Poet, performer, and editor Quincy Troupe was born July 22, 1939, in St Louis, Missouri. His books of poetry include Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2002); Choruses: Poems (1999); Avalanche: Poems (1996); Weather Reports: New and Selected Poems (1991); Skulls along the River (1984); Snake-Back Solos: Selected Poems 1969-1977 (1979), which received an American Book Award; and Embryo Poems, 1967-1971 (1974). He is also the author of Miles: The Autobiography (1989), which received an American Book Award; James Baldwin: The Legacy (1989); and the memoir, Miles and Me: A Memoir of Miles Davis (2000). Troupe edited the anthology Giant Talk: An Anthology of Third World Writing (1975) and is a founding editor of Confrontation: A Journal of Third World Literature and American Rag and the founding Editorial Director of Code.

In 1991, he received the Peabody Award for co-producing and writing the radio show The Miles Davis Radio Project. Among his honors and awards are fellowships from the National Foundation for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. He has taught at the University of California--San Diego, and Columbia University. He was the first official poet laureate of the state of California. Troupe lives with his wife, Margaret, in New York City.

Mother

For Dorothy Smith Marshall

when eye was growing up she used to sit in the bathroom, and & every

morning, smoking kool cigarettes, drinking hot coffee, reading newspapers,

a hard toilet seat caressing her derriere, reading glasses in place,

serious as cancer, the way her eyes devoured everything,

finished old newspapers stacked up high as her waistline when she stood

proud, erect, defiant, all of five feet two inches tall in high heel shoes, petite.

she was a pistol when she was young, eyes blazing, boring in

like bullets when her temper squeezed the trigger of her ire

hard, her rage angry scars she raised on me and my brother’s backs & legs.

dealt out with ironing cords that hissed through the air like whips, coiled snakes

about to strike, it was her mother’s influence (she was scared to death of her

mother – mama to me & my brother timmy –), who believed in retribution,

payback, fear, to the bitter end we watched mama slap mother around hard,

once or twice, for some perceived transgression, or indiscretion,

but we loved them both deeper than fear itself,

loved mother, mama too, because we knew we were a lot to handle -

my brother & me – born to do mischief in a neighborhood full of young thieves,

malcontents, murderers-to-be. You name it, they thrived & flourished there –

the good & straight we rejection out of hand as past tense, negro, square

as blocks we played with once until we wrapped hands around straight razors -

so she cracked the whip hard, raised welts on our backs & hardening butts,

legs & arms, kept fear alive in us, to keep us in line, & alive

she always had books around the house, introduced me to poetry & novels,

wanted to be a schoolteacher, raising me & my bother got in the way of that

& as she grew older she left a string of glassy-eyed suitors

in her wake, my father being the first who didn’t make it all the way

home, where her sweet perfume trailed through the air like flowers

blooming fresh in springtime, gardenias of lady day, sometimes

jasmine, or roses, it depended on her mood, but there was always something

about her that kept them coming back for more, time & again,

whatever she had bewitched them with, her charm, maybe,

that could be as dazzling as the smile flashing above her sensuous walk

that beckoned, her step so light she seemed to float through air, mariny-yellow

in skin tone, plum, cushiony lips, splashed bright red & full, smooth,

she called herself a part girl – though she was always much more than this,

the she was this, too – with a great sense of style. Dressed to kill cock-

robin, could press pedal to the metal out on the dance floor,

she caused head to swivel on necks like spinning tops,

whenever she passed, her fragrance tantalizing nostrils,

trailing behind her like a sweet-smelling invisible plume

she’s in her eighties now, still sits on the toilet stool each & every morning,

repeating the same ritual, only now she doesn’t smoke anymore,

everybody’s gone to the other side on her side of the family – mama,

her brothers garfield & allen, aunts & uncles, cousins, her daddy, mine too –

men her age still sniff behind her glassy-eyed, whenever she honors them

when she looks their way, still a fashion place, the best of her time, her smile

remains dazzling, her skill to squeeze copper from a penny, squirrel away

money – a survivor of the depression, she is tenacious – for rainy days,

she softer now, tells me she loves me every time we speak

over the telephone, tells me, with regret, she could have done better by me,

but that’s hogwash, because she did the best she could with what she had,

& that was more than enough to get us through all the madness,

she is still a pistol at 81, has all of her real teeth, too, has outlived all her

suitors except this last one, biff, who, she says, is slowing down at 79,

she still walks with a bounce in her stride, seems to still float across

& through the air, her eyes blazing bore in on you still like bullets

whenever she squeezes the trigger of her hot temper, ire

& eye love her more than eye could ever imagine,

love her far deeper than fear itself

Poem For My Father

for Quincy Troupe, Sr.

