With Millicent on this, Bill. Very good piece.
I've been a bit remote lately due to the press of some obligations.
I will be more present soon. Sheila
On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 2:46 PM Millicent Borges Accardi <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I love the cool feel-around of this poem and I like how the narrator was
> sorting thru experiences to define "repose/" I thought the second stanza
> was the strongest. Particularly stellar was this passage:
> Allowing things to just
>
> drip
>
> off you.
> Remember well, seeing Miles and Freddie Hubbard and even, of late, Nicolas
> Peyton.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
> To: POETRYETC <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tue, Feb 11, 2020 12:55 pm
> Subject: Repose - a draft
>
> 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
>
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