Pantechnicon; Micheal Harper

Michael Harper's grave blunt poems deal with human and black experience simultaneously welcoming white Americans into their music. As far as our imaginations you know priced from it and our history entitles us to go. This was part of the citation given to Professor Michael Harper by the American Academy National Institute of Arts and Letters when he won the 1972 award images. Michael Harper tonight on pantechnicon tonight a magazine on entertainment the arts and ideas made possible in part through a grant from the Korea corporation of law in Massachusetts. I'm Eleanor stone and I'm Greg Pitts Jerald. Tomorrow morning the polls open in New Hampshire for the nation's first presidential primary. Regular contributor Louie Lyons will have commentary coming up Michael Harper our guest on the poetry program this evening is a poet of distinction. Jazz in the Blues have been a great artistic influence on his poetry. He remembers Billie Holiday playing the piano in his family's home when he was 12. His first book Dear John Dear Coltrane is a eulogy to the famous black jazz man Michael Harper sometimes performs with a cellist in unrehearsed collaboration a technique borrowed

from the jazz idiom. Mr. Harper is professor of English at Brown University and his publications include history as your own heartbeat history as apple tree and nightmare begins responsibility. Our guest Michael Harper I think I've read the title for my first book Dear John Dear Coltrane and I can say briefly about this poem that I wrote before John Coltrane died. I can remember being up almost all night in New York City listening to him play at the half note. And I can remember being very guilty after the film was finished because I felt that it was kind of a recommendation or. Some kind of thunderbolt into the future. And I protected away and didn't look at it again for some time and after he died I took it and I began to look at it. This is my first attempt to relate to write a well-orchestrated kind of narration with the ritual components and to

try as best I could to appropriate the meaning of the music to me. So the poem has and has a graph to it. It's John Coltrane's own voice singing a love supreme which was the title album of the record of the year in 1064 A Love Supreme is a section which simulates the black church in which I think is quite easily decipherable. And one other thing called transfers twice. Her name is Naima. Also it's the name of a tune which she composed and played. Dear John Dear Coltrane. A Love Supreme A Love Supreme A Love Supreme A Love Supreme sex. Fingers toes in the marketplace. No your father's church in Hamlet North Carolina witness to this love in this calm fellow of these mines

there is no substitute for pain. Genitals gone agoing seed burned out. You took the roots in the earth turned back and moved 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 to change the seed gone. You plod up into the electric city your 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 fixin tween impotence and death fuel the tenor sax cannibal heart genitals and sweat that makes you clean. A Love Supreme love supreme. Why are you so black. Cause I am way so funky cause I am way so black. Cause I am way so sweet.

Cause I am way is so black cause I am a love supreme A Love Supreme. So sick you couldn't play Naeem so flat we ate for song you concealed with your own blood your diseased liver gave out it's purity the inflated heart pumps out the tender kiss tender love a love supreme A Love Supreme A Love Supreme love supreme. Do you write about jazz musicians a great deal like a Joe John Coltrane is really you a musician. Yes yes. He approximates and embodies a certain kind of aesthetic and I don't mean aesthetic in an academic or artistic terms but more as the kind of embodiment of beauty and beauty here as image and image as transformational.

Coltrane was a very important musician. He had a tremendous impact on musicians and he was obviously a craftsman and an innovator. But my main concern with John Coltrane is is his image making capacity and that's what I most identify with. Using the enemies when you read do you read that way very often.

It depends. It depends on what mood I'm in it depends on what the subject matter forms are the poems that I've written a quite a quite various in tone and subject matter and often times in public readings a person people have heard me read and I read through what I was about musicians and I think that's pretty much all I write about. But there is a kind of commitment and a kind of kinship with music and musicians the blues and my own background how I grew up and the music that I listen to and I'm sure has had a great influence. When you when you write then do you always keep in mind the rhythm you're speaking with. Sure Oh sure there's always a connection between I've been asked this question have I written the music and the answer is No. Because music interferes with the kind of space and the kind of silence which one needs to orchestrate a poem. But I hear almost everything I write. And that has that that's a tool and a guide as to whether a point is or is not or is not finished

whether it goes in a direction which I think it ought to go. Sometimes poems pretty much take on a life unto themselves and you discover later what's in there but the rhythm is important. So when you read you never have music in the background you don't know me to music. Well I read the music company meant but I mean I'm talking about in the composition and the writing a song I've performed with some of the company and I did it with cello accompaniment. I've also played we've done concerts with as many as nine musicians. I was I thought I might read up a very different kind of treatment of Coltrane's influence on me. Here I'm speaking about heritage. I'm also speaking about them the legacy that I would like to give to my children and particularly my oldest son. This is a poem which comes out of a kind of long historical rendering of the blues.

