Jazz-great Art Blakey #once said, “Music washes away the dust of every day life.” With a pair of drumsticks, he did just that, uncovering a new style of bebop drumming. He gave music a new shine.
Poetry scrubs us down with a back-and-forth hygiene, too. Its shifting rhythms and often abrasive refrains rub across #our dry skin like a pumice stone. But it takes some #obsession.
Movement. And repetition.
We wait for a jagged key to fit, for the molten brass to fill in the black holes. We listen for that sweet spot. “The most important thing I look for in a musician, said Duke Ellington, “is whether he knows how to listen.” Poets, can we tip a black fedora hat to that? It’s good wisdom.
Ellington became a legend partly because he understood the secret to a good shine: an artist keeps playing, until he hears that “Sweet Jazz O’ Mine”.
Let’s Play June Jazz!
All month long we’re swinging with poetry at Tweetspeak. We call it June Jazz. We write found poems and share them on Facebook, Twitter and personal blogs, though we always link back to here. Last week we wrote to the tune of “Three Trees”, a poem by Rachel Contreni Flynn.
Not only did Maureen Doallas hit the notes, she also hit most of Flynn’s words.
Already it’s October
and cold, the house sick
with our outraged hoping,
and silent in a clot of snow.
We’re all maneuvering
the sadness of brief summer
passion, the wrong thing
we made of ourselves;
the baby, the goodness after.
We, all of us, falter
and yet, of the earth,
pull through. Years vanish
in the slow grim gray of time.
Donna also heard the rhythm of pulling through. She wrote,
She pulled through
Like a small boat
Refusing to lose
Refusing to capsize
Refusing to be small at all
She pulled through
Like a small boat
As the big boats thrashed
Against the waves
Leaving this world
All twisted and sinking,
Wishing for
A heart like that
She pulled through
Like a small boat
Rosanne Osborne heard something else out in the snow.
When Wars Begin
Outraged in the snow
at the sheer audacity
of the attack,
his anger burned
through his mittens.
The snow ball
in his hand
melting
to an icy
missile.
Hands
that created
turned to hands
of aggression.
Kicking snow,
a restless yearling,
he hurled his charge
at Mason’s innocent cat,
tears of frustration freezing
on cheeks softened by the touch
of compassion and constancy of care.
Here’s how June Jazz works …
If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to Every Day Poems.
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1. On Mondays, the Every Day Poem in your inbox becomes a chord progression. Find your own tone. Build an idea around a single poem line. Just let yourself go and write a found poem, baby.
2. Tweet your poems to us. Add a #junejazz hashtag so we can find it and maybe share it with the world.
3. Or leave your found poem here in the comment box.
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We’ll read your tweets and share some of your weekly play each week. At the end of the month, we’ll choose a winning poem and ask the playful poet to record his or her poem to be featured in one of our upcoming Weekly Top 10 Poetic Picks.
Here’s today’s Every Day Poem. Now go jazz it up.
Want a little inspiration? Why not let Duke help you out …
Photo by Peter StraAina. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Matthew Kreider.
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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Trees.
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L. L. Barkat says
*You*
is my soul’s pleasure
just like that.
You and your jazz
is (are)
my soul’s pleasure.
My.
O how you pleasure
my soul.
Maureen Doallas says
Solitude Is Swell
Converse not,
and I may gladly
let thee be
my sweet pleasure.
Mind thy thoughts
of bliss; my spirits dwell
in jumbled words
and scenes with me.
O solitude, to thee
I flee.
Connie Cornwell Chipman says
Walk With Me
What Can I do for thee
who dwells in solitude,
how can I give comfort
to you? Let it not be
among the murky shadows
that hug.
Walk with me
through mingled light
and scented shade,
that makes passer’s by inhale
at the splendor in the air,
and fountains palpitating
in summers shine.
By each other’s side– lovelier made
Will our presence be.
Matthew Kreider says
O my! Listen to the sound of those push-pipes! It’s gonna be a good show, daddy-O’s! 😉
Connie Cornwell Chipman says
“Daddy’s-O’s.” Nice one:)
Connie Cornwell Chipman says
Daddy-O
It’s gonna be a good show
let it not be
among the jumbled heap.
Give me daddy-O
until that happy morning.
Donna says
if i could have
half a wish come true
then every sorrow would leave you
and your loneliness would
would fly away too
if i could have half a wish
if i could have
half a wish come true
you’d blink through the tears in your eyes of blue
and glimpse the power
i see in you
if I could have half a wish
http://unmixingcolors.typepad.com/along_the_way/2012/06/-half-a-wish.html
Rosanne Osborne says
Deception
When a dog startles the wild bee
from the foxglove bell, it’ll be
the devil to play. That dog
will think twice before he goes
sniffing around blossoms
where danger lurks. Deceptive,
those finger-like blooms carry
no hope of caress, no promise
of a scratch around the ears.
