It was in college during Intro To Poetry when I fell in love with Canary by Rita Dove.  And then Amiri Baraka’s Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note slapped me in the face with wonder.  And then it was basically all of Langston Hughes (duh).  Jazz and Harlem and brown girls and God damn it, I wanted it so bad.  The swagger and the motion, the deep melancholy and the unabashed celebration.  

So I went out and bought John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and it was magic.  And I started painting and drinking and wearing my hair like it didn’t matter and felt sexy for the first few times and got my first boyfriend we had sex ALL THE TIME and I dabbled in Miles Davis and then learned about the beats and that’s when Bukowski blew my fucking mind with that flower poem…  

My teacher was this great man with very long hippie hair and round John Lennon glasses and a non-stop smile, just like what you’d see in a movie, and I think he really took a liking to me.  Because the poetry was working.  He could see me growing bolder.  My mind was tickled with these ideas and the tone and the rhythm and all of it was so new and I felt like I was finally in on it.  I was in on the world.  I had it all figured out.

I was learning things.  Real, important things.  I was so happy.

***

My point is I’m revisiting Coltrane (the Complete Atlantic Recordings) and it feels like I’m on the precipice.  New words, new art, new ideas.  Let me figure it all out again.