Welcome to the December edition of The Hinge Poem, a regular feature inviting readers throughout the Triangle (and beyond) to read and discuss a single poem by a leading local author–and to talk directly with the poet him- or herself.
This month we’re featuring an untitled poem that will appear in Fred Moten’s forthcoming book The Feel Trio. To get started on the conversation, scroll down, read the poem, and then post your questions, answers and observations in the comment section (if you’re on the home page, you’ll first need to click on “Leave a comment” below or the headline above.) Read what others have written, engage, discuss–just be respectful. It’s fine to disagree, but we’ll delete ad hominem attacks and insulting language.
Most importantly, remember to come back on Sunday, December 11, from 3:00-5:00 p.m., when Fred Moten will be joining us for a live chat on this post.
[the way orchestra sounds in birmingham]
the way orchestra sounds in birmingham
that’s my sound. I belong to that sound
all the time, everyday. how bound am I
by music! the brain’s little wilderness is
a backbeat, a shotgun shack, a deferred
villa and built-in cross and time windows
and overlaid buzzes like you were struck
by the consolation of a blue joseph boye
when this seminar is on the discrepancy.
there’s a theory of sound in the autograph
but you have to wait for the sound of the
theory of sound and fold it between
hands and presence in the upper room like folded
a folded dream. the tower is held together
by every other building in town and the
mystery is in effect or an eremitic bridge
or a bridge machine or you’ll know why.
About the Author: Fred Moten lives in Durham, North Carolina, where he teaches at Duke University. He is author of two forthcoming books: The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions) and Theory of Blackness (Duke University Press).
The conversation starts below. And once again, remember to come back on Sunday, December 11, from 3:00-5:00 p.m., when Fred Moten will be joining us for a live chat on this post.
this is just great and gets better with every read. i like that the sound is immediate and that you have to wait and pray for the theory of sound, but that it will come to you or you’ll already know. i also like all the complexities of that rhythm section in the “brain’s little wilderness”. it is all so simply and not so simply there.
Ken,
Thanks for getting us started. I agree about the mix of immediacy and complexity (“simply and not so simply,” as you so effectively describe it.) The music is spot on, to my ear, and at the same time there are all of these lines inviting us to interpret. It all feels so true (to me at least) from the first, but nothing’s nailed down right away. I can’t wait to start tackling some of these lines, including the ones you mentioned: “the brain’s little wilderness is/a backbeat, a shotgun shack, a deferred/villa….” What do people make of that marriage of mind, music and architecture? Does it ring true for you?
I had music playing when I first began reading, but I had to turn it off because it was distracting. I know very little about poetry, so I started wondering if poets ever listen to music while they’re writing and, specifically, if Fred was listening to or thinking about a particular piece of music while he was writing this poem. Or would there be too much of a danger that the music would dictate the rhythm and flow of the poem, instead of allowing it to find its own?
Jordi,
Thanks for this. It’s a great question, and I’ll be very curious to hear what Fred says. I’ve heard some poets say (almost always sheepishly) that they listen to music when they write, and I do it too sometimes. It seems to offer a halfway point between other kinds of thinking and that weird mix of thinking and listening I need to work on a poem. By the time I’m there, though, I don’t hear the music anymore.
Do other writers–poets and non-poets alike–listen to music when they write?
Jordana,
I often listen to music when I write, or rather, before I write as inspiration. As a poet, this might be sacrilegious for me to say, but I am always jealous of musicians and their “tool box.” For me, a really beautiful song seems to awaken the emotions I need to write a poem.
You know, I often have music playing when I write but it never enters the writing. Sort of like how I always have music playing when I drive the car but it never enters into my driving. Poetry is entirely visual for me, though, as a writer.
Sometimes when I am listening to music I might start writing a poem, or be spurred by the music to begin something, but then I have to turn it off, usually, especially when I am revising, because I have to get the poem’s own music right, including how it’s supposed to look. Getting started is usually the fast part. The revision goes on and on and I need to have it pretty quiet for that.
No. Getting started goes on and on, too.
