Lyrical Miracle: Homage to the Great American Songbook

By Kirpal Gordon

Lyrical Miracle: Homage to the Great American Songbook celebrates the Great American Songbook as our boldest ambassador on the road to freedom, a 32-bar Bill of Rights lyrical miracle, an e pluribus unum forging individual genius in collective improvisation. Inspired by Walt Whitman’s barbaric yawp and his Democratic Vista, Kirpal Gordon draws on 48 of America’s most enduring jazz, pop, rock and blues classics to weave his long-lined prose poetry into their song forms so that they fit exactly into the time and tempo of the tune. “A poet with unstoppable chops, Kirpal Gordon is a spewer of jewels with the baddest ear in the hemisphere and an unbelievably well-hung mother tongue.... His voice is wed to the energy of a singly hearted ensemble,” Mikhail Horowitz, The Blues of the Birth. “His work swings with around-the-corner wit, but also with real gravitas, with a ludicrous tragic craziness that’s at once wild and frighteningly familiar. He chooses tunes that are sweet and heartfelt but also elegant and formally graceful—his voice levitating rich and smooth and right on the rhythm. I’ve never heard the marriage of music and the spoken word done with greater harmony,” William Seaton, director, Poetry on the Loose. “Hearing Gordon’s poetry with his jazz band at Sweet Rhythm is like seeing Salvador Dali’s paintings: he’s a shape shifter of the first order,” Lara Pellegrinelli, National Public Radio. “Precise of word and rhyme and ready of wit, his pairing poems with pearls of jazz and his erudition in world lit (licks from Eliot, Yeats and the Upanishads flit by like Dexter Gordon’s quotes) add further dimensions to his verbal inventions; at poetic peak he’s internally rhyming, eternally scheming, keeping this hot band dancing on the point of Cleopatra’s needle,” Fred Boucher, All About Jazz. “The only lyricist I know who can recite free verse so that the bridge of the tune has relevance to his recitation, Kirpal Gordon differs from most jazz poetry in two unique and wonderful ways: his ear is tuned to the jazz vocal tradition and his musicians interpret a repertoire that incorporates bop, swing, pop and classical standards with a musical freshness that corresponds to the vigor of his language,” Vernon Frazer, Soundzine. “Having graced our stage many times with his spoken word collaborations, we call Kirpal Gordon our poet laureate at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola,” Todd Barkin, proprietor, Dizzy's, Jazz at Lincoln Center.“If you think the notion of mixing jazz and poetry is hopelessly old-fashioned, let his swinging scansion and vivid imagery relieve you of that perception. Gordon swings,” Steve Smith, Time Out New York. “Kirpal Gordon is one of my very favorite spoken word performers, not just in New York City but anywhere. His work is wise and jazzy and poised and fun, and whether alone or accompanied, he never fails to bring it on stage in a manner that few can even approach,” George Wallace, editor, Poetry Bay.“Lotsa people go at it, but it’s Kirpal G who IS it—the Real Deal, the Chilly Willy, the Absolute Rootin’ Tootin’est Poet Qua Non—like the rain out of the blue. When my life is through and the angels ask me to recall the thrill of them all, I will tell them I remember Kirpal!” Bob Holman, proprietor, Bowery Poetry Club.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kirpal Gordon
• Release date: Jun 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005082048

Book preview

Lyrical Miracle:

Homage to the Great American Songbook

Also by Kirpal Gordon

Novels & Collected Works

Go Ride the Music (novel), Giant Steps Press

New York at Twilight: Selected Tales of Gotham’s Weird & Eerie (stories), Giant Steps Press

Round Earth, Open Sky (novel), Giant Steps Press

Dear Empire State Building (stories), Heaven Bone Press

A Further Being (stories), Pegasus Press

Eros in Sanskrit (prose poems), Leaping Dog Press

Speak-Spake-Spoke (spoken word CD with the Clare Daly Band), LDP Media

Booklets & Limited Editions

Hoo-Doo Mudras (fiction), Obscure Publications

Ghost in the Gone Realms (fiction), Obscure Publications

Against the Grain (non-fiction), Obscure Publications

Swingin’ (fiction), Obscure Publications

Traces of Love (novel excerpt), Obscure Publications

Round Earth, Open Sky (novel excerpt), Obscure Publications

Jazz Tales from the Ghost Realms (fiction), Obscure Publications

X Country: A Jazz/Poetry USA Tour (non-fiction), Leaping Dog Press

What We Got Against Tyranny (performance texts), Leaping Dog Press

Don’t Tread on Me (non-fiction), Unicorn Press

Because the Jewel Is in the Lotus (poems), Pegasus Press

Deadpan Parables (fiction), Scopcraeft Press

Down with the Move (poems), Heaven Bone Press

Pedestrian Love Songs (poems), Castillo Cultural Press

This Ain’t No Ball Game (performance texts), Armory Plays

Letter in Lady Day Spring Tones (performance text), Mockersatz Pamphlets

Kirpal Gordon

Lyrical Miracle:

Homage to the Great American Songbook

https://giantstepspress.blogspot.com

Copyright 2020 by

Kirpal Gordon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means or in any form whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in literary articles or reviews.

