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Trading Fours with Douglas Cole  is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film

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The Galactic Fantastic

 One Note

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I enter the cloud room and they’re playing first round bebop in unison, jumping scales and swinging out on a precursor to a kind of Stan Getz two-step finality, like an invisible wave collapsing at your mind, and then another door opens and this bright being steps out as if you were down in the basement looking up at the kitchen door, and this entity arrives and the music halts and one clear note hits the air descending like an angel from the sun, and you’re shot through and hung up as Idris blows that singular message like the breathing of a stone, like someone saying, listen, do you hear that one note one tone continuous and cool and so simple and cruising along like drift-clouds, like Saturday afternoon downtown crowds, until one leaps up and out and shouting says, listen, for a solid minute, the sound of the circular breath for a minute and a half in the stratosphere then diving back in and resolving at last all right saying, Mr. Hawkins, you take it from here.

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Listen to Douglas Cole read this poem

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 In the 1940’s David Stone Martin designed record album covers for the Asch label, which was owned by Moses Asch, who would go on to found Folkways Records.  It is believed Martin created the design on the tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins’ 78 rpm album jacket pictured prior to this poem in 1944.   Martin would go on to create the art on more than two hundred album covers during the 1950s for the labels owned by the impresario Norman Granz — Clef, Norgran, and Verve.  An outstanding resource for Martin’s work can be viewed by clicking here.

Cole’s poem is based on Hawkins’ 1957 recording “Juicy Fruit” from The Hawk Flies High, and features Idrees Sulieman (trumpet); Hank Jones (piano); Barry Galbraith (guitar); J.J. Johnson (trombone); Oscar Pettiford (bass); and Jo Jones (drums).  [Universal Music Group]

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photo by Jenn Merritt

Douglas Cole has published six collections of poetry and The White Field, winner of the American Fiction Award. His work has appeared in several anthologies as well as journals such as The Chicago Quarterly Review, Poetry International, The Galway Review, Bitter Oleander, Chiron, Louisiana Literature, Slipstream, as well Spanish translations of work (translated by Maria Del Castillo Sucerquia) in La Cabra Montes. He is a regular contributor to Mythaixs, an online journal, where in addition to his fiction and essays, his interviews with notable writers, artists and musicians such as Daniel Wallace (Big Fish), Darcy Steinke (Suicide Blond, Flash Count Diary) and Tim Reynolds (T3 and The Dave Matthews Band) have been popular contributions. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart and Best of the Net and received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry. He lives and teaches in Seattle, Washington. Click here to visit his website. 

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Click here for information on how to submit your poetry

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