Origins Of A Published Poem For A Man I Never Met

It’s pretty sad whenever I hear of a local musician who has passed away, one I’ve had an encounter with that made an impact on my life and perhaps his, enough so that he would even consider publishing me.

Flashback---Spring 2004: While at Jazz Record Mart in downtown Chicago, I stumbled across a little free publication called Creativity. What I discovered even more to my delight was that it was local and they published poetry!

I did an initial search on the Internet to see if any information was available on the magazine, but alas there was none, save for just an email address and a telephone number.

I called the listed phone number and I got a generic answering machine, so I hung up. A few phone calls later, I finally got a hold of him. The publisher seemed kind of lax at the time, but no matter. He told me he was going to do an issue dedicated to the late great jazz drummer Elvin Jones. I told him I had some poems I could email him and perhaps he could pick out something from what I would send him. He said okay.

I emailed my work off to him and near a week or so later, I received a response. Not what he was looking for, he said. He wanted something that sang to him. Something that jumped out in front of a semi-tractor trailer at the last second to make the driver use his emergency brake fast!

I looked through my poems and other writings, until I found one that I had recently written about Al-Qaeda, yet it had all the elements for a good jazz poem. Now, how in the world did that happen? Beats me! I’m just guessing that the fury of their terrorism tactics and actions propelled me to write something, just as a good jazz song propels me forward to write, sing or perform something similar.

Creativity is the name of the game, though why he called his magazine that, I’ll never know because in my mind it was such a bland and boring title, far from the man who published the magazine himself.

I began reworking the poem, making changes, including the tile, which at that point had referenced Al-Qaeda. The new poem title became “Dad! You Swung So Hard! (For Elvin Jones)” and as many of you readers know, I’ve since published in this space twice and I’ve read it aloud to enthusiastic crowds whenever the mood has struck me to read it.

I emailed back the revamped poem to him and his email response was “reads real good."

Of course, editorial themes change throughout the course of a issue and this one was no exception, for by the time it came out, it made little mention of an issue being dedicated to the memory of nor too much mention of Elvin Jones, other than an old review of Jones at Yoshi's in Oakland, California, the year prior (2003) and a few photos of Jones.

He said he would publish it in the upcoming Fall 2004 issue, with plans of distribution at both the annual Chicago Jazz Festival at the Petrillo Band Shell in held against Chicago’s skyline and at the annual Washington Park Cultural Festival on the west side in the weeks that followed the Chicago Jazz Festival.

I was extremely pleased for getting all that free exposure, but would it possible for him to send me some copies of the magazine as I’d like some for my archives?

Asking him that question was like pulling impacted wisdom teeth! He expected me to come out where he was and had no intentions nor desire to drive or meet me halfway to give me copies, as he claimed he was on a tight budget and couldn’t afford the gas expense.

Hmmm, I thought. A popular jazz musician on a local record label (Delmark), with tour dates galore, several recorded albums aplenty and who knows what else, telling me he was on a tight shoestring budget when it came to his publication.

I thought about it for a few days and I came to the realization that the guy had set such high standards for everything else, but this and he probably didn’t care about the way his publication looked, just so long as it was published to his liking. And yes, the publication was just that; a little free no-name publication.

Yet, it was the magazine that I raved about much earlier in the year, the one that gave me such chest-shivering excitement early on and still the man caused so much misery for me and still managed to mess up my poem when it was actually published, calling it “a glitch” by the publisher…well, I just let it go and chalked it up to experience.

In late August of that year, I left for the west coast to perform at the second annual Sound Poetry Festival in Portland, Oregon & then onward to The Valley Of Golden Happiness to visit The Arizona Babe & Rex Pâtér Homo for a little rest and relaxation and afterwards, coming home, only to move out of the hellhole I lived in and moved to the present address where I am writing this blog from.

I did manage to get some copies after calling around local music shops for a few weeks and pleading with them to hold a few, as free is free by most standards and sometimes people just don’t care, kind of like the Creativity publisher.

This past Sunday, July 16th, the publisher passed away, but I didn’t hear about it until midweek Wednesday, as I was getting ready for work in the morning. A mere blip on the news radio station, that if you weren’t listening close enough, you never would have heard it.

I called my brother Benjy and of course he had read about him on the obituary page of the Chicago Sun-Times the day before. Figures, I told myself, always the last guy to find out.

According to all accounts, he left behind a wife, a son and a wealth of music.

Thanks for publishing me sir and giving me a shot. Thanks for all the misery you gave me too; it made me a better person in the long run.

Yeah right!

Malachi Thompson was 56.