The Fret Cycle
By Michael S. Harper
NOTES ON THE FRET CYCLE
The American picaro writ small is bumbling, poignant, obsessive, caught
between the lyrical and narration of place, time, geography (fate), mostly
local with special features on locale, a song in an inchoate idiom in process
attempting to complete itself in cylindrical fashion; he is, a picaroon
marooned and, in transit, somehow eloquent while asking (always) “WHO
AM I?” To see is also to hear: oral and aural.
To the reader: The Fret Cycle strives to blend modes of lyric and narrative pulse without conforming
to the metronome: an American prosody as improvised conceit to tell by showing a
complex tale that strives to modulate simplicity of expression without diluting thought.
Because the cycle blends jazz, locality, the journey (inward and outward), one congests the
conventions of the classic picaro, from the ancients through the moderns [Gilgamesh,
Bocaccio, Chaucer, Milton, Keats, Ramayana, the Vedas, Emily and Walt, Melville, Twain,
Douglass, Bird and Trane, Bean and Elvin, Monk, Basie and Ellington, Stravinsky,
Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Zulu praise song, the Golden Stool], but the idiom is “American,”
self-consciously ‘innocent’ and searching towards a fully fledged maturity, a process of asking
“Who Am I?” in search for the covenant with self-conscious manhood. The musician as
artist is always accompanied by a spiritual mentor, the double, a negotiation with coming
to terms with one’s humanity, one’s doubts, one’s “negative capability,” most of all one’s
humanness, and one’s embrace of the corporal world, while reaching towards transcendence.
The music of speech is the idiom of discovery. That speech is our idiom of sonics.
WE ARE WHAT WE MAKE.
It is always an art of commiseration: the couplet an open conceit, the periodic sentence the
prime meridian of style. From frustration and phrenody comes the combustible song. The
pattern is collaborative as prime, fundamental, irreducible, and in flux, in the American
idiom, where blues and jazz is sung with biography writ small. One takes comfort in
metaphor, reaching for a true image apprehended in the act of playing. The lyceum is not
the academy, but the artifice of making, an agitation to play despite any difficulty of having
to live in the world. There is no retreat but assertion: The art is in the doing. To make is
to live.
Fret (A Tune Near Composition in the Studio)
We’re just re-tuning among the dials
engineer a student (Chris) we spoke of Scituate reservoir once
I’m sending him a book in the campus mail
(he has that shorthand on email of watery entitlement a fix)
Paul making new solos in accompaniment writes new music
only he can hear a praxis of support near duet, his unction
I watch him ‘fret’ over the blur of notched etching awhile back
when we were in the pitch of answering everything behind the beat
we will not be playing today my words now only an arrangement
an order a pace but his polishing a notion of fret to hone
what cannot be gone over again in performance but with dials
amplified in taking away holding the patterns for editing
I told him once (at Madeira’s in a list of specials) anecdotes
of growing up into one’s song he speaks of his father gone
a stylist of linguistics from abroad from elsewhere his mother
less resonant in a solo career which hovers now around tenure to play
like no other in his sphere every night each day for fresh fret
so we can go back into the zone of talking together over song riffs
not ever gathered into a garden while he practices new cuisine
hangouts with his sensei after workouts to keep his limbered reed
greased for he seldom orders soup but fish like ancestry Icelandic
an airline of composition over space like light near the pole
but his love of warmth say Dominican Brazil a talk of equality
in playing amber smooth canejuice which can’t evaporate at palate
when taste is all vintage of genes like spices in our neighborhood
of an alphabet of notes declensions arpeggios floss Monk
taking each black key into embouchures an attitude of gloss
vocabulary a pattern unthought out but felt in fret his own soup
‘sauce’ he says with olives the pits a sandpile reservoir
of studio work now fret your folks are waiting to exit over you
A Note From Cathy at Yaddo
the dog that bit Patty Sopp belonged to Katy De Groot
(Fret will occupy her father’s house down by the river
just before studio session) parable of the bite
for a dog that only guards the premises
Yaddo mascot no but De Groots wanted us to know
the story so play it Paul on bass clarinet
