For Dizzy Gillespie
It was never control we were after.
Jazz, by ragged definition,
pump-started its own heart,
sensed the possibilities of chaos
long before it became brown baby lullaby,
the ripples that pulse on the surface of whiskey.
Jazz demanded the unleashing of so many souls,
turned order into impetuous melody,
chords which blew spit at their captors,
and there was nowhere to run
and even fewer places to hide.
What gave birth to jazz,
what moist, constricted passage it struggled from,
who held it aloft,
slapped that newborn ass
and spark the glorious screaming
doesn’t matter.
What matters is fluid lines shredding into scat
and us owning that sweetness;
what matters is cigarette-thin men
swearing at their reflections in the bartop.
What matters is sugar browns
hitching up home-made skirts
and pounding holes into the dance floor,
out past curfew and tired of asking the time.
What matters is the bee in the bonnet of bebop,
curses swirling from the mouth of a sax,
moans trapped in cool column of clarinet,
the blues twisting the guitar string’s throat
and mojo rising up from the brown battered skin of drums.
There is growling in all of this,
a warning to stop and shout hallelujah!,
to shout praise for all that is cool and raunchy,
to be thankful for complication.
And let somebody else answer
when the disbelieving ask Who is jazz’s mama?
What ripe woman’s body curved and struggled
and pushed that hardheaded boy into the light?
And somewhere, the bell of a horn curved up.
Because, you see, it was never about control,
it was never about polished brass eking out thin notes
for maybe brown babies in sequins and hardbacked chairs.
Jazz was never capture or compliance.
It was all about the possibilities of chaos,
and he never bothered straightening that bell
cause why shouldn’t heaven get the gospel too?
What he blew upset us, soured our gentle stomachs.
What did we need with music
that thrived in blue light,
music with rumbling in its feet?
We begged it go away, they banned it on the airwaves,
but the heat in our hips spoke otherwise.
Couldn’t do, wouldn’t do, didn’t wanna do
didn’t know how to do without it,
those cocky, seamless blasts that rock us to rolling,
but it was not about control, it was never about control,
it was about the bell of a horn curved up,
not jazz’s mama, but her son,
all rough chin and sharkskin,
a black beret on cool kinks,
ever a note to apologize for
and
such
outrageous
cheeks.
“Spinning Till You Get Dizzy” is excerpted from Close to Death, by Patricia Smith. Copyright © 1998 by Patricia Smith. Used by permission of Zoland Books. All rights reserved.
My son, budding dreadhead, has taken a break from obsessively twist-
ing and waxing his naps, swelling his delts, and busting rhymes with
no aim, backbeat, or future beyond the common room. For want of a
plumper canteen, the child has laid claim to a jailhouse vocation.
I'm the writer, Mama, he tells me.
That's what I'm known for in here.
In my kitchen, clutching the receiver, I want to laugh, because my son
has always been the writer, muttering witness to the underbelly, his
rebel heart overthumping, his bladed lines peppered with ready-mar-
ket gangster swerve and cringing in awe of themselves. I want to laugh,
but
I must commit to my focus. I must be typical, single, black, with an
18-to-30-year-old male child behind bars. How deftly I have learned
the up/back of that tiring Watusi.
I guess it's a poem, he'd mutter.
Throw it away if you want.
And oh, I'd ache at what he'd done, the bottoms he'd found, the clutch
he claimed on what refused to be held, the queries scraped from sur-
face. What are you chile?, I'd whisper as I read. Could there be a dream
just temporarily deferred wallowing in those drooping denims and
triple-x sweats, could there be a poet wrapped tight against the world
in those swaddling clothes?
He was the writer then, but now, reluctant resident of the Middlesex
County House of Corrections, he is the writer, sanctioned by the bad-
dest of badasses because he has trumpeted the power of twisting verb
and noun not only to say things, but to get shit:
They paying me to write love letters to their ladies.
I write poems if they rather have that,
this one big musclehead brother everybody be sweatin
even asked me to write a letter to his mama on her birthday.
They call him Scribe.
They bring him their imploded dreams, letters from their women-in-waiting tired of waiting. On deadline, he spins impossible sugar onto
the precise lines of legal pads, pens June/moon dripping enough to
melt a b-girl's hard heart. He drops to scarred knees, moans and
whimpers in stilted verse, coaxing last ink from a passed-around ball-
point, making it wail:
please please babygirl,
don't be talking about not waiting out my time,
only five years left, that ain't much,
hey Scribe, Scribe, hook me up, man,
I ain't got no answer for this shit she sudden talking.