father, it was an honor to be there, in the dugout

with you, the glory of great black men swinging their lives

as bats, at tiny white balls

burning in at unbelievable speeds, riding up & in & out

a curve breaking down wicked, like a ball falling off a table

moving away, snaking down, screwing its stitched magic

into chitlin circuit air, its comma seams spinning

again toward breakdown, dipping, like a hipster

bebopping a knee-dip stride in the charlie parker forties

wrist curling like a swan's neck

behind a "slick" black back

cupping an invisible ball of dreams

& you there father, regal as an african obeah man

sculpted out of wood from a sacred tree of no name no place origin

thick branches branching down into cherokee & someplace else lost

way back in africa, the sap running dry

crossing from north carolina into georgia, inside grandmother mary's

womb, where your mother had you in the violence of that red soil

ink blotter news gone now into blood graves

of american blues sponging rococo

truth long gone as dinosaurs

the agent-oranged landscape of former names

absent of african polysyllables, dry husk consonants there

now in their place, names flat as polluted rivers

& that guitar string smile always snaking across

virulent american redneck faces

scorching, like atomic heat mushrooming over nagasaki

& hiroshima, the fever blistered shadows of it all

inked as etchings into sizzling concrete

but you there father through it all, a yardbird solo

riffin on bat & ball glory, breaking down the fabricated myths

of white major league legends, of who was better than who

beating them at their own crap

game with killer bats, as bud powell swung his silence into beauty

of a josh gibson home run skittering across piano keys of bleachers

shattering all manufactured legends up there in lights

struck out white knights on the risky edge of amazement

awe, the miraculous truth sluicing through

steeped & disguised in the blues

confluencing, like the point at the cross

when a fastball hides itself in a curve breaking

down & away in a wicked sly grin posed as an ass

scratching uncle tom, who like satchel paige

delivering his famed hesitation pitch before coming

back with a hard high fast one, is slicker, sliding

quicker than a professional hit man-

the deadliness of it all, the sudden strike

like that of the "brown bomber's" crossing right

of sugar ray robinson's lightning, cobra bite

& you there father through it all catching rhythms

of chono pozo balls drumming like conga beats into your catcher's mitt

hard & fast as "cool papa" bell jumping into bed

before the lights went out

of the old negro baseball league, a promise

a harbinger, of shock waves, soon come



& Syllables Grow Wings There

a blackboard in my mind holds words eye dream —

& blessed are the words that fly like birds into poetry —

& syllables attach wings to breath & fly away there

through music, my language springing round from where

a bright polished sound, burnished as a new copper penny

shines in the air like the quick, jabbing glint of a trumpet

lick flicking images through voices there pulsating like strobe lights

the partying dark understands, as heartbeats pumping rhythms hip-

hopping through footsteps, tick-tocking like clocks with stopgap

measures of caesuras breaking breath, like California earth-

quakes trying to shake enjambed fault lines of minimalls

freeways & houses off their backs, rocks being pushed up there

by edges of colliding plates, rivers sliding down through yawning

cracks, pooling underneath speech, where worlds collide & sound cuts

deep fissures into language underneath the earth, the mystery of it all

seeded within the voodoo magic of that secret place, at the center

of boiling sound & is where poetry springs from now

with its heat of eruption, carrying volcanic lava flows of word

sound cadences, a sluiced-up voice flowing into the poem's

mysterious tongue, like magic, or fingers of fire dancing,

gaseous stick figures curling off the sun's back

& is where music comes up from, too, to improvise

like choirs of birds in springtime, when the wind's breath

turns warm & their voices riff off sweet songs, a cappella