A friend gave me a poem about jazz. I left it there.

January 15, 2006 4:28 PM

Lost Poem. This is *not* the poem I'm looking for:

A friend told me
He'd risen above jazz.
I leave him there.

- Michael s. Harper

Rather, that poem is the epigraph for a much longer poem.

The longer poem ends with the words: "...that would listen if it could."

What is it?

posted by bingo to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Well, seeing as how nobody was able to help you out I did some googling. My results were pretty convoluted and unfortunately not much turned up on Google. I would go to the library and check out "Dear John, Dear Coltrane". That's pretty much just a hunch after the google results. The only clear thing I was able to come up with after searching was the title of that bit you put up is "Alone".
Good luck!
posted by Iamtherealme at 8:51 PM on January 15, 2006

According to google's book search, the poem (Alone) is just those three lines.
posted by dhruva at 10:44 PM on January 15, 2006

Yup....I'm wondering though if he wrote "Alone" as kind of an after thought to "Dear John, Dear Coltrane." I wasn't familiar with the term "epigraph" before now, but I get the feeling that implies it was written about somebody else's poem.
Perhaps your best bet is to ask him. Nothing to lose, right? Let us know what you find out.
posted by Iamtherealme at 12:02 AM on January 16, 2006

Response by poster: The poem that I'm looking for was definitely not written by the same person who wrote "Alone," and "Alone" was definitely written first. An epigraph is just an introductory quote from another work. Shelley introduces Frankenstein with:

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould Me man?

...from Milton.

Anyway, mayhap I will email Mr. Harper, though I'm not sure that this is something he would necessarily know about or have interest in answering. Thanks.
posted by bingo at 11:42 AM on January 16, 2006

Mod note: Final update from the OP:

The poem I was looking for is indeed called Above Jazz, by Philip Levine.

Above Jazz

“A friend tells me he has risen above
Jazz. I leave him there. . .” Michael Harper

There is that music that the hammer
makes when it hits the nail squarely
and the wood opens with a sigh. There is
the music of the bones growing, of
teeth biting into bread, of the baker
making bread, slapping the dusted loaf
as though it were a breathing stone.
There has always been the music
of the stars, soundless and glittering
in the winter air, and the moon’s
full song, loon-like and heard only
by someone far from home who glances
up to the southern sky for help and finds
the unfamiliar cross and for a moment
wonders if he or the heavens
have lost their way. Most perfect
is the music heard in sleep—the breath
suspends itself above the body, the soul
returns to the room having gone in dreams
to some far shore and entered water
only to rise and fall again and rise
a final time dressed in the rags of time
and made the long trip home to the body,
cast-off and senseless, because it is
the only instrument it has. Listen, stop
talking, stop breathing. That is music,
whatever you hear, even if it’s
only the simple pulse, the tides
of blood tugging toward the heart
and back on the long voyage that must
always take them home. Even if you
hear nothing, the breathless earth
asleep, the oceans at last at rest,
the sun frozen before dawn and the peaks
of the eastern mountains upright, cold
and silent. All that you do not hear
and never can is music, and in the dark
creation dances around the single center
that would be listening if it could.

--Philip Levine from Unselected Poems

posted by taz (staff) at 1:19 AM on October 13, 2021