I enjoy poems that are accessible on first read.  Who Remembers Davenport tells a story of two jazz artists first encounter.  The writer sets the scene so realistically you can see it.

More than a story, he uses jazz as a metaphor for inspiration and commentary on social change.  Read the first line and last stanza again.  This is a story making a statement.

Who remembers Davenport, Iowa, in 1920,
the year the city voted Socialist?
No one now alive could cast a ballot,
and the white-boy jazzers of Scott County
Didn’t care about the Revolution, but stood
on a wharf overlooking the muddy river,
Waiting for a riverboat loaded with music
from the red-light district of New Orleans.
One of them, just seventeen that year,
had heard it hardest. On the deck
Of the paddle-wheeler, high above the dock
and its straggling crowd, a Black man lifted
His ordinary cornet and blew the world away.
No one in all of Iowa knew his name
Except that young man, who understood
his betters when he heard them.
That day he heard it all and soon he would ride
Like Armstrong up river to Chicago on a golden cornet.
You want a revolution? Music was his manifesto.

The clarity of his tone, musicians said,
was like bullets shooting a bell.

The author’s comment

“Who Remembers Davenport” evokes two jazz pioneers, one white and one Black, and centers on the moment when Bix Beiderbecke, then in his late teens, heard the greatest trumpet player in history, Louis Armstrong—an encounter that naturally had a profound effect on Beiderbecke.

The transmission of the art across generations and racial boundaries is a source of fascination for me, no matter what the art; but jazz, more than most, has reinvigorated itself many times in just this way over the decades. Perennially reborn, jazz (and most other musical forms) remains for me a central source of inspiration.”
—T. R. Hummer

Note from poet’s almanac:  Edward Estlin Cummings, born on October 14, 1894, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a poet known for his radical experimentation with form and syntax.

Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, now celebrated as part of the President’s Day holiday.  It is still vital that we honor the passion he bought to serve and save the nation and our better selves.

A Poem of America

My Country, ‘Tis of Thee“, also known as  “America“, is learned in grade school and sung at most public and patrioc events. The lyrics  were written by Samuel Francis Smith.^[2] The song served as one of the de facto national anthems of the United States  before the adoption of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the official U.S. national anthem in 1931.^[3] (Wikipedia)

Ironically, the melody used is adapted from the national anthem of the United Kingdom, “God Save the King“.   Below is a version using the song’s meter and words to communicate a message in poetry calling for Lincoln’s vision to be realized.

Frank Barbour Coffin, born on January 12, 1870, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, was an African American poet and pharmacist who owned and operated one of the earliest drugstores serving the Black community of Little Rock, Arkansas. He authored one poetry collection, Coffin’s Poems with Ajax’ Ordeals (The Colored Advocate, 1897), and his poetry was otherwise published in journals. Coffin died on March 1, 1951, in Little Rock.  (Souce:  Poets.org)

Chicago

by Carl Sandburg

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have
seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Bulding, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his
ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

(Editors note:  My hometown from 1974-1981 when working at First Chicago and then Supervisor of Credit Unions for Illinois’ Department of Financial Institutions)

Photo by Cody Doherty

The Giant Cactus of Arizona

by Harriet Monroe (1914)

Note from Poem-a-day:  Harriet Monroe, born on December 23, 1860, in Chicago, was a poet, critic, and editor best known as the founding publisher and editor of Poetry magazine.