Coltrane

Dear John, Dear Coltrane

Sex fingers toes
in the marketplace
near your father's church
in Hamlet, North Carolina-
witness to this love
in this calm fallow
of these minds, there is no substitute for pain: 
genitals gone or going
seed burned out
you tuck the roots in the earth, 
turn back, and move
by the 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
in mute 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 thick sin 'tween
impotence and death, fuel
the tenor sax cannibal
heart, genital and sweat
that makes you clean-
a love supreme, a love supreme-

Why you so black?
cause I am
Why you so funky? 
cause I am
Why you so black? 
cause I am
Why you so sweet? 
cause I am
Why you so black? 
cause I am

So sick
you couldn't play Naima
so flat we ached
for song you'd concealed
with your own blood,
your diseased liver gave
out its purity,
the inflated heart
pumps out, the tenor kiss,
tenor love

    This poem takes the form of a tribute to John Coltrane. It engages directly with him using the second person and mentioning aspects of his life such as the town in which he was born. The use of second person creates a sense of bond, connection, between the speaker and the subject, Coltrane. This effect is only amplified when the speaker's language becomes more spiritual and metaphorical, as in lines 6-11. These lines contrast calmness with suffering, fallow minds with fertile ones. To paraphrase, suffering brings out creativity when suffering is harnessed properly. 

    The poem is really musical and lyrical. There's some tension and release--which I associate with music--going on with the relationship between the first stanza and the second stanza. The first stanza is dense with images and language and it goes on for quite a long time, breathless. This is the tension. The second stanza offers release in the form of a simple, call-and-response, chant-like passage.