2nd Place Poem
Shallow Jazz Roots
An Idaho native and former history major, Jamie Givens has never studied poetry formally, though she’s been writing and performing it for most of her life: In second grade, she won second place in a talent contest for reciting “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” Today Givens works as a massage therapist. Every second Saturday of the month, she hosts the open-mic poetry readings at Bean Central, and she participates in the Fresh Produce readings at ruby green every third Saturday.
Poetry judge Diann Blakely writes that “'Shallow Jazz Roots’ caught my eye—and ear—because of its lush lyrical vocabulary and its improvisatory, expansive riffs contained within a recognizable form and given narrative structure—what better mirror for the poem's submit?"
“Jazz oboist is an oxymoron,”
scolded the purist. I had heard
about this cat from Oregon,
he was playing fusion. But,
the voice of jazz reason anointed
my head with a worn neck strap
attached to the high school’s
used tenor saxophone. My fingers
went from trilling F sharp on a
baroque chart penned by Joseph Haydn
to popping mother of pearl pads
playing Stuck on You. Not to mention
a more important lesson: the proper
tonguing technique on the chorus
of Night Train. My lips went from
the embouchure of a dainty, delicate,
double reed to a thicker, rounder,
fill up your mouthpiece grip that
men commented about later.
My first day at the university, the jazz
instructor asked, “Hey baby, do you
swing?” Induction into the band came
with the admission, “Yeah, I know how
to play.” That impatient conductor
suffered the aftermath of not asking
the follow up question, “How well?”
I don’t know if it was innocence or
ignorance when through the cacophony
of a college cocktail party I queried
Clark Terry, “Which instrument do you
play?” Sadly, I learned the truth from
the master himself, Dizzy Gillespie
when he refused to baptize me.
With a blessed Baha’i bee bop bellow,
he bent over and bammed me with,
“Jazz musicians, they can play classical!
Classical musicians can not play jazz!”
His wisdom put a damper on my
endeavor to practice the tenor. But one
voice remained that kept calling me,
“Listen to my refrain, the name’s Coltrane.”
Nearly twenty-one, the month July,
I switched off the stagnate summer
swelter and stepped into the Record
Exchange. Flipping disks and reading
between liner notes, there he was...
Coltrane. The album, it read Coltrane.
I could listen to the man, he only cost
a dollar. The owner that sat behind
the glass counter looked up from
his newspaper and smiled. In my
basement apartment, lights dimmed,
I proceeded with ritual inspection
and cleaned the vinyl. The LP slid
on the Magnavox stereo my parents
bought when I was five. As the album
dropped, I brushed the needle and sat
back with a juice glass full of red screw-
top wine listening to the sax legend
John Coltrane. This is Coltrane?!
Can I give you my first impression?
He played like a steam loco motor
on the tracks packed with black coal!
Ready to burn, he was in position
for an improvisation. In the confusion
of horn blowing notes bending and
swerving, he was headed for a collision!
Somehow, he pulled out at the very end.
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