Written for a mythical woman named Ruth blues. The name of the poem is Ruth blues and the last part is I hear where Coltrane lives here where Coltrane is a soul and race are private dominions memories and motile songs of tender blossoming. Which would paint suffering a clear color but is not. In this Victorian house without oil in zero degree weather and a 40 mile an hour wind. It is all the well knit family a love supreme. Oh please pile up on walkway and steps. Catholic as apples in a special mist of clear white children who love my children. I play Alabama on a warped record player. Skipping the scratches on your faces over the fibrous conical hairs of plastic under the wooden floors dreaming on a train from New York to Philly. You hand out six notes which become an

anthem to our memories of you. Oak Birch maple Apple cocoa rubber for this reason Martin is did for this reason Malcolm is dead. For this reason Coltrane is dead in the eyes of my first son by the browns of these men and their music. Do you consider yourself a black hole. Never that might be. Well I've been asked this question many times as you can imagine and I always have a rather

complicated answer but I think I can make a simply. I make a statement simply both and I'm certainly one who embraces his heritage and his kinship ties family and extended family. So I would say that I'm certainly black or white I'm also an American poet. I think that one ought to be a little careful about the politicizing of these kinds of these kinds of assertions and I'm not saying that art or people poets are not necessarily political. I speak here about the political landscape and particularly about language. And I think poets should be primarily concerned with language. And I don't mind. Being described or described as any one of a number thing simply because it really doesn't have very much to do with what I do with my commitment so I think it's clear if one reads my work what the basic assumptions are and certainly some of those assumptions have to do with race. Do you are you making. Do you create then. Because you're making statements rather than for

the whole sake of creating poetry for the sake of writing. Well you see you know it's a very strange thing it does not see these these kinds of questions don't take place in a vacuum. They're loaded. And what I don't like to do is get involved in discussions which have to do with with illiteracy. I'm really very much in favor of illiteracy all say that the tradition which I try as best I can to connect myself with has to do with the Afro-American heritage it has to do with articulation in her wisdom and morality and immorality in and out of the poem and in one's life. And it seems to me that there are many people that share that. And the simplest way to put it is that I don't think that one can transcend that is all of these various demarcations and limitations and categories without embracing one skin whatever it is. And in my case it happens to be that. The Afro-American experience and that that's part which I embrace willingly and consciously and those kinship ties

allow for and opening up a kind of transcendence but when I see transcendence I don't mean to leave one's body in the world. You know I mean that one gets away from preexisting categories. And since we live in a world where race is uppermost in many people's minds it's there's no point in playing as if it doesn't have tremendous. There's a term of tremendous charge we charge charge and in the in the chemical sense that is. It has a valence charge ascription outside of the merely social or merely political. Seems to me I read though that you don't really feel that poetry should be biographical. That that there shouldn't be any personality involved. No no no no I I think that there ought to be a missed distinction made between. Biography that is the life of a person and personality which which is larger than self and has to do with

with something which can't be contained and the notion of a poem is made you know. No I think that one can say without. In my own case that there are some poems which are certainly conditioned by the life I lead. But I don't want to get into causality that is I don't want people asking me or saying I'm making assertions about because you were in Boston or you were in Cambridge or on this particular day and the poem is untitled February 13th 1976 that the poem was written because I was there. I mean it's that kind of kind of association. And I think reduction that I would that I really worry about but I think that it depending on who the poet is. The connections between biography and what one does can be as wide or as narrow as you want to make it you know but I don't like to be in a situation where people want to talk about my life in terms of my poetry or my poetry in terms of my life. I think that that is in error. And I think that one needs to develop critical mechanisms critical tools

to go about talking about the distinctions and talking about the overlaps. So I would say condition. You know I certainly don't want to be categorized as one who embraces. TS Eliot kind of has to I respect and admire some of the things he's done. We don't we don't agree. We and our disagreement has to do with notions of aesthetics and with culture. You know I think that's legitimate. I think I read a poem for Bessie Smith which I wrote it has a refrain line and the refrain line is similar to a popular song called last affair I've changed some words and as most people know Bessie Smith was a blues singer and she died on a rather dubious circumstances the first line of the poem is the medical term for the severing of the arm from the from the torso or the body. And the poem is called last affair Bessie's blue song. Disarticulated on torn out large veins cross her

shoulder intact. Her turn to get her blood. An all white big Benz. Can't you see. With love and heartaches done to me I'm not the same as I used to be. This is my last fear. Mail truck a parked car in the fast lane afloat at 43 on a Mississippi road. Two hundred pound muscle on her hambone another nigga dead for no. Can't you see what love and heartaches done to me. I'm not the same as I used to be. This is my last fear. Fifty dollar record cut the vein in her neck fool about her money told her black train wreck why press missed a funeral in the same stacked deck. Get you see what love and heartaches done to me. I'm not the same as I used to be. This is my last affair. Love the little black bird heard she could sing martyr in her vineyard pestle in her spring Bessie had a bad mouth made much Andre. Can't you see the love and