It’s the first line of this poem that strikes me – the ownership of not just the sound of an orchestra, or a piece of music, but how that orchestra sounds in a particular place – and how he “belongs” to it, is “bound” by the music. Those are powerful words. I’ve heard people say that music feels like the soundtrack to their lives, and this is sort of that idea taken to a completely different level. I was also intrigued, Jon, by what you mentioned – the “marriage of mind, music, and architecture”. It’s almost like he’s mapping his connection to the music and uses that marriage to “scaffold” his point. I don’t have any real talent for understanding poetry but I’ll be interested to hear his response to the music questions you and Jordana bring up.
Michelle,
Thanks so much for your comments. I think you offer a great way into one of the pleasures of this poem–the sense of it as a kind of map, or maybe a journey. And I like, too, the way you get at a kind of double-ness that is in this poem and in any powerful relationship to music: a sense of possessing AND being possessed.
I really like this poem, and especially love the typographical hiccup — it reminds me of a moment in a song when the time signature goes from say 4/4 to 5/4 and you’re left dangling for a moment as a listener. That said, I thought it was a surprising choice to make a musical poem so arrhythmic — that is, there is rhythm in individual lines, but now “beat” to the poem that I can discern. What made you decide to “sing” the poem this way?
“No” beat. Dammit!
That’s such a great description of the outcropping, Dan. And I think I know what you mean by there not being a beat; it keeps varying. I can’t help feeling that the music is playing out in part through a careful listening to and responding to the sounds that have preceded them. It’s just amazing when that works–and to my ear and mind it works amazingly well here.
These visual disruptions or augmentations or whatever are the closest thing I have to some way of simulating an effect of multiple voices or of writing something for multiple voices while still having show up as one integrated composition on one page. But this is not clear. What I’m trying to say is that this little cantilever in the poem is just a gesture towards that multiplicity. the word “folded” occupying the same plane as the line that follows it as if, at that point, you could also have had two people reading at once, that doubleness of foldedness (like a fortune teller, the kind kids used to make at school, a kind of little permutation machine, a little hypertext) but still the supposed coherence of a single page.
This poem is gorgeous..and although I don’t know what exactly the sound of an orchestra in Birmingham is, I can imagine from this poem that it might be a little jazzy, a little swingy…I’m wondering if I’m right? The more I read it, that’s the sense I get…
Yeah, I think this really goes to Dan’s comment just above. I love how real–how present–”the orchestra… in birmingham” is here in spite of the fact that we don’t get any specifics about it. Do others feel similarly? Do you wonder what the orchestra sounds like there, or does the presumed reality of it become another kind of scaffolding (to use Michelle’s great word for it) for the rest of the poem? Or do you do what Amy cannily does and look for its sounds in the sound of the poem itself?
By the way: without having any context: does Birmingham seem significant in this poem? The city’s certainly played a huge role in American history, particularly the civil rights movement. Does that seem important to the rest of the poem?
Sun Ra’s monasticism!
I like the phrase “bridge machine.” I don’t know what is it, but I love it. I think I could use one.
And that coming right on the heels of “eremitic machine” (I’ll admit that I had to look up eremite: “a hermit or recluse, especially one under a religious vow”) which seems so unlike a machine. And the double-meaning of bridge: something from both architecture and music. That last sentence is a real show stopper. The mystery *is* in effect, isn’t it? And yet there’s this sense, as in “you’ll know why,” that it all works, much in the way the tower is held up by the other towers–maybe not unlike the individual notes in music?
Out of curiosity, I looked up orchestra in Birmingham online and found this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alys_Stephens_Center) thanks to Wikipedia. I can’t say for sure that it’s what the poem refers to, but I find it intriguing in light of Amy’s comments.
Jonathan-I looked up “eremitic” too! Thank you, Fred, for teaching me a new word. In the poem, I am most drawn to these beginning lines: “the way orchestra sounds in birmingham / that’s my sound. I belong to that sound / all the time, everyday. how bound I am / by music!” I think I am drawn to these lines for a few reasons. First, I love how the speaker takes ownership of the orchestra. We, as readers, do not know if the speaker is part of that orchestra as a musician or as a listener, but it does not seem to matter. I am moved by the certainty the speaker feels in being defined by that music. Second, I think the line break on “how bound I am” is brilliant. If read slowly, it leaves the reader space to consider all the things that might make a person feel bound, which for me is a very heavy thought, but then the tone quickly lightens with those two words “by music,” ending with that exuberant exclamation point. My question for Fred involves the unique use of white space with the line “theory of sound and fold it between,” and that single word “folded.” I am curious if there was a reason to use space in this way, or if it just felt “right” for the poem?
