TOP17-DES16
This Old Poem #17:
Michael Harper’s Dear John, Dear Coltrane
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 8/25/02

  Michael Harper is 1 of those poets I hate to include in a series like TOP; the reason being he’s a very ambitious poet- in a # of ways he’s the black equivalent of Hart Crane, save for documenting the- ahem- dark side of the America he loves. Unfortunately he lacks HC’s lyricism, & while some of his longer poems, like Debridement, work pretty well- it falls far short of The Bridge or even Voyages. He simply has a clunky ear, a penchant for trying to be a ‘jazz poet’- presumably because he’s black, even though were he to stick to ‘cerebral verse’ he would be alot better off. I love MH’s zeitgeist but….he just does not know how to make the most of his talents. Dear John, Dear Coltrane is typical of MH poems that fail- it’s an attempt to be jazzy, yet his subject matter is über-trite: John Coltrane, again? The only way this poem could have a worse, & more pathetic, provenance were if MH were white.
  But, MH considers himself a historian, as well a poet. He believes history is shaped not by events but by people who observe it in song, dance, poetry, etc. His father was a mailman, & MH is 1 of the few poets, of any creed, to write alot of working class life. He grew up in a Brooklyn family where the blues & jazz were played. His family’s move to Los Angeles in 1951, to a white neighborhood was a traumatic enough experience to make MH vow to use poetry as a weapon. The pattern set, is it a wonder that he’s never reached his potential? He earned his MFA & is now a tenured professor at Brown University. He even teaches Advanced Poetry Writing: ‘a body of exercises, workshops, and conferences.’ His poetry is highly influenced by jazz & blues- much to his detriment, for 1 with a tin ear. His poems are filled with references to his past; history, experience, family. A stay at the infamous Iowa Writer’s Workshop in the mid-50s had a profound effect on MH- that this bastion of liberalism was still segregated led MH to redouble his efforts to use poetry as a political tool. Uh-oh! The poem I will tackle comes from the same-titled 1970 book. The 1970s were probably the best decade for MH. Since then he has slid into repetition, with occasional power coming through- most notably in his 1975 book Nightmare Begins Responsibility.
  But it is the insistence of being a ‘jazz poet’- despite his lack of ear- that has hurt MH the most. Here’s an online take:

  In [Dear John Dear Coltrane], John Coltrane, who Harper knew, is both the man and his jazz, the talented and tragic musician, and his wholistic worldview and redemptive music. With an understanding of black music similar to W. E. B. Du Bois's in his description of the African American "sorrow songs," Harper includes the music of poetry as similar affirmation of the importance of articulating suffering to gain from it and survive it. Here, as in Harper's later volumes, musical rhythm replaces traditional metrics in the poetry without sacrificing craft. Coltrane becomes a link between the personal and historical, pain and its expression, suffering and love. To extend these themes, Harper devotes a section of the volume to poems about his own kin, thematically and literally personalizing history so that family ties become continuities of humanity as they link the individual with both a personal and collective history. This opening and overlapping of historical and personal possibility, in the context of Harper’s interest in music, seems to provide a handle on Harper’s difficult and abstract concept of musical and poetic modality.

  1 has to wonder why someone with such artistic fury would fall in to such a trap. Nonetheless, MH is a pretty good poet. As for Dear John, Dear Coltrane- read on:

Dear John, Dear Coltrane

a love supreme, a love supreme
a love supreme, a love supreme

Sex fingers toes
in the marketplace
near your father's church
in Hamlet, North Carolina--
witness to this love
in this calm fallow
of these minds;
there is no substitute for pain:
genitals gone or going,
seed burned out,
you tuck the roots in the earth,
turn back, and move
by river through the swamps,
singing: a love supreme, a love supreme;
what does it all mean?
Loss, so great each black
woman expects your failure
in mute change, the seed gone.
You plod up into the electric city--
you song now crystal and
the blues. You pick up the horn
with some will and blow
into the freezing night:
a love supreme, a love supreme--

Dawn comes and you cook
up the thick sin 'tween
impotence and death, fuel
the tenor sax cannibal
heart, genitals and sweat
that makes you clean--
a love supreme, a love supreme--

Why you so black?
cause I am
why you so funky?
cause I am
why you so black?
cause I am
why you sweet?
cause I am
why you so black?
cause I am
a love supreme, a love supreme:

So sick you couldn't play Naima,
so flat we ached
for song you'd concealed
with your own blood,
your diseased liver gave
out its purity,
the inflated heart
pumps out, the tenor kiss,
tenor love:

a love supreme, a love supreme--
a love supreme, a love supreme--

  As I said, the only way this poem could be worse were if a white guy were trying to write it. Note the attempts at tri-syllabic jazz lines & rhythms. Pretty clunky- eh? The ‘love supreme’ refrain is as trite as it is dull. & look at all the clichés of the down-trodden jazz or blues musician. The rule that he, & most poets forget is: if you wanna write a poem on boredom, do not make the poem boring! Similarly- take a NEW approach to this overdone musician’s life! Pain, sex, river, swamp, electric city, ‘tween, funky, blood, alcohol- please! There is nothing 1000 other Coltrane (or Bird, or Satchmo, or….you get the point) poems have not said 1000 times before- & sometimes better.
  Then again, most poets fail because they refuse to 1^st master an aspect of poetry & THEN move on to new territory. Most just shift aimlessly, purveying ½-thought out pap all over the place. Let me clean this poem up & send us on home- or should I say, in true blues swagger, ‘Bring it on home’?

Dear John, Dear Coltrane
 
near your father's church
in Hamlet, North Carolina--
witness to this love
of these minds;
there is no substitute:
turn back, and move,
singing: 

a love supreme, a love supreme;
what does it all mean?
in mute change, the seed gone:

 
your diseased liver gave
out its purity,
the inflated heart
pumps out, the tenor kiss,
tenor love:

  This rewrite has all the important & salient features of its longer counterpart- but none of its excesses. The ‘love supreme’ appears only once & we get, instead of the trite jazzman’s life poem- a poem on a particular son & father. Also, by ending each stanza with a colon we get each stanza as a subset of the preceding one- which adds a psychological resonance the original lacked. By ending the last stanza with a colon we also leave the reader hanging, rather than ending with the trite & expected ‘love supreme’ refrain of the original. The end images, are also far more unique & resonant. We can be pretty sure what will come.
  But, MH doesn’t trust his readers enough to merely sketch out a situation, like my rewrite does. He has to lay it all out for the umpteenth time. Here is another snippet from online, typical of the apologiae offered for bad poetry:

   The poem begins with a catalog of sexual trophies, for whites, a lesson to blacks not to assert their manhood, and that black men are suspect because they are potent. The mingling of trophy and Christian vision, Coltrane’s minister-father, indicates an emphasis on physical facts—that there is no refinement beyond the body. The antiphonal, call-response/retort stanza simulates the black church, and gives the answer of renewal to any question raised—"cause I am." It is Coltrane himself who chants, in life, "a love supreme;" jazz and the blues, as open-ended forms, cannot be programmatic or abstract, but modal.

  Well, D-Uh! That a poet should so lightly regard his reading public as to feel a need to hand-hold them through a poem- well. Then again, this is an online ‘sage’- not MH’s rationale. But, it is probably closer to what MH would say in defense of his trite poem, than the slick, & non-condescending, rewrite I spun for you. 

Final Score: (1-100):

Michael Harper’s Dear John, Dear Coltrane: 55
TOP’s Dear John, Dear Coltrane: 80