Fw: Dis Ere by Bobby Timmons
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-------- Original message --------
From: Anne & Inigo Kilborn
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2021, 19:03
To: 'Tara Desai'
Subject: RE: Dis Ere by Bobby Timmons
Hi Tara,
It's a great poem, full of vivid images, which reads (and sounds) like music - not dissimilar perhaps to Cannonball's passionate improvisation itself. Yes, I did listen again to "Dis 'ere" (and it was even better than I remembered!) before reading your poem for the second and many more times.
I especially like the way you include multiple references to the track, which strengthen the links between the music, the audience at the gig, the reader and the deeply-felt message (no other word will do) that you are expressing. Writing anything about music is so often either trite or doomed to failure, but you have pulled it off triumphantly.
The only contemporary so-called "poetry" I read these days is the odd poem or two that appear each fortnight in the London Review of Books. They are 90%+ of the time vapid, self-regarding and infuriatingly (deliberately?) obscure.
Poetry should communicate. Your poem does.
Keep writing!
With love,
Inigo
PS Orlando read your poem - he thinks it's great too!
PPS I'd like to send you a couple of my more recent CDs, BUT only if it's OK with you. If it is, let me have a postal address.
De : Tara Desai [mailto:taradesai@hotmail.com]
Envoyé : samedi 6 février 2021 21:24
À : anigo@wanadoo.fr
Objet : Dis Ere by Bobby Timmons
Hi Inigo,
I'm sending my poem to you as I know you'll immediately dig it. I have started writing poems on jazz and individual artists. I've sent this to mum too and I look forward to an arduous analysis. She would give Shakespeare a hard time! Also I'm not sure she can clap to a waltz!
All the best,
Tara
"Dis 'ere..." Cannonball announces,
E flat sax of his all lit up
In the smoke-filled club,
"... is a jazz waltz."
Brother Nat' s horn
Plays a foreign fanfare,
Proclaiming the second coming,
Like a thousand tongues of
Prostrated Pentecostals.
This here's a whole congregation,
Of foot-tapping listeners who,
In the Spirit, are slain.
As they pray for life in 3/4.
3 counts and no rests.
Jazz. Period.
No Bach Chorales,
No laboured grace notes
No European overthinking.
A primeval urge to survive
Set our ancestors,
Like driven jazz drummers,
Hurtling towards
This promised land: thuggish, smug in its all-knowing 'un-reality'.
This double-edged sword
Of knowledge:
Science and Faith. Which one's the gloopy black
Murderous residue?
Product of neuroses,
Our glib hypotheses?
PAIN.
Is an entire people,
Destined for syncopation,
Like a band on the brink of combustion,
Yearning for open fifths
And blues scales,
Imperfect cadences like
Suffering unanswered.
Raw chords, as diminished as our unsatisfaction.
Yet the calculated cold
Rhythm of scientific 'cures'
Will never revive our human race.
From the dead we're raised, each one of us a Lazarus,
Energised by our Art;
A reflection of our condition.
Chanting 'survival' like the final movement
Our clapping, hollering, agony...
Acknowledged by a jazz quintet .
Now we're finally seen.
Like the bayou embraced by the hot rain.
See the clowns, all
Devoid of elation?
Blacked up in their white cake stick
'A jinglin' and janglin' to powerful
Scarecrows of idols?
A hate's
Only born out of thinking.
All races and colours of skin with their
Genderisation and fluids and sub-groups
Lock us down;
Tying us up with a dandelion stalk.
Binary Bi-Curiosity
Can't mend humankind.
This was not our agenda.
To flail.
To wail. We yearn
For the simplest of pasts.
Past simple; one verb and it's done.
Auxiliary verbs, future perfects and such
Over-complicate life like
A priest's proud
Indifference towards all the nuns.
The heart's a waltz.
With no fourth beat.
No coda.
No stodgy prescriptions
No tweaking.
No factions
No bombings
No blunders.
No blame.
No political
Quest for revenge
And no need to amend.
Just a rapture on beat number two!
A gospel-jazz waltz,
Like a preacher's charisma,
Ties our life neatly
To its right tense.
Like every beginning joyfully
Finding its end.
Flora$$$ghostw12
 7900
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DIS ERE BY BOBBY TIMMONS
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DIS ERE BY BOBBY TIMMONSDis 'ere..." Cannonball announces, E flat sax of his all lit up In the smoke-filled club, "... is a jazz waltz." Brother Nat' s horn Plays a foreign fanfare, Proclaiming the second coming, Like a thousand tongues of Prostrated Pentecostals. This here's a whole congregation, Of foot-tapping listeners who, In the Spirit, are slain. As they pray for life in 3/4. 3 counts and no rests. Jazz. Period. No Bach Chorales, No laboured grace notes No European overthinking. A primeval urge to survive Set our ancestors, Like driven jazz drummers, Hurtling towards This promised land: thuggish, smug in its all-knowing 'un-reality'. This double-edged sword Of knowledge: Science and Faith. Which one's the gloopy black Murderous residue? Product of neuroses, Our glib hypotheses? PAIN. Is an entire people, Destined for syncopation, Like a band on the brink of combustion, Yearning for open fifths And blues scales, Imperfect cadences like Suffering unansw... |