I hate to admit it, but I just realized that I’ve been misreading the first line. For some reason, I kept inserting a “the” before “orchestra.” It’s an important difference, isn’t it, a suggestion that a kind of music sounds different in a different place? I’d love to hear people’s thoughts about why that might happen in Birmingham–and why *that* might be someone’s sound.
Jonathan, isn’t it odd what reaches out to each of us as different readers? The lack of a “the” before “orchestra” in that first line was a signpost for me, saying this poem would be rooted in something vernacular and personal. It set a very “jazz” tone for me, so that I was willing and ready to ride through the rest of the piece. For me, the speaker’s thoughts run together in a particularly improvisational, jazzy, organic way.
Something else I found interesting — on subsequent readings, certain words like “orchestra” and “Birmingham” and “seminar” were at one side of a growing gap between my expectations and the poem’s subject matter. It’s as if the intrinsic baggage of those words as subjects has been jettisoned, or built on and then taken away, like lost wax casting. And going back to my original gut feeling on the first line, a part of that wonderful gap or disconnect that keeps the piece bubbling along is the vernacular implications of dropping the “the” and the expected propriety of “orchestra.”
this orchestra in birmingham feels a bit like a jar in tennessee. and the sound of the theory of sound sounds stevensian as well. but what i love most about the poem is the mixture of that sort of music and the urgency of moments like “all the time, everyday” and especially the momentum built up by “the / mystery is in effect or an eremitic bridge / or a bridge machine” that abruptly stops short with “or you’ll know why.” this diction/syntax and these linebreaks make the stevensian musical/philisophical landscape…”the brain’s little wilderness”…seem organic and inevitable.
the fold of that protruding line has me preoccupied. i count three ways to read it, and presume them all to be simultaneously there when i read it. what i most like about that moment is that it is very much a moment — a stoppage in time, more than a visual stoppage on the page. i feel like the protruding line is the poem and the rest of the poem is its negative space. which is a theory of sound within a theory of silent sound.
I love so much the use of the exclamation point in the fourth line–how it sets us in joy going forward. Oh, *this* kind of joy my mind says, and rides on.
I haven’t seen a poem that looked like this one in a long time. I personally think the way it plays with prose-like formatting is enjoyable to read and fun because it is different.
I hadn’t really focused on that exclamation point, until you wrote that, Elaine. You’re right, it really wakes the piece up.
My favorite part of this poem: the last four words, “or you’ll know why.” The thing is, I don’t know how to read that ending or why I like it so much. I just do. This is actually one of the things I most like about poetry (as opposed to fiction)–some of the lines or images that move me most are those I cannot entirely explain.
Very beautifully stated
My take on the relationship between the poem’s metaphors is that music is a structure within a structure – a building in the mind, which is within the body, itself a sort of building. The human memory works spatially – it can help, when trying to remember specific pieces of inf
(hit the post button by accident)
Information, to associate them with physical locations, like different parts of a room. Given that interplay, the idea of music as a permanent structure in the memory is very compelling.
Note also in the first line we are first presented with “orchestra in Birmingham” – a social formation in a physical location. The music itself is a sound structure within a social structure (orchestra) within a social and physical structure (Birmingham).
For me the poem seems to pivot on the phrase, “the brain’s little wilderness is / a backbeat” – once that backbeat is in place, we get a sudden and incredible flight of “music” – music we can’t quite consciously keep up with, but that pulls us along so commandingly. Very much like jazz, as Angie mentioned. Or like the sound of an orchestra warming up, with the different instruments coming in and out of focus. Or like being in a crowded room, with snippets of different conversations weaving into and over each other.
I’d be very interested to hear Fred talk about the balance between improvisation and… well, whatever the opposite of improvisation is (revision? editing?) in his writing process.
Does improvisation have an opposite? This is what the your question, Claire, the way that you ask it, suggests, brilliantly. I think that maybe improvisation has no opposite. Revision and improvisation are each the other’s afterlife.
