Thread: Mingus

A solo dancer marches
to the rhythm of
hands digging through
public ashtrays looking
for decent cigarette
butts and the time
signature is from a smooth
jazz number squawking from
211 suicide call waiting
help line that is busy
at the moment please wait
your call is important
to us.
Spit valves open and close
in the upright bass baton
that leads a parade of
cigar puffing pretentious
pulsing pulp eyed baker
acted neon sign tremolo
singing dead freelanced
musicians that scrawl
their legacy on black
spinning disks that
foam dust from their
mouths when left in the
dark too long.
Throw a Spanish finger
picked nylon stringed
guitar in the duet of
solo dancers and see what
happens when it begins to
bite tradition on the shoulder
and pull its hair and drools
in laughter. Perhaps somewhere
down the line someone will
listen to their screams
before taking a a couple
pills of prescribed abused
angelical feathers wrapped
up in blue and red dissoluble
plastic and try to march to
the rhythm of desperation,
dirty and damp and
beautiful.

This was very enjoyable. Vaguely surreal and impressionistic, much in the way jazz can be surreal and impressionistic. (Charles Mingus is/was a jazz musician, right? Forgive my ignorance; I never could get into jazz.)

First, though, some technical nitpicks.

Originally Posted by Hinducow28

hands digging through
public ashtrays looking
for a decent cigarette
butts and the time
signature is from a smooth
jazz number squaking from
211 suicide call waiting

I'm not sure if, when you talk about "butts," you're talking about the cigarette butts, or the cans of the dancers. Assuming you're talking about the cigarettes, it should either be

looking
for a decent cigarette
butt

or it should be

looking
for decent cigarette
butts

Now, if "butts" refers to something else, like the rear ends of the dancers, the verb needs to agree with its subject, and it should read like this:

butts and the time
signature are from a smooth
jazz number

Because the poem is a bit surreal, it was hard for me to know which way you meant it, so I just thought I'd point it out.

Also, "sqaking" is not a word. Did you mean "squawking" or "quaking"? Toward the end "disolvable" too ought to be changed to "dissolvable." It still technically isn't a word, but in that case I know what you meant, so it doesn't matter. It's just that "dissolve" has two s's, not one.

Okay! Now that we've got all that out of the way, I want to reiterate how much I enjoyed this poem. The chaos in the language well represents the chaotic atmosphere of a jazz club. You've managed to maintain that feel from beginning to end, and while I don't know exactly everything that's going on in the poem, it still works, because I think that was intentional on your part. So, thanks for sharing. It was a fun read.

This seems to come across as a too self-conscious effort to imitate beat poetry, rather than pay it tribute -- with it being centered around jazz and with the drugs and neon and cigarettes etc. All those things are coming off as cliche to me, like nothing about it comes from experience or anything authentic. So on that level it really isn't working for me.

well, thanks anyways for reading.
and to Bachelorette: thank you for pointing out the spelling/grammatical errors! I can be pretty bad at that.

"Throw a Spanish finger
picked nylon stringed
guitar in the duet of
solo dancers and see what
happens when it begins to
bite tradition on the shoulder
and pull its hair and drools
in laughter."

there are some really great lines in this, some good imagery. i really like the energy of this, but for some reason the whole poem isn't coming together for me. i'm not sure what advise i would give you. perhaps forming this in longer lines, use line breaks for more impact and to compliment the rhythm. keep working on this, i'd love to see any changes you make.

wood

Have you ever read Tarantula by Bob Dylan? That's what this reminded me of: chaotic, surreal, and utterly engrossing. Not sure you've quite found your Beat voice, but there is more substance here than not.

Well, I probably was a bit harsh. Once I reread it, and kind of accepted the elements that came off as cliche to me, I could see you do have some interesting imagery. I suppose kind of a big red "this is beat" flag came up and I was having a hard time getting past it. The style and the jazz references etc. are going to do that, no matter what, I think -- if you're familiar with all that. I probably started second-guessing it at the title -- being a Mingus fan and a big fan of jazz of that era, Miles, Coltrane, Dizzy etc. Anyway it's a good effort. Cheers.

Interesting you should say that, JosephB. I know next to nothing about beat poetry, so maybe that's why my reaction was more positive?