FOOTPRINTS
by Mary K O’Melveny
Wayne Shorter, the enigmatic, intrepid saxophonist who shaped the color and contour of modern jazz as one of its most intensely admired composers, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 89.
—The New York Times, March 2, 2023
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Some people barely tiptoe through the multiverse, if they ever notice it at all. Others soar on color, line, on rhythm, tempo, vision. On poetry swirling like silk. Listen to that smooth, mellow tenor sax as he croons, spoons, caresses, cajoles, teases, tempts. His roads were paved with be-bob, fusion, funk, hard bop, symphony, opera, even chamber quartets. His footprints knew no limits. No regrets. Once you start out, There is no reason to stop. Take his lead. The weather report is good. The route mellow. You know some band mates — Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Esmerelda Spalding, Joni Mitchell, Milton Nascimento, Steely Dan, Carlos Santana, Terri Lyne Carrington. You know some tunes—Juju, Nefertiti, Iphigenia, Endangered Species, Gaia, Speak No Evil. We all grooved down those paths, as he soothed our way home. Every note was a prompt, every sound a clue, every tone a tricked out treat, every twitch a temptation to stop, then soar. He is now well on his way along enlightenment’s pathway. In the key of cool.
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Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY. Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020
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HOMAGE TO WAYNE (AND MY FATHER)
by Dick Altman
In a 2014 interview, the saxophonist Wayne Shorter was asked how often his working quartet rehearsed. His reply was evasive and illuminating: “How do you rehearse the future?” This was classic Shorter—gnomic, gnostic, mischievous, wise. It was a bit of a humblebrag too. For more than six decades, he conjured the future of music into being, with or without the benefit of rehearsal. Shorter, who died yesterday at 89, was a giant of jazz as an improviser, bandleader, and thinker, but above all as a composer—arguably the greatest in jazz since Thelonious Monk, and inarguably one of the greatest the genre, and the United States, has ever produced. —David A. Graham, The Atlantic, March 3, 2023
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“All or nothing at all Half a love, never appealed to me If your heart, it never could yield to me Then I'd rather, rather have nothing at all…” Wayne—I once thought Sinatra’s voice was the best one alive to interpret the ballad that launched his career into the musical stratosphere—until I heard yours—heard your sax—above a hundred-and-fifty other memorable voices—wrap its breath around my soul—your intimate—languid purr—as if stroking— rather than playing—the notes—imbues “longing” with the blade of desire unshared—I imagine us conversing at The Five Spot— Greenwich Village’s storied jazz dive—your “All or Nothing at All” doing all the talking—softly—soothingly—trying to mend a twentyish broken heart—you keep it low and slow—no evidence of Sinatra’s signature swing—you’re standing at the other side of the table—answering the sadness you see in my eyes—my face— so very you to sing as if I were the only person in the room— I said all, or nothing at all If it's love, there ain't no in between Why begin then cry, for something that might have been No I'd rather, rather have nothing at all Your sax bewitchingly mouths the words—shares their ache— this is your magic—to get beneath the skin of the music—to find the pulse—to release its essence—I close my eyes—draw into me the air filled with your genius—wonder if there will ever be another like you—like her
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Note: The poet’s father Arthur Altman composed the music to “All or Nothing at All.” Lyrics used in the poem by permission.
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Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.