It's not unusual for me to come home and find my daughter playing "Joy Spring" along with Clifford Brown. She's learned the heads to about a dozen or more jazz standards, mostly just from playing along to the records and learning by ear. "All of Me," "Doxy," "St. Thomas," "Now's the Time," "So What," "Oleo," "Cherokee," "Tenor Madness," Moritat." Mostly Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk. I hear her right now with "Birth of the Cool." I think it's "Boplicity." Now where could she have gotten this interest in jazz from?

I never realized Rollins had a quartet for a short period in 1963 with Don Cherry, Henry Grimes, and Billy Higgins--a pianoless group similar to those of Ornette shortly before (Cherry and Higgins had of course played in Ornette's groups shortly before.)

(I knew some Rollins trio recordings with Elvin and Wilbur Ware--also pianoless.) I love the absence of piano because it allows for so much space in the music for the bass and drums. Cherry is in top form, a nice complement to Rollins as he was on Coltrane's The Avant-Garde, in another shadow-Ornette group (Ornette's musicians without Ornette himself). The Coltrane group with Cherry and Ed Blackwell, however, never quite comes together in satisfactory form.

Some bebop contrafacts, with original song in parenthesis:

In Walked Bud (Blue Skies)

Ornithology (How High the Moon)

Oleo; Moose the Mooche (I got rhythm; there are many other songs based on "I got rhythm," too numerous to mention,)

Donna Lee (Indiana)

Quasimodo (Embraceable You)

Hot House (What is this thing called love?)

Koko (Cherokee)

Evidence (Just You, Just Me)

Hackensack (Oh Lady be Good)

There is/are only poetics, there is not "a poetic" of this or that. There are emphases within this, or statements of where one is "at" at a particular time. That's why a blog might state a different poetics every day, but in an evolving series. It's temporal and ongoing. You can't have a poetics, in the sense of possession; you can only participate in it. It's thinking I understood something the day before yesterday, but realizing it's only a partial understanding. That is why Alice is right to call poetics bullshit. It is an inherently provisional enterprise. (This is different from someone who never thinks about poetics in the first place.)

Poetics in the neoclassical sense of prescription, how boring is that? Poetics can only be descriptive, in the sense that linguistics is descriptive. Describing what good poets already do, not telling someone what to do. Or worse, what NOT to do.

***

Cut down my MLA paper from 18 pages to 8. Ouch. But I could eliminate some "It could be argued that."

***

Julia learned most of the first chorus of Rollins' improvisation on "St. Thomas." I found a transcription on the internet. It's 16 measures since the tune is in 16-bar AABC form. The ability to sit down for an hour and work on something like this. Who said kids didn't have concentration. The trick is finding something worthwhile for them to concentrate on.

I am getting more and more into the poetry of Olvido García Valdés. There are three stages in reading. (1) It's interesting but I don't really get it. (2) It just keeps getting better and better. (3) Discrimination. Some poems are more interesting than others; some flaws might emerge; both positive and negative aspects become sharply delineated.

I'm at stage 2 now with her. What I like most is the way my thoughts adopt themselves to the meditative rhythm of reading. It takes you to another place.

***

Julia learned to play "St. Thomas" along with Sonny Rollins. (Just the melody for now, not the entire solo!) It's perfect for an eleven-year old because it is both simple and hip. You have to come in on the and of one so it's a little tricky. The trumpet plays an octave above the tenor sax. Then she learned "Moritat" from the same album (Saxophone Colossus.) (The tune is "Mack the Knife" but with an alternate title.) The same thing: simple and melodic, but extraordinarily hip, to get that phrasing right. It would have been a little easier if we'd had written music, but it's good ear-training to learn it from the recording. Plus it's fun to play along. I can find the notes on the piano and transpose to tell her what the notes are supposed to be. Her ear is better than mine, but notes are easier to find on the piano because you can "see them" in relation to one another.