No piano playing, no blues please;
No moaning and groaning;
Just lay me on the table, mash me
Into my two-hundred-dollar suit,
Red socks, black patent leather shoes,
Polka-dot tie (make damn sure it’s silk—
And dont forget it!)
Knight’s poems generally tend to be of the narrative variety. That is to say that they feature distinct characters in recognizable settings revealing a little slice of the human condition, usually a little slice below the poverty line. Those who stray away from poetry that is merely a collection of literary devices---metaphor, allusions, imagery, etc.—which speaks to some vague and mystery theme rather than telling a story will find Knight’s poems much more accessible. Not a whole lot of detail is provided about who Slick is or what his life was like, but one can nevertheless get to know the man by virtue of what he wishes to eschew from the ceremonial commemoration of his death. In addition to no blues, he rejects the idea of a preacher in favor of a trumpeter and his ultimate fantasy is to be buried in his pink Caddie, propped up behind the steering wheel so he can drive to hell in style.
Making jazz swing in
Seventeen syllables AIN’T
No square poet’s job.
Count the syllables in the poem. Or, if you already are familiar with a haiku, nod knowing. This is a haiku about making jazz swing in a haiku, the popular poetic form requiring no more and no less than seventeen syllables rigidly constructed per line. The speaker is saying he himself ain’t a square, Clyde; collar the jive with hep cat because he’s on the trolley, man. He is making jazz out of poetry; lyrics without music.
Once upon a today and yesterday and nevermore there were 7 men and women all locked / up in prison cells. Now these 7 men and women were innocent of any crimes; they were in prison because their skins were black. Day after day, the prisoners paced their cells, pining for their freedom. And the non-black jailers would laugh at the prisoners and beat them with sticks and throw their food on the floor.
Notice that “Last Words by `Slick’” is a monologue consisting entirely of Slick speaking. The poem above is a haiku about how it isn’t easy to write a haiku that replicates the rhythms of jazz. And here we have a poem given the title of one of the oldest forms of prose in the history of literature and what does the poem look like? A paragraph written in prose. What has been demonstrated with these selections of quotes is that Knight is a poet who is clearly quite interested in the concept of matching content with form.
The manifestation of this interest is also revealed in the various ways that Knight attempts to create a mood or tone or atmosphere in his verse which reflects the social circumstances. He will experiment with punctuation lapses, dialogues, asides, interior expressions of thought as a means of putting the reader inside the head of the circumstances of his characters. An excellent example, it just so happens, occurs at the end of this very poem in which the final two lines are constructed as the expected moral with which a fable always concludes. That moral is conveyed with the repetition and vernacular speaking directly to the prison experience.
