Bill
I ike the matching of repose to cool, & can almost follow that long 4th stanza on the cricketeers who do & do not have it, but that is parochial in its way (although an american would probably use baseball the same way, with bemusement from many around the world).
I do think the finale works very well, those last 2 lines, sharp.
Doug
> On Feb 11, 2020, at 1:54 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Having repose
>
>
> They were looking over the other patrons of the restaurant to see if they
> had repose - Dick said no American men had repose, except himself, and they
> were seeking an example to confront him with.
>
>
> - F Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
>
>
> i
>
>
> Before cool,
>
> before Brando,
>
> before Birth of the Cool,
>
> the 1949 Miles sessions,
>
> even before Lester Young,
>
> ten years before that,
>
> Scotty’s Dick Diver had repose
>
> in spades.
>
> And sought,
>
> largely in vain,
>
> fellow reposers.
>
>
> He had his Zelda-like Nicole of course
>
> and besotted 18 yo Rosemary
>
> and he had Paris.
>
>
> ii
>
>
> What’s cool?
>
> Stepping back,
>
> stepping out?
>
> Ability to take it
>
> on the chin perhaps.
>
> Unruffledness.
>
> Allowing things to just
>
> drip
>
> off you.
>
>
> Not restricted to jazz musicians
>
> or Jazz Age hipsters,
>
> cricketers can be cool.
>
> But not all.
>
> Shane Warne may have spun himself
>
> into the record books
>
> but was too ornery
>
> to have repose.
>
> Look to black for that -
>
> gum-chewing, all-smiting Viv Richards,
>
> even fielding at mid-on had it in his smile
>
> or even white Waugh, Mark,
>
> the seconds-older twin of captain Steve,
>
> finesser of strokes,
>
> accepter of swished outs with aplomb,
>
> surely displayed repose.
>
>
> Top flight sportsmen, purring actors, musicians,
>
> socialites, are not the only ones.
>
> Unselfish, stylish flourishes
>
> can be the province
>
> of any of us.
>
> Unless
>
> we know it.
>
>
> bw
>
Douglas Barbour
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https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Listen. If (UofAPress):
Done in by creation itself.
I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
Robert Kroetsch
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