Chekhov’s Mistess

Marginalia: Rounding Brilliant Corners

I picked up Brilliant Corners, “A Journal of Jazz and Literature.” For those that are not into jazz, Brilliant Corners is a tune composed by Thelonious Monk, a genius of the “bop” era in jazz.

First of all, I love the name, both as the tune and as the title of a journal. This was my first read and I imagine that is tough to run a literary journal with such a narrow focus. This issue featured an interview with Dan Morgenstern, whose book Living with Jazz, A Reader, was recently released (and given to me as a Christmas gift). Morgenstern is a long-time jazz critic who has seen a lot of history, so the interview alone is interesting, but the journal as a whole, even with its self-limitation, succeeds for a jazz fan.

Most of the issue was poetry with a jazz theme, which was thought provoking for me both in terms of thinking about poetry and jazz. I’ve been a jazz fan longer than a poetry fan, but in some ways they are similar. If you think about jazz improvisation and what that means to the music, I think you have the essence of a good poem. I once saw an interview with Branford Marsalis, who said that (and I paraphrase from memory) that it is a fallacy ‘to think that a jazz musician just goes out there and plays anything he wants; the music tells him what to play.’ I think in the same way, poetic form, or the idea of the poem is merely the structure in which the poet uses as a spring board for creative energy.

I also just happened to have watched the documentary film, “Straight, No Chaser,” about Monk, who was/is one of my favorite jazz composers (along with Mingus). Incidentally, some of the scenes of Monk hanging around clubs in the fifties reminded me of certain parts of Gaddis’s The Recognitions. Some of these jazz documentaries mistakenly think that it is enough to put a little biographical information around concert footage, but this one gives you a sense of the man and the time he lived in. I recommend it.

Read widely, think well, and write often.

comments

Aye, but imagine the poet who could write as freely as a riffing Miles - that person would be godly indeed. Improvisation is a truly amazing gift, music has the imposition of time and space which is actually very liberating in practice

(not for me by the way, I always freaked over mistakes)- whereas the poet has the tyranny of revision to consider. I always liked Pound’s dry little translation of Sextus Propertius, “we have kept our erasers in order”.

    – genevieve (01/30  at  09:08 PM)

Time and space sure, but jazz musicians have revision in the form of practice practice practice - even if that sometimes means playing in some club everyday.

Love the Pound quote by the way - I haven’t read “homage...” but have long been getting up the courage to spend some time with Pound beyond reading - or reciting might be a better word - some of the Pisan Cantos.

    – Bud Parr (01/30  at  10:08 PM)

Bud, I’m sure you’d enjoy Sextus, it’s much easier than the Cantos and very funny. I also love the little poems in the front sections of collected Pound - the tobacco shop, “ oh God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves...”

    – genevieve (02/02  at  12:44 AM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: January 26, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature

• Comments:3
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