Tattooed in riotous colors, they circle him in the common room,
whispering to him beneath the surface of their reputations:
Got a job for you Scribe, got a job.
When the letters are crafted just right, copied over and over and
edited for the real, the customers stumble through the aloud reading
of them, scared of their own new voices. Too dazzled to demand
definition, they scrunch scarred foreheads and whistle through gold
caps at the three-syllable kickverbs:
I'm gon' trust you, they tell my son. I'm gon' trust you on this.
They don't want their softness. They don't want it.
You know, Scribe, damn, damn this shit SINGS!
You blessed man, you blessed.
I don't know what you saying man, but it sho sound good.
So I'm gon' trust you. I'm gon' trust you on this.
Then they copy the words in their own hand and send spun silk shoutouts
to the freewalking world, hoping that a disillusioned girlfriend or a neg-
lected mother or a wife-in-waiting tired of waiting will slit open the
envelope and feel a warm repentant should spill out into her hands.
And I must admit, as a fellow poet, I envy my son, this being neces-
sary. Think of it. Which of us would refuse to try on the first face of a
killer, our life teetering on every line? Wouldn't we want to craft a
new front for everyone just once, to rewrite one moment of a life
story, to beg for mercy on behalf of someone who has never known
life on his knees?
And at the end of our flowery betrayal, the white-heat moment of no
sound. In the steamy pocket of it, all we'd need is one person rising up
slow, full of spit and menace, to say:
O.K., O.K., I'm gon' trust you on that one.
I'm gon' have to trust you on that.
"Scribe" is excerpted from Teahouse Of The Almighty, by Patricia Smith. Copyright © 2006 by
Patricia Smith. Used by permission of Coffee House Press. All rights reserved.
PATRICIA SMITH’s latest poetry book, Teahouse of the Almighty (Coffee House Press), was chosen by Edward Sanders as a 2005 National Poetry Series winner, and was also awarded the 2007 Paterson Poetry Prize. She is the author of three previous books of poetry - Close to Death (Zoland Books), Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland Books) and Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Chautauqua Literary Journal, TriQuarterly, and other journals, and in many groundbreaking anthologies-most recently Gathering Ground, The Spoken Word Revolution, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry and Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry. Her poem "The Way Pilots Walk" received a Pushcart Prize.
Smith is four-time national individual champion of the notorious and wildly popular National Poetry Slam, an energized competition where poets are judged on the content and performance of their work. Recognized as one of the world’s most formidable performers, she was featured in the nationally released film “Slamnation,” and appeared on the award-winning HBO series “Russel Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam.” Smith has read her work at venues round the world, including the Poets Stage in Stockholm, Rotterdam’s Poetry International Festival, the Aran Islands International Poetry and Prose Festival and on tour in Germany, Austria and Holland. In the U.S., she’s performed at Carnegie Hall, Bumbershoot, the inaugural Palm Beach Poetry Festival, the Folger Shakespeare Library and St. Mark’s Poetry Project, sharing the stage with noted writers such as Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds, Rita Dove, Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsberg, Walter Mosley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Billy Collins, Galway Kinnell and “Lord of the Rings” star Viggo Morgensen. She has also collaborated musically with Philip Pemberton and the blues band Bop Thunderous, and is occasionally a vocalist with the stellar improvisational jazz group, Bill Cole’s Untempered Ensemble.
A selection of Smith’s poetry was produced as a one-woman play by Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott and performed at both Boston University Playwrights Theater and the historic Trinidad Theater Workshop. Another play, based on Life According to Motown, was staged by Company One Theater in Hartford, Ct., and reviewed favorably in The New York Times.
Recordings of Patricia Smith’s work can be found on the CD “Always in the Head” as well as in the compilations “Grand Slam,” “A Snake in the Heart,” “By Someone’s Good Graces” and “Lip.” A short film of Smith performing the poem “Undertaker,” produced by Tied to the Tracks Films, won awards at the Sundance and San Francisco Film Festivals and earned a prestigious Cable Ace Award as part of the Lifetime Network’s first annual Women’s Film Festival.
As a budding voiceover artist, she was the radio voice of the Oil of Olay Total Effects product line.
Smith is currently at work on Fixed on a Furious Star, a biography of Harriet Tubman. Previously she authored Africans in America (Harcourt Brace), a companion volume to the groundbreaking four-part PBS history series.
Her first children’s book, Janna and the Kings, a New Voices Award winner, was published in 2003, and her second, Mahina, the Mad Mad Moon was just completed. She is also writing a young adult novel, The Journey of Willie J, as well as Blood Dazzler, a book of poetry about the human toll exacted by Hurricane Katrina.