so the bell which recites the tones
also catches the pitch of dog
all microphones spiked
in adjacent rooms
The Lesson for Paul on Catherine Clarke’s Birthday
Padre says ‘you were bad last night’ but not
in performance wondrous overtones sonics
to rhyme with tonic and GIN too much for one
sonata which you could have written ‘first thing’
but you were missing breakfast lunch De Groot’s
ass the apple of your attention just around the bend
the river where you will compose the suite
of all the ancestors the factory closed down
after Pearl Harbor in nearby Whitehall
(remember when you go for your massage
Raymond Moriyasu’s father was in the 442nd in Europe
finally allowed to fight his ‘mentors’ in the open
too many Japanese-Americans in Hawaii to encamp
the parachutes we lost in metaphor for easy landings
near fresh water) you’ll play your bass clarinet
fretting for the answers to how to trap the music
not caught in the bell of Tom Lopez’s studio
once a hippy hangout a lowbrow dream of equity
in another lost cause you will come to know
the supply line of the Hudson at this crossing stage
of another war (perhaps Page 1 your own) combining
in the nearby fields a team of mules at the barge
for here was the canal which went to Plattsburgh
an underground rr station for John Brown (Lake Elba)
which is the lesson
as you move your quarters in the woods
Fret In the Woods
Even with driveup mosquitoes
while you focus on lime
you camp in your head on the river
“ass” is the feature heartwork
the slang of ass a full-time job
(praxis a galaxy of women all vintage)
can you stand this ancient proverb
“the song turns into itself as bramble”
somebody got thrown into the briar patch
honeybee and honeystruck pollination
in the next life you will conjure
your own children the source Bahia
military coups will be native morpho
(a shirt you own but will not wear
a brand of pollen attractive disease
for some species of deceit caretaker)
the reed is to be listened to as Coltrane
cautioned he spent most of his time
conjuring the supreme right here on
earth while Elvin was the mask incarnate
country music is what to focus on now
(the bites you get the price: inoculation)
like any cellphone you speak into dark
by calling out tunes you can’t remember
when not driving the gig is just ahead
(you fantasize the drive back easily
don’t die on the hwy racing to cabin)
somehow the divine enters your mouthpiece
you will have no more innocence about Y
but you will rewind the clock Fret less!
Table Notice
Fret reads this with his lunch
(the day he leaves is when the pool opens
and he takes this personally:
Venezuela, Argentina, Italy, LA
all the muses at the table
he will not swim with them
having left his suit elsewhere)
he takes out his bass clarinet
in the woods where he’s been moved
since leaving the ‘pink’ room
with the pitch machine for jive
upbeats, modulations, adjustments
then he takes the Padre texts
he has recorded and walks that music
into the woods it is raining sunny
soon he will be by the river ax ready
where De Groot might appear to hear
him solo he will be alone that dog
who goes for a walk at the same time
known to bite just anybody if pitch
is tonally correct and Fret worries
just a little behind the beat about
this problem the problem of ass is
very different juice off the bell
where only partial aspects of sound
can follow he gives notice to swim
elsewhere with Elvin’s ghost
which is still hanging around
hung over just a little on gin
ancestral libations having glow
on both sides of the equator
meridian hemisphere orisha
preferring fish after he works
tonic with his ‘ten’ without any tab
I tell him this little initiation
is a trial run nothing to worry
ass will always be the problem
fascination that does not come only
from Finland his mother’s research
at teaching him to read his father’s
linguistic gifts at being foreign
Fret a true American loving the music
of every aboriginal birdcall parse
of organic form his weakness at
writing it all down then explication
to tame the critics while he hears ass
apologizes for it the stiff drink juice
across his lap while waiting to enter
this part of the ensemble improvised
players coming and going some who read
others who can’t and won’t compress
that part of the schedule Fret won’t
ever be the same he knows this truth
he ponders the fact of the river dog
pitch ass mother who made him study
prepare father who outlived her
didn’t do right by her or so he thinks plays the
aria of Yaddo (meaning shadow)
Fret Skips Town for a Gig in New London
Recording machine goes with him
though he says otherwise; lost sessions