heartaches done to me. I'm not the same as I used to be. This is my last affair. Billie Holiday was also a favorite. Yes I grew up on a music and Nona image and she was she was in many ways the incarnation of a certain stance and a certain attitude about the contemporary living and about the way in which black people saw the world. We identified when she said I did whatever we assume we pretty much assume we it was the iwi connection and really how they represented more than just you know her image and it was a certain kind of sound a Nixon going to distance in a certain kind of perspective which when heard in a voice which didn't very much have to do with what with with beauty had to experience and had to do with life lived and

there was a certain testimonial witnessing quality about her voice which which is unforgettable and. She she was part of my childhood and my my teens. And she'll be with me always no doubt. Since you love music so much alchemy went to musician. How come you were a poet I wasn't good enough. I started I started out I play a little and I just what I was just surrounded I came first of all from a very rich musical context and I wasn't really motivated to be a musician I knew it was hard work involved and I knew the kind of dedication and at the time I didn't think that I was ready to make that kind of lifelong commitment. I was poetry isn't that easy. No it is not easy I don't mean to say that it is but I came to him directly I came to portray him directly I thought I was going to be some kind of professional man doctor or lawyer and I'm a pre-med major and slowly but surely I found myself making commitments that I didn't know about and I think my own my own view is that you shouldn't rush yourself when it comes to art in particular writing it to Give

yourself 10 or 15 years to make up your mind when you want to do it for life. I came to writing really I must have been writing maybe 20 years but I didn't I didn't think that I was really really important a writer until very recently you know. And then you found out I found out. I thought I'd read a poem I wrote for my father it's called Grandfather and it's based on an image really of recording. It's both of memory and of the whole question of technology and aesthetics this argument about technology anesthetics. It has the wood film and the birth of a nation which I saw and which figures are very fully in this poem but it's a poem based basically a kinship. And it's called Grandfather in 1015 my grandfather's neighbors surrounded his house near the De Line he ran on the Hudson in Catskill New York and thought they'd burn his family out in a

movie they'd just seen and be rid of his kind. The death of a lone black family is the birth of a nation. Or so they thought. This five foot four inch waiter gate to quench the white jacket smile he brought back from water polish of my father on the turning seats. And he asked his neighbors up on his that's porch for the first blossom of fire that would burn him down. They want to weigh his nation spittoon in the torch next in the shadows of the riverboat they'd seen posse decomposing. And I see a monster with white bag from your restaurant challenge by his first grandson to a footrace he will win in white clothes. I see him as he buys galoshes for his rail yard in a mini O's metal shop where roses jump as the bell circles his house toward Brooklyn where his rain fell. And I see cigar smoke in his eyes. Chocolate. Madison Square Garden chews.

He breaks on his set teeth stitched up after cancer. The great white nation immovable as his weight Wilts and he is on a porch that won't hold my arms or the legs of the race run forwards or the film played backwards on his grandson's eyes. We've been listening to guest poet Michael Harper you know ongoing Monday night series celebrating the art of poetry by this time tomorrow night most of the votes will be in in the first in the nation presidential primary tonight regular contributor Louis Lyons has commentary on the New Hampshire primary tomorrow in New Hampshire the first primary. It's national impact is Holly from being first. Senator Mansfield urging a national primary sites New Hampshire as an illustration of the present hodgepodge. New Hampshire is an enormously overrated primary says a Senate leader if it has any significance it is

purely psychological. The psychology is inflated by the concentration of press and broadcast attention to it ludicrous by any news standard. But until a more typical state votes New Hampshire is the only parliamentary test vote to go by to the clutch of democratic contestants it's only a trial heat their standings may shift a week later in Massachusetts and again two weeks later in Florida. Voters who are not enough or impressed with any of them will vote uncommitted to see what else turns up. Maybe Humphrey. Want to leave it to the convention. But on the Republican side with only the president and his challenger the effect can be greater for Mr. Ford has never faced a test of an election or been nominated by his party. New Hampshire brings the first register of his raising with voters. His challenger Mr. Reagan has talents in crowd pleasing as a professional actor that are persuaded the presence manages he has a real

