Classic and Contemporary Poetry
VARIATIONS FOR A SUMMER EVENING, by MICHAEL ANANIA Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Thank you and goodbye' Subject(s): Jazz; Music & Musicians; Roach, Max (b. 1924); Young, Lester ('prez') (1909-1959) | ||||||||
"I have heard what the talkers were talking . . ." 1. "Thank you and goodbye" and now she turns, hair asway, skirt furling, the peonies, each one of them a pink tangle, sunlit quartz sidewalk. Lester leaps in. 2. Flowering Cheyenne, ladyfingers, white blossoms, bees and butterflies, the skyline, pure Chicago, this paper cut-out of itself, watertower solitaires, a deuce-and-a-quarter listing by. 3. The voice I hear under the locust tree in the courtyard, so definite, the rush of the El, box elder, poplars stirring. "All I want," she says, "or anyone, for that matter, is a chance to show you what I mean." 4. Haze after haze, the city and evening: music seems implicit in conditions perfected years ago, gaiety, the Venetian glass swirl of warm gin over ice. Dear saxophone, the breathy instant before the sound comes on like anything. 5. America, it's hardly worth mentioning. These happy accidents occur as they occur, something the horn ribbons out into moist air and indigo. "To show you what I mean," like the lyric that stammers inside the song, Embraceable You, never quite uttered, assumed, like Max Roach, an insistence that sometimes comes to call. 6. Elm crowns above the scattered rooflines, my sweet, the Smoke King, so close you could hear him fingering the keys, embraceable valve pads opening and closing, riding above the notes and darkened leaves, breath flared like steam against lacquered brass. Sometimes this sadness is intolerable. 7. "All I want," the narrow leaves like fossils stamped in anthracite, "or anyone," ice cubes hissing their breath away, an insistence turning just where the light furls around their sadness. "Thank you and goodbye," my sweet embraceable night air and its thickening apprehension, "for that matter, is a chance to show you what I mean," my sweet embraceable you. From The Sky at Ashland by Michael Anania, published by Moyer Bell, Kymbolde Way, Wakefield, RI 02879. Used by permission of the publisher. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ELEGY ON MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE by WILLIAM BASSE THE WANDERER: 2. IN FRANCE: AUX ITALIENS by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON SONNET: IN ABSENCE FROM BECCHINA by CECCO ANGIOLIERI DA SIENA THE FAIRIES OF THE CALDON LOW; A MIDSUMMER LEGEND by MARY HOWITT FONTENOY, 1745: 2. AFTER THE BATTLE, EARLY DAWN, CLARE COAST by EMILY LAWLESS THE COLLEGE, 1917 by HAMILTON FISH ARMSTRONG SONG: 6 by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD |
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