An accomplished and sought-after instructor of poetry, performance and creative writing, Smith is proud to be a Cave Canem faculty member, as well as a former Bruce McEver Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech University. Currently she does workshops and residencies customized for all age groups.
In October of 2006, during the Gwendolyn Brooks Creative Writing Conference at Chicago State University, Patricia was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent.
From Lollapalooza to Carnegie Hall, Patricia Smith has taken the stage as this nation's premier performance poet. Featured in the film Slamnation and on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam, Smith is back with her first book in over a decade-a National Poetry Series winner weaving passionate, bluesy narratives into an empowering, finely tuned cele-bration of poetry's liberating power.
Amplifying the voices and souls of black men at various stages of their lives, Close to Death is a poetic requiem for those who struggle against the odds, for those who have resigned themselves to death, and for those already gone.
by Patricia Smith
PATRICIA SMITH’s latest poetry book, Teahouse of the Almighty (Coffee House Press), was chosen by Edward Sanders as a 2005 National Poetry Series winner, and was also awarded the 2007 Paterson Poetry Prize. She is the author of three previous books of poetry - Close to Death (Zoland Books), Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland Books) and Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Chautauqua Literary Journal, TriQuarterly, and other journals, and in many groundbreaking anthologies-most recently Gathering Ground, The Spoken Word Revolution, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry and Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry. Her poem "The Way Pilots Walk" received a Pushcart Prize.
Smith is four-time national individual champion of the notorious and wildly popular National Poetry Slam, an energized competition where poets are judged on the content and performance of their work. Recognized as one of the world’s most formidable performers, she was featured in the nationally released film “Slamnation,” and appeared on the award-winning HBO series “Russel Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam.” Smith has read her work at venues round the world, including the Poets Stage in Stockholm, Rotterdam’s Poetry International Festival, the Aran Islands International Poetry and Prose Festival and on tour in Germany, Austria and Holland. In the U.S., she’s performed at Carnegie Hall, Bumbershoot, the inaugural Palm Beach Poetry Festival, the Folger Shakespeare Library and St. Mark’s Poetry Project, sharing the stage with noted writers such as Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds, Rita Dove, Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsberg, Walter Mosley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Billy Collins, Galway Kinnell and “Lord of the Rings” star Viggo Morgensen. She has also collaborated musically with Philip Pemberton and the blues band Bop Thunderous, and is occasionally a vocalist with the stellar improvisational jazz group, Bill Cole’s Untempered Ensemble.
A selection of Smith’s poetry was produced as a one-woman play by Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott and performed at both Boston University Playwrights Theater and the historic Trinidad Theater Workshop. Another play, based on Life According to Motown, was staged by Company One Theater in Hartford, Ct., and reviewed favorably in The New York Times.
Recordings of Patricia Smith’s work can be found on the CD “Always in the Head” as well as in the compilations “Grand Slam,” “A Snake in the Heart,” “By Someone’s Good Graces” and “Lip.” A short film of Smith performing the poem “Undertaker,” produced by Tied to the Tracks Films, won awards at the Sundance and San Francisco Film Festivals and earned a prestigious Cable Ace Award as part of the Lifetime Network’s first annual Women’s Film Festival.
As a budding voiceover artist, she was the radio voice of the Oil of Olay Total Effects product line.
Smith is currently at work on Fixed on a Furious Star, a biography of Harriet Tubman. Previously she authored Africans in America (Harcourt Brace), a companion volume to the groundbreaking four-part PBS history series.
Her first children’s book, Janna and the Kings, a New Voices Award winner, was published in 2003, and her second, Mahina, the Mad Mad Moon was just completed. She is also writing a young adult novel, The Journey of Willie J, as well as Blood Dazzler, a book of poetry about the human toll exacted by Hurricane Katrina.
An accomplished and sought-after instructor of poetry, performance and creative writing, Smith is proud to be a Cave Canem faculty member, as well as a former Bruce McEver Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech University. Currently she does workshops and residencies customized for all age groups.
In October of 2006, during the Gwendolyn Brooks Creative Writing Conference at Chicago State University, Patricia was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent.
From Lollapalooza to Carnegie Hall, Patricia Smith has taken the stage as this nation's premier performance poet. Featured in the film Slamnation and on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam, Smith is back with her first book in over a decade-a National Poetry Series winner weaving passionate, bluesy narratives into an empowering, finely tuned cele-bration of poetry's liberating power.
Amplifying the voices and souls of black men at various stages of their lives, Close to Death is a poetic requiem for those who struggle against the odds, for those who have resigned themselves to death, and for those already gone.
by Patricia Smith
© 2008 Borders, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
