Use Trouble
Published on 10. April 2009
368 pages
978-0-252-09147-6 (ISBN)
Description
For decades, Michael S. Harper has written poetry that speaks with many voices. His work teems with poetry configured as awe, poetry as courtship, and poetry as elegy and homage. Infused with tales and riddles, sass and satire and surprise, Harpers poetry takes the form of psalms, jazz experiments, soft serenades, and radical provocations. _x000B__x000B_In Use Trouble, his first major collection since Songlines in Michaeltree, Harper renews poetry as the art of taking nothing for granted. In three groups--"The Fret Cycle," "Use Trouble," and "I Do Believe in People"--he draws on his seemingly inexhaustible resources to paint, sing, sympathize, and sorrow. Here are his tributes to his father and family, his irrepressible playfulness, and his lifelong romance between poetry and music.
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Michael S. Harper
Use Trouble
Book
03/2009
University of Illinois Press
€105.23
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Content
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- I. The Fret Cycle
- Fret (A Tune Near Composition in the Studio)
- A Note from Cathy at Yaddo
- The Lesson for Paul on Catherine Clarke's Birthday
- Fret in the Woods
- Table Notice
- Fret Skips Town for a Gig in New London
- Fret Deep in the Woods
- Fret Leaves Yaddo
- Ghost of Fret at High Table: Mansion
- Fret's News from the Front: Yaddo After
- Martini Glasses Galore
- Fret Shows Up at the Metropolitan
- The List: Yaddo
- Fret Leaves Yaddo in Disguise
- Fret Having Survived Modernity
- Fret Discovers the Blues, Again
- Ass
- Fret in Studio with the Ancestors
- Fret Find the Instrument of Archipelago
- Mt. Pleasant Local Library
- Fret Finds the Open Field
- II. Use Trouble
- A Photographic Guide to the City
- Use Trouble
- Portrait: (Jay Saunders Redding at Sayles Hall) 5/26/97
- Esther
- Triumphs
- Homage to Jay Saunders Redding on His Natal Day: 10 13 04
- Praisesong for BB
- Goodbye to All That
- Public Letter: Visible Ink
- Dubonnet
- Archives: The Public Library I
- Archives: The Public Library II
- Legend of Jeannie Turner
- TCAT Serenade
- Sherley Anne Williams: 1944-1999
- Chloe: Black Pastoral Luminous
- Handmade Book on the Theme of the Beloved
- Pigeon
- Artist on a Cellphone (Yaddo)
- Vote (Providence)
- Marilyn
- Tattoo
- Copenhagen
- Notes on Our Resident Humanist: Mahler B. Ryder, 1937-1992
- Ostseebad Ahrenshoop
- Ribs
- Charlotte and Nathan Exchange: 50th Anniversary
- Charlotte to Nathan
- Notes on the Hopi
- Critical Mass
- Hemingway's Iceberg
- Saint Dolores (Phillips Exeter Academy)
- Days Remaining"/Bloom's Day, Dublin
- Freud: Lessons on Boundaries
- George J. Makari Blues
- Songbirds (Habitat)
- Ponta de Areia" [Brazil]
- Tagore (Nobel, 1913)
- On Brodsky's Collected
- Three Poems: October 17, 2004
- I. Archival Secrets of Mary Lincoln
- II. At the Square
- III. The Secret Lore of Will's Presidency
- Zen: The Trainride Home to the Welcome Table
- The Flight Home
- Tatum
- Baseball (Orb)
- Josh Gibson (Master of National Past)
- Blackjack
- Look Backwards: Henry Aaron's Hammer
- A Centenary Ode to EKE: The Duke of Ellington
- Ray Charles Robinson Dead at 73
- Womb of Space (Yaddo)
- What I Know This Very Day
- Along Came Betty
- Repeat Button
- Digesting Dexter Gordon at 80
- Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
- Photo: Letter (Joel Chandler Harris)
- Ernesto Victor Antonucci
- 'Craft'Talk, Vermont Studio Center
- Elder
- On the Theme of Self-Knowledge and Education "In Society" Though Not Defined by Falsehoods
