Poems by Quincy Troupe
Quincy Troupe launches a pyrotechnic display of jazz rhythms, political commentary, sports tributes, travelogues, and architectural abstracts in his latest volume of poetry, Choruses. Merging traditional poetic form with contemporary content, Troupe fashions words & sounds that build bridges toward a new tongue as he writes in Song, an ars poetica. Only Troupe could write a sestina chronicling the mass suicide of Heavens Gate, or a villanelle for Michael Jordan: rising up in time, michael jordan hangs like an ikon, suspended in space / / his eyes two radar screens screwed like nails into the mask of his face. A masterful technician, Troupe experiments with free verse as well, repeating the same words in three different line-break configurations in Images: Three Variations of Shape & Form. From haiku to tanka, from Mark McGwire to Sammy Sosa, from bebop to hip hop, these choruses become sound tracks lifted off a poets tongue, / / syllables, within momen! ts, are transformed into song. . . .
With oracular power and the boldness of jazz improvisation, these poems by the acclaimed biographer of Miles Davis celebrate modern African American life without shying away from sharp critiques of social injustice. Where ahead-of-the curve ideas and canonical form intersect, there you will find our best modern-day troubadour, Quincy Troupe.