bother him ass does not he speculates
what’s catchable is like gin disappearing
guaranteeing nothing in the creative tank
(yet he struggles with routes only)
his fetish is to play badly for money
(he thinks I don’t see this obsession
but Yaddo allows failure every day studio
in the woods also East Room no picnic)
he misses the witticisms of bacon and cakes
(not the Bruce variety but french toast
the inmates love it syrup like molasses
which I attribute to rum trade cane flax)
We will take this up when Haiti swims up
the many bodies of the deep in his craw
We will get some Finland stories Nokia
fishkill serfs pogroms lute fantasies
an instrument akin to ass he says sleep
walking his way to the lotion to dose
Pulitzer’s new rules where he can stand up
make changes run down Lacy who just died
I must point out the change of name in obit
Astaire not able to dance any rhythm
but no slouch with partners film silent
it doesn’t matter ugly nice threads
Fret Deep in the Woods
Untuned piano still the birds flock
your sessions prodigious (Elvin spirit
now is lone accompaniment he had no
children in “Nagasaki” or “Pontiac”
but the pied piper of drums calls
you can’t help but answer) behind wheel
tunes collapse around your ears
(the smell of women torment you)
you play into and over them for praxis
they write their names on your feet
you begin to clean up around the flat
(little mini-recorder punishments regal)
you stop drinking entirely meals fallow
toasts in the town are unfriendly muse
talks into the meadow across the night
(you can hear horses winnowing silence
across the lap of your shoes anklets
silk shirts the gift of the morpho
alive at riverside) libation libation
in every element you try to go home
early but the melodies have you gutshot
you learn to walk with such pain soldier
formations bayonets infantry lore
sonnets file onto the memo stand padre
has told you so you will listen faintly
put aside the staggered machine: orchestrate
Fret Leaves Yaddo
Because you are drinking beer
the missing of breakfast is strategy
some leave notes others want you
to drop by but packing is proverbial
and not to be tested like water
in the dirty swimming pool
where you can wash your clothes
while you ‘chat’ en route to email
some you’ll meet in new york
others will compress your shuttle
into the weave of materials
the craft of ‘making’ modest but steady
nest is the order of the day
(last night you saw a deer robust
the leaping factor bright
like the eyes of the hunted
Fret thinks of Haitian music
the cost of that music artmaking
with or without the military)
G8 goes on in Sea Islands Gipper
gives the nation a holiday called
‘the communicator’ lest you forget
you have been doing in your studio
East Room is not pink room
the pitch moves the tent is collapsed
Vermont two hours north paydirt
Ghost of Fret at High Table: Mansion
Bouquet squats at center peonies
Chinese garden music Fret quips
sits on the lap of the redhead forlorn
Fiona’s papa squeezes all juice
from the Philharmonic vegetarian mama
Juilliard stuck tightens the hold pox
americana jogger killed for no reason
not far from the bridge Fret plays
for the young and old asses of the apple
but does not get lost on city politics
he slyly puts the touch on redhead
(Padre told him about that melody
just one note one finger on sweet spot)
he moves to the silent table a patch
but one of fresh soil Blows his ax
one last time his cellphone on quiet
so allcanhear his solo Music Room
ready acoustics like cathedral tones
at Dutch’s flagdraped caissondrug coffin
(Vermont’s homebrew faint now riffs
he could not learn in school now evident
in all his muscles the soft reed broken)
but ‘strong in the broken places’ chants
slowly into the vacant seat beside him
the ghost—ancestor analogy touches
the master chords he memorizes
Fret’s News From the Front: Yaddo After
provost with no pouilly-fuisse power
to bring back Ray Charles “Robinson”
sends a word in channels protest
prairie dogs put up resistance
redhead pigeontoed painter no dreds
keeps prancing around the premises
lost but steady martini glasses still
in the back fridge Katy always on
expenses has left the building ‘hello’
more resonant than… “goodbye”
I noticed Danielpour repaired convertible
with a local washing off to New
Hampshire on personal maneuvers found
several clumps of honeybees in tower
but like the snapping turtle keeping
his distance cellphone opera localfair
on the ready Fiona read about her father
in the nyt his ‘animal’ implements
a swimming pool opening outdoors from
inside her psychiatric meanderings no
longer disguised in treatments Phil-