- Joseph Santos Ileto
- The Broke and the Unbroken
- Jacuzzi Serenade
- On Arrival
- Christine Frey's Resurrection
- Open Studio
- Iowa (1961) Or "How to USE TROUBLE" [Writers Workshop]
- Shirley of Little Falls [1961, Iowa City, IOWA]: A Profile in "Intaglio
- Philip Roth
- American Masters: PBS" (Ralph Ellison)
- Neighbors
- Leonard Brown, Musician/Teacher
- Richard Davis's Trampolines
- Year of the FirePig in Chinese New Year
- Eulogy Framed as Requiem Mass on the American Frontier
- Modulations on a Theme . . . for Josephus Long
- Eva's Song at the End
- Los Angeles Coliseum Olympic Swimming Pool, 1960
- Frederick Armstrong Hetzel
- Zambia
- Massey's Ministry
- The Tank and Its Narrators
- Judge & Jury: A Saga on Dramatics of the Persona Off Stage
- The Revolutionary Garden
- Royce Hall
- Gwendolynian Staccato Dance
- Muse
- Spencer Trask's Den (Yaddo)
- Spoon of WNN III: Lost Reflections on My iPod No Longer Shuffling
- Newk" While He's Still Alive and Playing
- Horacescope
- Miles Davis Shirt: Monterey Jazz Festival
- On Green Dolphin Street" [after Miles Ahead]
- The Life of Jackie McLean
- Blues for a Colored Singer: Milt Jackson
- Interstate 80 Freeway Return
- Last Song [in Memoriam: Michael Micciche III]
- Libation for Elvin Jones [1927-2004]
- Dexter Leaps In
- The Book on Trane
- A Coltrane Poem: 9 23 98
- A Coltrane Poem: 9 23 98 (2)
- Coltrane Notes on the Millennium 9 23 2000
- Sermon on O'Meally
- Larry Doby
- Panhandler (New Haven)
- Galveston: 9 8 1900
- Notes on the Long Poem (Tuscaloosa, AL)
- John Killens at Yaddo
- Haircut on the Solstice
- Ten Years of Freedom: South African Film Festival, N.Y.C.
- Certainties
- Hooded Cobra Eyes: Beguiled by Pitch of the True Reed
- Bouillabaisse
- Ars Poetica
- Bellow Berryman James Arlington Wright
- III. I Do Believe in People
- Poem on Contents of Harper/Johnson Kin
- Horoscope: 3 12 98
- Horoscope: 10 3 98
- Driving Up on Van Aken Blvd.
- My Mother Said: For My Sister, Katherine
- Rome, New York
- My Aunt Ella Mae
- Ice
- Snapshot
- Sacrament
- Elizaville
- Subcode
- Five Gallon Water Bottle (Oster Is the Best): A Story, a Tale
- Couch
- Why I Don't Do Surveys
- Sleeping under a Wool Blanket Here
- Patrice among the Elders
- Getting My Head Shaved by My Son at Odd Hours
- Glass (Crystal)
- Bermuda Triangle: for Patrice Cuchulain Harper
- Papa's Day: Notes On Partition: WWH: Father's Day Greeting '99
- Broadside
- (Omaha) UTAH BEACH, FRANCE, 5 8 92
- Josh Gibson's Bat
- Portrait off Son at Rhinebeck Train Station
- Paris
- Mama: To Son
- Katherine Louise Johnson Harper
- Headset
- Juneteenth
- Indispensable Meditation on the Family Tree
- The Latin American Poem
- Airport
- Altura
- Maroons
- When I Was a Boy
- Pull-ups at PS 25
- Hives
- Iowa
- My Mother's Bible I
- My Mother's Bible II
- Pigeons
- Caretaking Supreme
- The Patriarch, W. Warren Harper, Circa 1938
- Cathair on His Blackwatch Jacket
- Manhattan Beach
- Homage to Flight #103, Pan-American
- Commencement Address: For Jonathan Paul Harper (1941-1977)
- Attributes And Eccentricities of W. Warren Harper
- Meditation on Catskill Creek
- Talk Therapy on John Milton
- Lovesong
- 1965 Watts Riot
- Domestic Relations (Defendant saith)
- The Red Dress: 12 24 65
- Walking Tour (Lake Windermere) Studies in Romantic Poetry
- Walking Tour (Lake Windermere): Its Aftermath
- The Squire of Taunton
- Jaxon's First Song: 5 21 2000
- Natal Visit on the Theme of Shoes
- Apologia to Charlotte Scott on Pantops Mountain
- Forty: 6 28 06
- Loyalty
- Paul Urabe [1938-2003]
- Yaddo, Mrs. Ames and Black Men
- Index of Titles
