"the price of glass"
Corso, Jauss, O'Hara, Cortez, Kelly
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Gregory Corso:
David Jauss:
Frank O’Hara:
Jayne Cortez:
Robert Kelly:
Miles Davis, Honda scooter commercial, c. 1989:
Miles Davis Quintet, live in Milan, October 11, 1964:
A touch of Miles from “Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong”:
Static
I'm sitting in my in-laws' converted attic,
the cramped desk by the window covered with paper,
with line variations playing across each page
to unwritten melodies, and radio static
suddenly comes pouring down through the roof
between bursts of furious birdsong and takes
me back to the late-night sound of blue-white waves
broadcast from the Pacific to my room,
or to the moment when the car goes out
of range of one station before it is in range
of the next, so Creedence and Beatles play
through flurries of whitest noise, and then night shouts
for us to stop, if only for the stars
out here between the cities, far from day,
with only a radio to keep us awake,
and for an hour there've been no other cars,
or to my dawn whisper being the one
someone makes out through crackle, a student DJ
spinning something slow by Miles and Trane,
"All Blues" for the blue brought by the rising sun
to a sky as clear as Bill Evans' piano part
that plays in my head as I sit here in the attic,
forgetting my unfinished poems in radio static—
but no, it is the art of the black redstart.