harmonic Mr. caisson is gone dimes
still belong to FDR Nancy chastened
on her knees at sunset (you don’t have
any Irish brogue I can fathom so get
yourself a ‘Jewish’ lawyer ) and sue bad
Martini Glasses Galore
Ten and Russian gone but vermouth
a trace no olives bandits ate ‘em
around the perennial fire of night
the makers gather lying prostrate
in their rooms bats occasionally
enter chased down by nets upside
down a yoga expert turns back nyc
upsidesmanship murder mayhem breach
in town the stablefiretenders come
north cats calming the horses
I see them at the Yaddo lakes fishing
or watching the undertow of branches
take the silt minnows bass survive
barely under the trees the woods gut
spin out the filters of dust mariners
come in SUVs to garden the roses
by standing guard occasional marriages
at the rose garden oldtimers search
for the magical goldfish long gone
actuarial tables stand up in clearings
a girl dances with her father brother
can hardly walk for the shoes staggers
away from childhood into children bold
for not paying attention to her mother
but who listens glow of part time ease
steady work of making due do or don’t
Fret Shows up at the Metropolitan
She’s leaving town for the apple to sell
her wares on paper contacts made on this
coast need phyla on that agents galleries
gone sour such delicate Mondrian corsets
spread out in precision girdles back in
place her stopping her work for four years
to recover start again a world missing
chastitybelt now an iron cage at exhibit
fitted into place cameras she bought
unworkable target cvs failing except
for you your instrument in your hands
the best part of her on paper her heart
pounding as she packs up leaving wine
for Padre who’s written a short madrigal
in her honor asked back in this detail
the stay in Albany no blue hwy in leather
you break training for a day and let her
in an inch the neckline broken lost
weight an appetite for all but food
lunches wasted the steak she orders
in her head the first meal when apple
turns to core heart and brain show up
together you intuit all this with gigs
you should turn down but drawn near her
you find the Met your mother did research
in remember she left space for this paper
The List: Yaddo
You will not be in touch with her
who has given up her wine unopened
Argentina California an hour in
from the vineyards Mondrian’s
artform sessions of composition
do not hide tears of the heart
ruthless in colorational design
medicines bought on camera infect
you said nothing late into evening
when I swim into your caverns whist
a strategy of containment bidwar
you cannot fathom by touch alone
the train you take N or S empty
but collectible caboose an axial
table where the dining is exquisite
to the tongue but to the eye illusory
the flesh goes bad over the trestles
we are saying goodbye in code emails
handwritten only in another century
bionosphere newsreels documentaries
the still frame is best negatives
large enough to contain our world
our children though we have none
collect admire admonish eviscerate
backwards in stereo typescript
illegible the soul leaves the body
Fret Leaves Yaddo in Disguise
Her perfume arrests she gives Padre
two bottles of wine Argentina red
California white the desert within her
only an hour east of San Francisco
but bleak she will not speak before noon
(again the papers her paper Mondrian
another gallery another museum run back
east trainride all alone to the apple
blessing) she will eat a large steak
and lavish the cooking for herself mirror
touched up hair she should not speak
to him by cell payphones are delicious
when you’re hungry losing weight blind-
sided by passions long adrift when she
stopped working her designs surrounded
by vegetarians the fish run away from
her scaling knife wriggling on drawing
board dorsal fin potent squid be still
he would have driven her to her city
but his trunk is far too small baggage
of this quality demanding attention
he can not give obsessive Argentinian
Venezuelan Italian ass now fading
into the red fleece above his lap
the one melody she teaches on his tongue
requiring new fingering fresh reeds
Fret Having Survived Modernity
The ax falls in the meadow Goliath
turns the sling has but one rock
but it is the rock of ages Fret
listens to the painters of old musicians
will fail him if he’s not steady
(alive on the table of redsweetend hair
he can do no evil and no good just stand)
this will be a fight to the finish
as legend attests instrumentation capsizes
but the solo melodic note rises toward him
the giant who’s been foreshadowed by fall
and lost an eye in the process retreats
