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Private Stock
from CONJUGATIONS AND REITERATIONS
thelonius
the syncopating monk
whose preferred cloistersphere
seemed to be the misty morning atmosphere
of the after hours joint
from which the last of the nightlong
merrymakers have departed.
in all events
he almost always used to seem
to be resampling his honky-tonk piano
meditations and up-tempo stride time etudes
as much for his own private edification
as for the programmed entertainment
of any paying audience
indeed thelonius made music
as some monks have always made
and shared wine:
here's something else to my taste
try this
how about this
or
this
Pas de Deux
from CONJUGATIONS AND REITERATIONS
(I)
all art,
said old water pater,
speaking of sandro botticelli,
constantly aspires
toward the condition
of music.
so it is swing
that is the supreme fiction,
madam,
for
(given the concreteness
of physical experience per se)
our primary concern
is the quality of our consciousness
(how we feel about it all)
and swing, which is movement
and countermovement
which is life itself,
is that elegant resilience
that poetry would reenact,
its verbalization being
aesthetic kinetics!
after all, madam
(or rather first of all),
is not the primordial function
of verbal enchantment
the refinement
of our physical responses?
the objective of poetry
is to be moving, madam,
poetry is the supreme effort
to make words swing.
but according to vico,
(giambattista, 1668-1744)
before articulation
became narration
there was only exclamation
(onomatopoeia)
along with pantomime
yes, as jamesjoyce came to know
and kennethburke came to say,
poetry is symbolic action
and symbolic action,
madam,
is the dancing of an attitude,
and dance, madam,
don't mean a thing
minus the insouciant element
of swing
there's your supreme fiction, madam,
it ain't waht you do it's the way that you do it.
l'envoie:
it must never
be more gynastic
than elegant
II.
swinging is never uptight,
my good fellow,
no sweat, my man,
cool, old pardner,
up-tempo relaxation
as it were, moreover,
given the inevitability
of entropy
and the ineluctable modality
of perception
and thus conception
swinging is not only
the most elegant mathematical
solution
it is also
the best revenge
Excerpted from Conjugations and Reiterations by Albery Murray. Copyright© 2001 by Albert Murray. Excerpted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of
Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this poem may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Photo credit: Joan Bingham.
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