Fred,
If you have time for it, I’d love to throw out a question of my own–one that goes back to Chris V.’s interesting description of writing for him being entirely visual. For you, as a writer, what’s the relationship between the sound of the poem, the layout of the poem and its ideas? When you do include formatting elements like that protrusion, are you thinking of the poem as something that happens principally on the page, or does it represent something that could happen in a reading, too?
I think Richard hits at what struck me most about this, but in a slightly different way. I have always felt music to be geography in my mind, to the extent that I often imagine travelling over it as a song or composition plays. There’s something about music existing entirely in time (it has to play through time to be heard, and of course rhythm and tempo are crucial to most music), yet also seeming to exist forever independent of it. I can think of a particular song and can access it whenever I want, and there’s an expansiveness to the logical structure of a piece of music that makes it seem as if it is something that can be explored at your leisure independent of just the experience of hearing it.
I see hints of this in your poem, as in “the brain’s little wilderness is a backbeat” and my favorite part at the end, with the towers all holding one another up, and the “eremetic bridge.” Does music feel like place to you? Or is it more that place evokes music?
Hey Everybody,
Thanks so much for all the kind attention you’ve been paying to the poem. I appreciate it and I also apologize in advance for all the typos. OK, a kind of opening response to some of what’s been said so far, starting with Jonathan’s question and trying to go from there.
I think the concept that I try to keep in my head the most is contrapuntal or, maybe better, polyphonic. i want to try to have multiple lines in the poem, different threads going together, maybe the way an orchestra would be, but also multiple sensual registers, multiple aesthetic forms and formations–architecture, painting, music. I want to keep all the stuff, all the lines, operative, though some emerge and some recede, depending on the moment. They don’t all operate with the same force or intensity all the time, but when I read this poem aloud and get to the protrusion, the cantilever and fold, I am aware of it and I certainly want people to be aware of it when they read/see it even if that new position is not as audible as it is visual.
This poem is part of a sequence called “Block Chapel,” which is part of a manuscript called The Feel Trio–three longish sequences all of which are concerned with the ways the poems look, the shapes they take, on the page. Shape and form are huge concerns–shape at the level of form, form at the level of content, if that makes any sense. I have been trying to figure out how to have stuff sound good, how to have the arrangement of the words carry sound/sounds, in the way that poems can and should, but to do so by way of a set of protocols of shape on the page that are proselike. Like to have the end of a line be determined by position and sight as much by sound/ear. To create my own small spatial justifications and then to disrupt them. And I have been thinking about this writing as a set of experiments in “shaped prose.” The block, and then the breaking of the block, has been a big part of the way I’ve been trying to use shape. The seating and possible dispersal of a choir in a chapel or a symphony in a philharmonic hall. Like if a band on a bandstand had, for whatever reason, to be resituated, in part, out into the audience, which is what happened one time when I saw Sun Ra at a club in San Francisco. The band stand was too small so the arkestra had to jut out into the audience like a broken block or cube. Arkestra, by the way, is how Sun Ra said orchestra sounds in Birmingham, the Magic City, which is where he first landed. Outer Space, Alabama is also one of the big spatial concerns of the poems in this collection, at the level of content. That space or the set of spaces that is called Alabama, keeps coming back all the time, in a bunch of ways, as in the echo of Brecht/Weill’s “Alabama-song,” with which the poem ends: “or you’ll know why” by way of a Lotte Lenya formulation. Music is a bunch of places that evokes place–projective habitations.
The music of this poem takes me back to attending a Jay Wright reading a decade ago, not knowing what I was in for and being exposed to another side of poetry I hadn’t seen to that point (I didn’t get out much, poetry-wise). Specifically – there’s an Ornette Coleman poem.
The bad news is my Jay Wright collection has gone missing.
Whit, you mention Jay Wright which makes me think of one of his, not for Ornette but for Sonny Rollins, “Blue Seven, or Learning to Dance to Different Measures,” which is what I hope I am trying to do. Thanks, everybody!
My Day opens on a faithful bird
There is time to repeat what I have heard
But I say now more than it has meant to say
I might pláy within its stitching music
I can really hear now those harmonies without a voice
Two and five I submit will not fit cannot be or touch the right measure oh no
Time is the first knot a tangled root that binds as it helps to spell
my name
Aw, the spacing got messed up, so you have to look at it, the first (blue) seven lines on page 63 of THE GUIDE SIGNS.
Really great info!