He’ll learn. Not every fox wearing
mittens is ready to romp or play.
Some are tossing their gauntlets,
a challenge that pits character
and faith against consummate odds.
Rosanne Osborne says
Graduation
Nothing is sweet in the converse
of an innocent mind. The sugared
coating of time has been bleached
from the denim thighs of the young.
World weary, they have seen
the underside of the cockroach,
the lifted tail of the scorpion’s sting,
and they know more than they
understand of a chaotic world
where gowns and mortar boards
only pretend adequate preparation.
Their innocence soured before
they left the public playground.
College was merely a rehearsal
of the mawkish stench of warm
beer and cribbed education.
They go now, the finest minds
of this age, haltered by egos
that shield reality, their success
dependent on what they can reject.
Grace Marcella Brodhurst-Davis says
“Treasure”
To him, it seemed he had to stumble from
The shy observatory he stood upon
To seek that secret soul’s pleasure
To be everyone’s idolized treasure
He opted for the liquid measure
Tasted highest bliss in his endeavor
Down murky halls he slithered anew
After drinking the witch’s bold brew
Atop the smoky, jumbled heap he drew
Crowds of kindred spirits to woo
‘Mongst age-old musical souls he crooned
The musky notes of a jazzy blues tune
Matthew Kreider says
Grace, I love the sound of “musky notes”! 🙂
Grace Marcella Brodhurst-Davis says
Thanks Matthew:)
Rosanne Osborne says
To read today’s offering to Keats and jazz with correct spacing, go to my blog: http://poetryhawk.blogspot.com.
Donna says
someone turn me off, baby
leave me where it’s still
fill the place with quiet, baby
go against your will
and let me be
just let me be
someone turn me off, baby
take these blues away
i’d rather have a coma
than this heartbreak everyday
let me be
just let me be
until my tears run dry, baby
and my heart is free,
please turn me off for just a little while
and let me be
oh let me be
inspiration poem: “to be an inanimate object, by ruth mowry
Rosanne Osborne says
Perspective
Descending…
the jumbled heap
of murky buildings
reaches up
and grabs us
from the air.
Our plane blends
with life below
and we become
what they are.
Plans crystalized
in the air melt
into the stasis
of landlocked life.
Airy illusion
is wrenched
from our psyches
and we become
mold-stained
bricks and mortar.
Donna says
Grace…. love your piece… this line grabs me!
“‘Mongst age-old musical souls he crooned
The musky notes of a jazzy blues tune”
Grace Marcella Brodhurst-Davis says
Thanks Donna:)
Rosanne Osborne says
O Solitude
Solitude is the operation
of the soul in search of itself.
It’s in the dead center
of soundlessness
that vitality’s insistent
reminder can be heard.
The crunch of ant feet
descending into dust,
their mission mandated
by singular intelligence,
beating a rhythm
that the soul knows.
Tracy Seffers says
Here’s my O and tree poem in one–hope it’s not too late.
The Root Defiant
(for Katy)
The gardener toils and, splicing strength to strength,
engrafts the sturdy root of apple tree
to graceful weeping crab. The grafted tree
is planted; grows as planned; but in its shade
another grows: a girl, apple-blossomed hair
and feet bird-swift; laughter brimming, spilling . . .
until the years of darkness slow their flight,
dam up the stream and dim her radiant hair.
O Tree-girl. O Girl-tree. In the silence
of your roots is held the truth of who you are.
Go there. Listen. Embrace and be embraced.
No time remains for this trailing habit:
See the long-diminished root express its branching hunger for the light,
Declare in greenest strength, I will no longer weep, but stand.
Rosanne Osborne says
Solitude with an Age Bias
Keats and Twain were tailored
from different cloth,
but on solitude, they agreed.
Twain named it contemptuous
when his neighbors
turned against him,
their hardness cutting
him to the quick, that soft
flesh below the growing nail.
It would be his hands that suffered,
his writing intricately interwoven
with his sense of self, a singular fabric.
His was the solitude of age, life
betraying life, scissors cutting
errant patterns for ill-fitting
garments. For the youthful Keats,
solitude was the vestment
worn by a suitor kindred seeking.
Rosanne Osborne says
Connection Is Where You Find It
The only possible connection
between my father and John Keats
rests on their joint recognition
of the deer’s shift leap. For Keats,
that deer is little more than a conceit
to complete a sonnet’s line,
but for my father, that deer’s leap
figured the elusive target
in a hunter’s late initiation.
Not born to hunt, he moved
us to a rural Missouri community
in the forties where the currency
of male social exchange spun
on the eye’s dime sighted down
a rifle barrel. Each year, the men
waited for the three-day season
to fill their waiting freezers
with meat for the winter. Each year,
my father’s errant shots did little more
than accelerate the leap of wily bucks,
the cunning of six-point patriarchs.
For him, the doe’s sudden bolt
across the car’s light at night
became the stuff of sacred magic.