Wednesday, October 26, 2005

On Miles (Quincy Troupe)

Here is a paragraph from Quincy Troupe's Miles and Me (U of Cal Press, 2000), p.2.

"Sometimes when he used the mute, whether on up-tempo tunes or slow ones, we knew we were hearing perfection. When he played muted ballads, it was as if he were tenderly kissing our feelings--then he would stun us with bright, rapid-fire bursts of notes that penetrated our souls. Miles not only soliloquized, he also had a "dialoging" style. It was like listening to him having a conversation with himself, with one of his voices imitating a fast-talking, sweet-rapping black street hustler."


A great style here. After finding this book, to my joy, priced at a bargain $10 at the Uni bookstore, I learned of Troupe's incident of resigning UCSD and California's first poet laureate in 2002. It was the immediate consequence of his falsification of CV; he actually didn't have a BA from a Louisiana college. But who cares, it only endorses the incommensurability of poets and educational institutions! He's got style, he can write. He knows music, and has passion to write thrillingly about it.

Professor or not, official poet or not, it's only writing that matters.