the lawyers come into the picture Fret
likes his chances he cares not for battle
but resume long lists of charts headcase
that he is standup only when he has to
he marvels at speed in practice mornings
(late at night fantasies extraordinary
while playing live with makeshift ovoid
players tambourines choirs caped maestros
for he is all things at once symphonic
the piano answers the strings oboes nod
he prefers homemade melodies folksay
but damsel gives him purpose he strides
across all crevices all declensions
rabbi turns away from all texts passover
he prefers holyrollers in makeshift haunts
(he builds in the basement of structures
beneath thresholds he’s known before death)
annunciations that circle of glow triumphs
A E I O U]
Fret Discovers the Blues, Again
He got the thought twice she was
ambidextrous it was not her art
but her stride pigeontoed losing weight
with each step chortling speech at her
own juice which were prodigious
having lost her gallery stopped working
on paper for four years married again
the pink of her eyes framed in sterile
blue which made the orbs enchanting
when she closed her lids then opened
everything to hold him close to kill
his fear his attitude his pledge
not to fall into orbs the Finnish
especially when displaced became linguist
saturated drank too much or not at all
and turned technological even when
fishing in shallow water the deep so
transporting by reflection were classic
Norse highlights sprung into song lore
eyeshadow taught him what blacks down
South brought with them on trains buses
knapsacks shopping bags chickenhawk
songs of cottontail and rabbit briarpatch
the light and the dark transmogrified
He’d fall for this woman’s touch forgot
himself wrote melodies to her reflection
Ass
She pops holding him in place refusing
to scratch any part of him yet holding
him in place a pouch hamstrings opening
wetness prodigious he cannot talk about
any of this but plays his ax recklessly
a suite selects itself in the bathing
juices from the unopened vaults reckoning
the pain gone fleece of locks prisons
keys a burst of hormones he cannot name
refusing to speak in the middle of lavish
kisses the french know nothing when it
comes to this bragging talking shit
as though what stinks doesn’t inflame
the body into the mind of no comparison
he washes his laundry but not her sheet
the standing pole where she whispers
his name a text spoken for the first time
the food for thought in appetite spices
condiments without an ounce of fat on it
‘he means you’ the sediment of solos stolen
he begins to study the discipline of quality
he thought he could count in practice
the body swells and closes down he rests
but when she’s near he puts his fingers
in the openings what musicians call ‘breaks’
the looking around for options new moves
letting her lead forgetting to hold back
(he straddles the extreme unction of coitus
delivered and held back) stud that you are
this is the perfume you live for seldom get
Fret in Studio With the Ancestors
without libation but in spirit makeshift camera
he makes devotions á la condomblé
then popping his finger asks for playback
“twiddlin’ thumbs” the metaphors for passing over
the dark passages of the soul we conjure in Tom
Lopez’s country studio right on the Hudson River at riverside
Fret has been practicing his own music scaring him with inventions
bass clarinet talking to him free of microphones
the De Groot summer home in tune to riffs
he seldom imagines at eventide sunset
looking west over every canebreak
he stomps finger popping off tempo
he’s swum in the pond to refresh
eaten lunch fidgets as is his proxy to finishing
melodies awaken the craw ‘magic circle’ he breathes
in circularity another lesson outta school
as he hands me Brother “RAY” in heaven
DVD the world of jetlag descends
booty palms for booty lessons of the flesh and spirit
a baker’s dozen of Fret lessons building
toward a saga under the surface rivers
make you sing when out of the woods
oxygen one more element
to swim by meridians steady
Fret Finds the Instrument of Archipelago
She would be Chinese because of the spices
he gets this rush when watching the diving
needs no olympics yet his mind wanders over the framing
of points level of difficulty entry into the water
he admits to liking the wet hairs of the point system
when he sees the pool thinks of the rivers that need crossing
that which is ancient that which is new collect as attitude
a passion for rum of the best vintage for his birthday
well, he takes into his arms the tenor soprano his fingering intricate
as she said when he had her up against the walls of perspiration
