Peace on Earth by Michael S. Harper
"Peace on Earth" is a poignant poem by Michael S. Harper that serves as the concluding piece in his collection "Healing Song for the Inner Ear." The work intimately explores the life and artistry of the renowned jazz musician John Coltrane, using a series of vividly crafted images and clusters of lines to convey profound themes. Harper weaves together the transformative power of artistic inspiration with the responsibility artists hold towards their cultural heritage, reflecting on the interconnectedness of human experiences across diverse contexts.
The poem opens with a spiritual tone, suggesting that moments of artistic inspiration are akin to religious reverence. Harper references significant historical events, such as Nagasaki, to emphasize a broader human empathy that transcends local cultures. Through rich imagery, he highlights the deep bond between the artist and their medium, as well as the collaborative nature of jazz performance. The poem also touches upon the influence of civil rights, showcasing how music served as a response to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.
As the poem progresses, Harper delves into the challenges faced by artists, capturing the intensity of Coltrane's creative journey and his dedication to his craft. Ultimately, the work encapsulates a message of love and unity, echoing Coltrane's famous composition "A LOVE SUPREME," which stands as a testament to the enduring impact of artistic expression on the human spirit. Overall, "Peace on Earth" is a reflective homage to the role of art in fostering peace and understanding within the human community.
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Subject Terms
Peace on Earth by Michael S. Harper
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1985 (collected in Healing Song for the Inner Ear, 1985)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
The last poem from Harper’s collection Healing Song for the Inner Ear, “Peace on Earth” concludes a triad in which Harper moves beyond his previous addresses to and descriptions of jazz giants to enter the mind and soul of John Coltrane. Using a structure of separate image clusters produced by groupings of two and three lines, Harper not only recapitulates the highlights of Coltrane’s life and work but also maintains a correspondence between the music and his own poetry, finding parallels between Coltrane’s compositions and many of his own efforts.
Like the melodic motifs of a jazz composition, the twin themes of the sublime, transformative force of artistic inspiration fused with the idea of an artist’s responsibility to the cultural legacy of his community are interwoven throughout the poem. The poem begins with an image of spiritual transcendence, as the speaker declares that moments of inspiration are closely connected to an attitude of religious reverence. “Tunes come to me at morning/ prayer,” he says, extending the thought to include the nature of an individual’s obligation to human decency by recalling how he “prayed at the shrine/ for the war dead broken/ at Nagasaki.” This reference carries the poem beyond a specific local culture to an international linkage of human beings. The immediacy of his personal response, “the tears on the lip of my soprano/ glistened in the sun,” establishes a close identification between the artist and his instrument, or the poet and his use of language.
After setting the conditions of the meditation, the artist mentions that “In interviews/ I talked about my music’s/ voice of praise to our oneness,” stressing the commonality of human experience, and by inference, the solidarity of a specific cultural community. The poem focuses on the forces of creation and their effect on the creator. Speaking in awe of the power surging through the process of artistic expression, the speaker mentions “cymbals driving me into ecstacies on my knees.” He describes his collaborator, “the demonic angel, Elvin/ answering my prayers on African drum,” contributing to a partnership that echoes the call-and-response connection between a chorus leader and chorus. This idea is extended further in the way in which the musicians responded to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., in their music, as “we chanted his words/ on the mountain, where the golden chalice/ came in our darkness.”
The latter sections of the poem move deeper into the artist’s consciousness. Driven by an instinctive vision, he recalls that he “pursued the songless sound/ of embouchures on Parisian thoroughfares,” realizing that no other experience could match the sense of illumination of creative effort: “no high as intense as possessions/ given up in practice.” The wrenching, unsettling difficulties of the demands the musician placed on himself are expressed in his admission that he worked “without deliverance/ the light always coming at 4 a.m.” Yet he knows that he had no alternative—“how could I do otherwise”—as he was involved in a much larger motion, “my playing for the ancestors.” The ultimate justification for his work, his life, is expressed in one of Harper’s favorite phrases, the name again of the Coltrane composition that is at the heart of all worthwhile human activity: “A LOVE SUPREME.”
Bibliography
Brown, Joseph A. “Their Long Scars Touch Ours: A Reflection on the Poetry of Michael Harper.” Callaloo, no. 26 (Winter, 1986): 209-220.
Cooke, Michael G. Afro-American Literature in the Twentieth Century: The Achievement of Intimacy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984.
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.
Henderson, Stephen, ed. Understanding the New Black Poetry. New York: William Morrow, 1973.
Lerner, Ben. ToCutIstoHeal. Providence, R.I.: Paradigm Press, 2000.
Mills, Ralph J. Cry of the Human: Essays on Contemporary American Poetry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974.
Moyers, Bill. “Michael S. Harper.” In The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets, edited by James Haba. New York: Doubleday, 1995.
O’Brien, John, ed. “Michael Harper.” In Interviews with Black Writers. New York: Liveright, 1973.
Rowell, Charles H., ed. “Michael S. Harper, American Poet: A Special Section.” Callaloo 13, no. 4 (Autumn, 1990): 748-829.
Stepto, Robert B. “After Modernism, After Hibernation: Michael Harper, Robert Hayden, and Jay Wright.” In Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature, Art, and Scholarship, edited by Michael S. Harper and Robert B. Stepto. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979.