“The Chet Set” – poems by Bernard Saint

April 20th, 2023

“Chet Baker No. 2,” by Henry Denander

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Chet Baker Summer Sketch

In the city of Bologna
There’s a jazz club bears his name
So – typically of course –
He never played there

Preferring one without a gaudy sign
That mainly served spaghetti –

A summer concert in the square
Returning there for supper
He drew a portrait sketch upon the menu

One continuous line
In the manner of Matisse or Cocteau or
Chet Baker when he circles a white space
In notes of calm allusive beauty –

Whose is this suggested face at peace
They promptly framed to hang upon a wall?

Might it be a somnolent
Self-sabotaging angel
Sleepwalking fame’s absurd fast-burning tightrope?

Lucca

One day soon he will settle in Lucca –
A small house with a garden
A music room of course and in the cool
Spring evening it will be pleasant
Wandering piazza to piazza
To sit at café tables with a few
Understanding and forgiving friends

Someday soon when the fever breaks
Of crossing borders concert to concert
Festivals to cash-in-hand recordings
From dealers in hard drugs to hardened doctors
Substituting methadone with cautions

Driving overnight without a break
All to play one T.V. slot in Oslo –
Someday soon he’ll stay at home in Lucca
No last-minute sound-check to insist
‘I always play softly – I always sit down’

One day soon he will settle in Lucca
There is a quiet music to the phrase
Eternally assuring and enchanting
For high on uncut heroin
Every town is Lucca

Cool School

Musicians have apparent
Lack of conversation
Concerning all but sound

They rarely mention hardship
Eternally apprenticed
To Art with scant reward

They remain politely unimpressed
By fame-and-fortune merchants
The media feed an unreflective public

But if your part is ‘clean’
Meaning you articulate
A passage with due weight

And if you lend true feeling to each note
Then someone gives a nod
As if to say ‘O.K.’

Obliquely…
…Sometime later

Chet Baker In Bologna

Concerning Chet Baker my lips are sealed
By a calm vermillion glowing coal
At the centre of a snowball –
This was his sound – his soul

A snowflake turning to a flame mid-air
A cool conduit concluding
In a candlelit basilica –

The groove above our upper lip
A fingertip impresses before birth
Advises silence on our true abode –

‘Hush this is the world
Which shall pass
Though music last’ –

To contemplate at lowered microphone
A whispered existential question mark
That bends his reputation to a stance

Of spretzatura understated cool –
Articulation of the difficult
Without personal bravura

Baker Takes The Cake

‘You sound too sweet’ said salty Miles
To Chet – reportedly
For if he spoke one word per day
Sparsity assigned it extra weight
And this was half his style

‘Now there’s a white cat on the Coast
Who’s going to eat you up’ said Bird
To Miles the skinny sideman straight
From Juilliard – just to keep him on his toes
Remember nothing ‘here’ is permanent

‘Why are all Rome’s jazz clubs underground?’
Chet opined of Gregory
Corso in the Catacombs
‘When I feel I’m going to die
I hurry to the movies’ answered Gregory

Chet made soundtracks for the Roman screen
‘I gave to him three notes
He hands me back inventions of great beauty –
But the film they made about him?
That’s not him’

‘Gone Bird’ said Kenny Dorham on the stand
Some remarked he meant ‘Go On!’
New York flip-talk
For ‘take another chorus then another’
Sax hauled out of hock with string and gum
On the street the world connecting
‘Out of Nowhere’ with nothing

Cut flowers in ice-water buckets
Still bloom on the ring road to Rome
‘Little boy blue come blow your horn’
For the last lyric American voices
In Campo di Fiori and for
‘All the Things You Are’

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Bernard Saint is a U.K. poet who has published in U.K. and United States literary magazines since the 1960’s. He is a regular contributor to International Times. His most recent book is ROMA, published by Smokestack Books. He worked as a therapist and supervisor in the U.K. National Health Service in psychiatry and in addiction recovery.

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Henry Denander is an artist and a poet whose work has been published in many books and magazines. Click here to visit his website.

Listen to the 1985 recording of Chet Baker playing “But Not For Me,” from a live recording in Bologna, Italy [BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited]