At the Lincoln Gardens in Chicago with Roy Fisher

or rather in its empty space, 

time, the city’s relentless undoing, 

here, then,  the Twenties recalled – 

King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, 

Armstrong, Jimmy Noone, Bill Johnson –  

there just past the broken sidewalk 

spikeweeds like table lamps 

and leaning in Gene Krupa,

Benny Goodman, Bud Freeman, 

Jimmy McPartland and Joe Sullivan; 

this was the prospect in sound  

they came to, 31st Street, white teenaged  

sons of European immigrants;  

co-option, my friend Pope, called it, 

Sullivan tracing Lil Hardin’s fingerings 

against his thigh, Goodman breathing 

with Noone, McPartland with Armstrong, 

what they gathered in and carried away, 

footfall and stride, New Orleans angled, 

inflected by Chicago, taken up, then 

passed around, phrased, rephrased, 

New York, Paris, London, Birmingham, 

each hand, each breath making its own 

way out of what was first heard here; 

in music, once known, like arc light 

searing the retina, is known forever

Poem first published In Time (MadHat, 2024).

Michael Anania was born in Omaha, Nebraska but spent much of his life in Chicago.  His recent books of poetry include Continuous Showings (2017), Nightsongs and Clamors (2018),and In Time (2024). From the Word to the Place, a collection of essays on his work, was published in 2021.

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