we can’t call it sweat because his attention span in studio
is nothing like the bandstand yet Fret comes alive at audio
the mask is the dance of adumbration
he is at home in that nation thinks maroon runaway creation
Mt. Pleasant Local Library
Van is there from Barrington
Nancy Craven without the shakes
Fret ready to blow (Emily cool with baritone
maneuvers from Seattle footwork he can’t see
for she escaped the bombs in Madrid trainsense
a long diary of muslims with issues)
I sit down while Fret stands up librarians
in kidchairs all about I start off with
“The Myth of Music” to steady my beat
for all the kids in the audience and one
turns to her father and says “I love you
Dad” right on time and in key about eight
The rest is routine except Fret is too close
attention-span vexed (he wants to solo)
then Emily comes in terse poignant “Harris
Collection” ready with Dickinson embers
just above the transom for the parents
who are glad they came to the children’s
section of the neighborhood all poems come
from there my daughter’s riffs “Nasty Poet”
building a literate way new avenue her own
house petition to dreams only she can make
Fret Finds the Open Field
I have told Fret about my former teacher Henri Coulette who wrote a poem
on the subject “Tenure” it is buried in his COLLECTED POEMS long out of print
the picaro comes to mind because all the masters tell long stories
Sterling Brown would say “they’re trying to bury the hatchet,
and it’s always in my head” and Count called Tatum’s felicities on piano
“the Hatchet” looking for a job in Pittsburgh asking for favors ‘from the help’
before the master came in and he always arrived early for practice
(minimalism was always the approach to Basie’s band after that lesson)
I will not announce Move or ‘The Tulsa Riot’ of 1921 when the black section
was bombed from above in the first instance of civilian blitzkrieg
(lessons learned by trench warfare during World War I)
I noticed you doctored the order of the compositions crafted hot off the press
in your name you took what you wanted left the rest for other picaros
(I told you about my ‘epic of search’ in the stacks of the l.a. state open stacks
the early coursework from insiders who migrated as birds toward paradise)
BIRD was the first that got my attention see my poem on BEAN in HONORABLE AMENDMENTS
on Waterloo and mud we both know you would be hell if only six feet tall
the instrument you’ve selected to depart the field of play on the Pembroke campus
contrabass clarinet silver in appearance a hum of switches at your feet for effect
“Ilu: The Talking Drum” by Etheridge Knight conman prisoner addict prince
starts the program Obeng a head full of proverbs on all his African percussion
cunning company to Royal’s drumming roommate soulsinger stand-in for Elvin
we poured libation for him from the balcony of Yaddo’s mansion above kitchen
in this kitchen of the campus we pour mountain dew cachaca canejuice conjo
lost in performance the self lets the cork out of the bottle wafts over audience
benign or malign your enemies will be transformed audio video condomblé
the religion of the elders in both worlds comes forward ancestor worship
(man as artform women as singers children the fresh space of our waters)
WORD DRUM DRUM WORD might be the answer to ancestry
lest we forget our beings/becomings are to thrive in the world of living true
‘a light is asked for and a light is given’ ‘simply human is what their faces say’
I know today’s lesson the making of the possible now cipherable fretsome cryhue
Michael S. Harper is University Professor and Professor of English at Brown University, where he has taught since 1970. He is the first Poet Laureate of the State of Rhode Island, a term he held from 1988-1993. In 1991 he was Visiting Scholar, at large, for Phi Betta Kappa, visiting nince campuses. He has published fifteen books of poetry, two of which were nominated for the National Book Award (1970 & 1977), Dear John, Dear Coltrane and Images of Kin, New and Selected Poems. Images of Kin won the Melville-Cane Award for the Poetry Society of America : History Is Your Own Heartbeat, 1971, won the Black Academy of Arts & Letters Award for poetry. He has edited the Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown, which he selected for the national Poetry Series, 1979. He is the co-editor of Chant of Saints, an anthology of African-American Art, Writing and Scholarship, and also co-editor of the “Ralph Ellison” special issue Carleton Micellany, winter 1980. He was guest editor for a special issue of Robert Hayden for Obsidian, 1981.