contest on his hands although they will like to realize it. Mr. Ford starts with a handicap in New Hampshire communications. The New Hampshire voter gets a lopsided picture from the only statewide newspaper in the hands of William lobe whose front page editorials mocked at devious Gerald and Gerald the jerk. While the governor a lobe Cong ignores the presence of the president in the state. But such boorishness by Reagan's chief New Hampshire sponsors will surely prove a boomerang to Ford's advantage. The president's stock has risen with the spectacular rise in the stock market on the eve of the primary and an abatement of inflation slight as it is has given Mr. Ford a chance to claim things are starting to look up as he had forecast that inflation remains an intolerable 7 percent a year is an issue he must face later with the Democrats. But one thing at a time. His latest excursion into New Hampshire came on the heels of another veto of how that takes the

edge off some Reagan criticism. Though Ford says nobody more conservative than he could be elected he competes for the most conservative vote even asserts that philosophically he and Reagan don't differ. Reagan has been again having to explain himself which does a candidate little good. He says his views on Social Security were distorted. He was reported proposing to invest Social Security funds in stocks which Ford attacked. Front page pictures this morning a Richard Nixon in China. All reminders of Ford's pardon of Nixon. He was repeatedly questioned about this in New Hampshire. But this is an issue regen cannot exploited without losing Nixon's diehard supporters. Newspapers give top headlines today to Nixon's appeal for closer relations with China and is scoffing at the Helsinki agreement with the Russians. If even for a regen thanks that shows that Nixon without Kissinger has been brainwashed.

He does not venture to stick his neck out that far the Republican contest in New Hampshire is reported too close to call. With Masters coming up next week Ford could have afforded to forget New Hampshire if New Hampshire was seen in perspective. And his managers had misjudged the trend there till too late. But New Hampshire has become a media event to use a horrible current cliche. It is crowded even the Hearst trial for synthetic interest. It's brought in hordes of political writers and leading broadcasters. Some of the names are better known than most of the candidates. The president himself has been sucked in by this hullabaloo which he might have been deflated by ignoring it. A statement from the White House says the president will await the election returns in the White House. Maine held its presidential election ahead of the rest of the country until 16 years ago in September and long nursed the slogan as Maine goes so goes the country. But in

1936 this was changed to as Maine goes so goes Romont a constitutional amendment in 1957 put Maine in line with the nation. Reagan's challenge is chiefly to Ford's competence. He's already scarred last week by disclosing that Ford had twice asked him to take a post in the cabinet. But that would qualify Elliot Richardson or Nelson Rockefeller. Even John Dunlop Pat Moynihan Richardson has been campaigning in New Hampshire for Ford. Rockefeller broke into the news last week with his thoughts on the state of things and he has to make the major address tonight to the big American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston. Should Ford's fortunes fall irrevocably which seems unlikely. Would Richardson or Rockefeller move into the breach as a backup candidate against Reagan. The political broadcasts from New Hampshire have mostly to be beamed from Boston so they cover Massachusetts to the Liberal Democrats count on the different climate of Massachusetts

and Reagan is skipping the master's primary to make his next effort in Florida. On the Democratic side Senator Jackson and Governor Wallace are not contesting in New Hampshire but will be next week in Massachusetts where both are angling for the anti busing vote. Otherwise the list of identifiable Democratic candidates is the same in each state. Carter you dogged by Harris Shriver with a general expectation that they will come out of New Hampshire in about that order though there is little enough to go on. Carter's child is expected to carry him about as far in the conservative conditions of New Hampshire as it has in the rural state caucuses of Iowa and Oklahoma. But Massachusetts conditions seem to favor you Damo by his mustered labor support which Jackson also Louis Harris is professed popular populism hasn't scared people who have found appeal in his direct forthright positions. It's a race where the candidate who has ducked issues least

I think it would go to Harris and he has proved no slouch at organization. The only daughter door canvasser rang I doorbell so far was rehearsed. For months primary is March 2nd same date as Massachusetts and it seems strange that Vermont has had so little attention until one takes a closer look at it. It amounts only to a poll of presidential preference not binding. Delegates are still chosen by caucus. This is romance first primary in 56 years. Reagan is not entered there. No you don't but it will have its interest as a statewide poll in a state where the wells of communication are not poisoned other voters benumbed by political pounding. It will be interesting to see if the uncommitted vote is as lodging knees knowing the primaries as it has been in the earlier caucuses where it topped out of any candidate. To some this means indifference to all those who hope to vote for Humphrey who is not entered in any primaries but allows you to

offer Humphrey's of parents with sound a Kennedy Kennedy fund raising affair a few days before the New Hampshire primary same dwell time to remind people that the list of Democratic candidates long as it is does not exhaust available talent. Thank you for being with us tonight. Join us every weeknight at 6:30 and weekends at 5:30 pm. This is Eleanor stout and sitting in for Frank. Greg Fitzgerald has heard seven nights a week on CBS radio that was made possible in part by a grant from the courier corporation of Lowell Massachusetts.