Dear John, Dear Coltrane by Michael S. Harper

First published: 1970, in Dear John, Dear Coltrane

Type of poem: Elegy

The Poem

“Dear John, Dear Coltrane” is about love and concerns how pain and suffering can be transcended through “a love supreme.” Divided into two different but unified voices, the poem reflects solemnly and antiphonally on an acceptance of physical decay, spiritual malaise, and fragmentation. Throughout the poem, decay and disease are regarded as a part of a natural cycle that can lead to an expression of love. Pain is regarded as necessary—“there is no substitute for pain”—and vital to the creative act, as suggested by images of planting and harvest (seed, fallow, roots) or escape and revitalization: “move by river…singing.” Singing or creating music (or poetry) becomes the manner in which love of life is expressed.

The italicized lines are directly related to the voice and music of John Coltrane, a tenor and soprano saxophone player, who was born in Hamlet, North Carolina, in 1926 and died in Huntington, New York, near “the electric city,” New York City, in 1967. Coltrane introduced a vibrant singing sound to the upper registers of the tenor sax and had a revolutionary effect on the use of the saxophone in jazz. His masterpiece, “A Love Supreme,” is a four-part inspirational work produced in 1964 on which he literally sings, “a love supreme, a love supreme.” In that composition, the last movement is improvised entirely from the syllabic content of a poem Coltrane had written; thus, Coltrane’s musical composition was inspired by poetry as this poem is inspired by a musical composition.

The poetic voice describes the physical deterioration of Coltrane and in so doing bears “witness to this love” expressed by Coltrane and his music. The voice also continues the tradition of paying homage to heroes who have maintained a courage and will to struggle on despite personal suffering and pain. The poet’s eulogy is both secular and religious as it describes the symptoms of illness—“impotence,” “diseased liver” and spiritual malaise—which lead, paradoxically, to a “purity” in Coltrane’s music. Disease and decay do not conquer the will, as Coltrane still “pumps out, the tenor kiss, tenor love.”

Images related to Coltrane provide a counterpoint to the larger musical tradition among African Americans: spirituals, urban blues, and jazz. The creative act—musical composition—is a testament to one’s being: To sing or shout of one’s agony gives acknowledgment to one’s existence. The poet testifies to the endurance of Coltrane by invoking images of escape, of “rivers and swamps” used by African Americans to flee physical and spiritual slavery, “singing: a love supreme.”

This reference to spirituals and their evolution is followed by descriptions of plodding into the electric city and Coltrane’s fragility and suffering. Significantly, spirituals and blues are direct influences on the evolution of jazz. The pattern of interlocking the African American musical tradition with Coltrane’s individual life experiences illustrates the redemptive nature of music. The intensity of Coltrane’s love also resonates with religious traditions that acknowledge humans as heroes when they maintain an embracing love of others despite private pain and suffering. Thus the universality of transcending personal pain and loss through love is linked to a jazz artist whose secular music is an expression of his love.

The poem, as elegies often are, is also a melancholy reflection upon life’s transience. The question “what does it all mean?” has no definitive answer; there can ultimately be no answer except in how one responds to life. Paradoxically, the answer is to assert oneself: “cause I am.” Coltrane’s response to personal pain is through his music: the tenor kiss which, metaphorically, is a kiss of love coming from a heart in all its purity.

Forms and Devices

This lyric poem can be considered a jazz elegy in which voice and idiom are central to the poem’s form and content. Contained within the formal structure is the traditional lament for a friend or a public figure. The poem follows a form that Harper has called “modal,” a term he borrowed from music (it refers to types of scales often used in jazz improvisation). Harper uses the term to refer both to his principle of composition and to his ethical vision; “modality” encompasses “relationships” and “energy.” It is always, he says, “about unity.” The form of “Dear John, Dear Coltrane” fittingly resembles the structure of a jazz number in which improvisation is open-ended. The first half of the title (“Dear John”) indicates a personal letter of love that says good-bye (the poem was written before Coltrane’s death). The second half (“Dear Coltrane”) represents a public or formal letter of good-bye. The double title reflects the multiple meanings of the poem—personal and communal, present and historical.

Many of the poem’s images are evolved from literary and historical allusions related to African American idioms and tradition. In the formal improvisational structure of the poem—itself a seeming contradiction—Harper relies on a formal arrangement of musical notes (words) being played (read or sung) to evoke emotions. Feelings are evoked by the arrangement of the “notes” and how they are played. On the one hand, the note “Dear John” is suggestive of an ancestral voice, John the Baptist, who baptizes Christ much like John Coltrane provides a baptism for the poet and for other saxophone players. On the other hand, “Dear John” echoes Father John in Jean Toomer’s Cane (1923), who requests that Kabnis do something about “the sin the white folks ‘mitted when they made th Bible lie.” This kind of multi-referent suggests an improvisation which occurs within the context of a jazz musical composition.

The images throughout are often double entendres evolving from an African American historical point of view. As an example, the images of “Sex fingers toes” suggest the birth of Coltrane in North Carolina. They also are the necessary components of playing music and are suggestive of the aura of jazz. They are also, as Harper has indicated, images of sexual trophies taken from African American men who were lynched. Historical documents reveal that African American men were often castrated (de-sexed) before being lynched or burned and that spectators often took parts of the body of the victim as souvenirs.

Further, the images contrast with, or are in musical counterpoint to, the images of sterility and impotence—“genitals gone or going/ seed burned out.” These images, juxtaposed to the images of family and church which literally influenced the “birth” of Coltrane’s music, resonate with private, public, racial, and historical echoes. Implicit in all these images is the concept of humans having distinctive bodies which are separate from their souls, especially in the Christian context.

The metaphor of the marketplace and the religious tradition on the personal development of Coltrane and on the African American musical tradition is developed throughout the poem. These influences led to the development of Coltrane as artist and as propagator of the faith in people. His personal plight reflects how African Americans survived the institution of slavery. Images of planting further extend this “solo” theme as if the musician were planting the seed of spiritual revitalization despite physical impotence. The land is ripe for planting as Coltrane figuratively tucks his roots in the fallow fields of the public mind. The same situation applied for many African Americans escaping a slavery of the body or of the soul. In this manner, the poet relies upon historical idiom to convey the private agonies of a loved one.

The antiphonally playful section of “Why you so funky” and the italicized sections from Coltrane’s music add a slightly different focus to the poem’s voice. These idioms, from African American musical slang, evolve from the African American call-response religious tradition and the ballad tradition. This call-response form gives an answer of renewal to any question raised: “cause I am.” Implicit in the question “Why you so black?” is the reference to an equally unanswerable question in another famous tune: “What did I do to be so black and blue?” There is no answer other than the assertion of one’s being.

Bibliography

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Harper, Michael S. “The Map and the Territory: An Interview with Michael S. Harper.” Interview by Michael Antonucci. African American Review 34, no. 3 (Autumn, 2000): 501-508.

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