Some of these works appeared in print or online in these magazines: Amelia, Big Bridge, Big Scream, Central Park, Collages and Bricolages, Creeping Bent, Dog River Review, Gypsy, Heaven Bone, Hunger, Longhouse, Longolalia, Mad Blood, Napalm Health Spa, Poem Beat, Polarity, raccoon, Unlikely Stories & Wawayanda Review; these anthologies: American Yoga (Barnes & Noble, 2003), From Water, Came Love: Poems for Tsunami Relief (Foothills Press, 2005), Lines During War (Heaven Bone Press, 1991), Post-Beat American Poets (Hebei Press, Shijiazhuang, China, 2006), Slam the Body Politic (Synaptic Graffiti Multimedia Collective, Australia, 2004) & Will Work for Peace (Zeropanik Press, 1999); these books: Eros in Sanskrit (Leaping Dog Press, 2007), Go Ride the Music (Giant Steps Press, 2014), New York at Twilight (Giant Steps Press, 2013), Round Earth, Open Sky (Giant Steps Press, 2011); these CDs & tape cassettes: Heaven Help Us All (Daly Bread Records, 2004), Speak-Spake-Spoke (Kirpal Gordon & Claire Daly Band, LDP Media, 2007); Voices from Prison (Castillo Cultural Center, 1990); and these limited editions: Because the Jewel Is in the Lotus (Pegasus Press, 1996), Deadpan Parables (Scopcraeft Press, 1994), Down with the Move (Heaven Bone Press, 1993), Ghost in the Gone Realms (Obscure Publications, 2009), Hoo-Doo Mudras (Obscure Publications, 2007), Jazz Tales from the Ghost Realms (Obscure Publications, 2001), Letter in Lady Day Spring Tones (Mockersatz, 1986), Swingin’ (Obscure Publications, 2003), What We Got against Tyranny (Leaping Dog Press, 2004), X Country: A Jazz Poetry USA Tour (Leaping Dog Press, 2005).

Gordon, Kirpal, 1952-

Lyrical Miracle:

Homage to the Great American Songbook

ISBN-13: 9781540359209

Printed in The United States of America.

Cover design by JT Milstead

www.johnmillstead.com

Front cover photo & author photo by Paula Siwek

www.PaulaSiwek.com

Formatting and Technical Consultancy

Steven Hirsch

([e-mail])

Emily Rivera

https://emilyrivera846220394.wordpress.com/

First Edition

Giant Steps Press

Freeport, NY

Table of Contents

Three Versions of a Preface

I: Circle Seams

The Mission of Tradition/ Theme for the Eulipions

Tree, Mend Us/ You Go to My Head

Rubaiyat Melodic/ So What

Create Me, Baby, Shout/ Song of India

Origins in the Key of Sea/ Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most

Coitus Turns the Curved World inside out/ For All We Know

Appearances/ Serenade to a Cuckoo

Nothingness/ Dedicated to You

What the Ancient Ones Say/ Simone

Astral Cocktails Molotov/ You Make Me Feel So Young

From a Line by Sappho/ ’Round Midnight

The Magic a Circle Seams/ Lasting Love

II: Praise Shouts

If Bird Lives/ I Got Rhythm

Antidote to Armegeddon/ Cisco Kid

Puberty/Colonialism/Spring/ Young at Heart

Dude Called You a Lady/ Goodbye Porkpie Hat

Actin’ Naturally/ Standing on a Corner

A Word’s Worth/ I Feel Good

Be at/ Ijinna

From Mary Joyce’s Journals: A Pile of Ashes/ Lonely Wilderness

The Cryin’ Plea of Stanley Kowalski/ Stella by Starlight

A Malevolent Bling Bling/ Old Devil Moon

Adios, Mijo/ Satin Doll

III: Blues Many Hued

Trace the DNA/ Afro Blue

11:11/ Equinox

Grokkin’ Why It’s I-Yi-Yi/ The World Is a Ghetto

Call up the Ghost of Chano Pozo/ Evil Ways

Greasy’s How I Got Here/ Funk Underneath

Running Open April’s Veins/ My Little Brown Book

Out There without a Prayer/ The House of the Rising Sun

Go Flow the Tao, Old Lao/ It Don’t Mean a Thing

Lady Day Spring Tones/ Fine and Mellow

Regarding Paradise/ Theme from Walkabout

A Shape We Might Yet Be Born into/ Blue Rilke

IV: Tales in Performance

Go Ride the Music: An Excerpt/ Guinnevere

Ganga Runs the Voodoo Down/ God Bless the Child

All Blues

It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World

Basin Street Blues

Come Sunday/ In a Sentimental Mood

Daydream

Mood Indigo

Bloodcount

Upper Manhattan Medical Group

Tell Me It’s the Truth

Round Earth, Open Sky/ My Man’s Gone Now

Stranger in Paradise

Return to Me

Piano Prelude 2

In loving memory to my parents, George & Gertrude Gordon