Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY SUNDAY MAGAZINE Februdry 13, 1917 February 1,3, 1977 Poge Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY 5UNDAY-MAGAZINE Februdry 13, 1977 Februory 1,3, -1977- THE MICHIGANDAILY SUNDAY MAGAZINE THE MICHIGAN DAILY SUNDAY MAGAZINE Ii Warren s varied verse, Steven's flat biography SELECTED POEMS 1923-1975 by Robert Penn Warren Random House, 325 pages, $15.00 SOUVENIRS AND PROPHECIES: THE YOUNG WALLACE STEVENS by Holly Stevens Alfred Knopf, 288 pages, $12.50- By MARNIE HEYN COMMON WISDOM HOLDS that Robert Penn Warren was once, long ago, an adequate writer, a recently declined self-elected poet who fared better as a novelist. In short, dismissable. And although Yeats, Dickinson, and Donne needn't fear for their reputations, this volume indicates that the common esti- mate is all wrong, and that Warren is a poet whose writing is improving with his age. It is to our benefit that he is still pro- ducing and publishing. Apropos of publishing, I wonder whether Random House plans to pump out selected or collected editions of "name" poets every eight or ten years. This is the third selection of Warren's work (the last was in 1966) and it, like its predecessors, is essentially additive--that is, it's not new,merely larger. Readers are, in fact, paying fifteen dollars for only ten new poems: pretty steep. It would seem to make more sense for Warren and Random House to issue individual volumes of new verse, and -save up material for a big, posthumous, selected tome-unless some ulterior motive is at work. SELECTED POEMS shows that Warren's curious imagina- tife weakness is so bound up with his most pronounced strength as to be inextricable. The formulation would run something like this: despite his declared interest in religion, metaphysics and history, Warren is still bound by place, time and culture. His inability to extract himself from his own homey space is exem- plified by "Pad Year, Bad War: A New Year's Card, 1969," an especially gruesome little ditty which concludes Dear God, we pray To be restored to that purity of heart That sactifies the shedding of blood. t-N THE OTHER hand, Warren's peculiar sense of immanence is poignant and persuasive, as in this passage from "A Way to Love God": I do not recall what had burdened my tongue, but urge you To think on the slug's white belly, how sick-slick and soft, On the hairiness of star, silver, silver, while the silence Blows like wind ... "Ballad of Mister Dutcher and the Last Lynching in Gupton". demonstrates that Warren's work with prose has granted him a talent for narrative verse, and for evoking mood using very sparse imagery. One hot afternoon in Hoptown, some fool nigger, wall-eyed drunk and with a four-bit hand-gun,-tried to stick up a liquor store, shot the clerk, and, still broke, grabbed a freight, and was high- tailing for Gupton, in happy ignorance that the telephone had ever been invented. So when they flagged down the freight, the fool nigger made one more mistake, up and drilled one of the posse. That was that, and in five minutes he was on his way to the county seat, the constable driving, but mighty slow, while back there in Gupton, in the hardware store, a business transaction concerning rope was in due process. "Homage to Theodore Dreiser" weaves together the easy sentimentalism of popular ballads, while "Where Purples Now See WARREN'S, Page 8 - -- ---- - - Marnie Heyn is a graduate student in English and a regular contri- butor to the Daily's Editorial Page and Magazine. - -f Msings presents his d music- with a touch o By STEPHEN HERSH Pholo b, PAUI[NE LUBENS WHEN OHARLES MINGUS lumbered up onto the stage of the Union Ballroom with his ensemble of jazz musicians in tow, getting ready to start the Saturday afternoon public rehearsal, an announcer stepped up to the microphone and explained, "Mingus is going to teach the band a tune called, 'Better Get It In Your Soul'." "Wait a minute," Mingis objected. "The composition is called, 'Better Get Hit In Your Soul'." Mingus was just needling the announcer-the word really is "It,"' not "Hit." But the remark seems tame compared to some of the thing's Mingus said on stage Friday night. That evening he punctuated his performance by snapping angrily at saxophonist Ricky Ford, who -had flubbed a passage by leaving out a phrase. "Stupid," Mingus snarled. "Don't stop now, motherfucker." It can be quite hard to adjust to the contrast between Mingus's gruff stage presence and his melodies. But it's precisely his hard-ass, critical personality which begets that delicate yet highly-charged music. Pianist Bob Neloms, who joined the band and put himself under Mingus's command only a few weeks ago, insists that if Mingus sometimes has a harsh manner, the reason for it is simple and justified. "The man writes music," Neloms remarked, "and he wants it played the way he wrote it." Whatever else can be said about Mingus, it can't be denied tlgat he does his job-he gets his music played the way he wrote it. A ND THE MUSIC Mingus makes is a treasure of American culture. He's been at it for several dozen years, and the concerts he's played, the records he's pressed and the compositions he's penned during those years represent some of the most engaging, moving and technically advanced music of our time. It's not very popular music-acoustic jazz doesn't earn a hell of a lot of money. That's something Mingus is obviously bitter about: he told the audience at his Saturday rehearsal:' "You don't have to buy my records, you can just take them off the shelf at the store and listen to them there. It seems like that's what people do." But Mingus has never reshaped his music to try to make it more marketable-you can tell that by studying the records he's produced over the years. He has faithfully developed the jazz tradi- tion from which he emerged, branching out at various times with various sorts of innovations, on occasion moving in the direction of neo-classicism, more often expanding familiar jazz formats. The music is usually complicated-and judging from the stream of cri- tical remarks Mingus made during the four concerts and the re- hearsal, it's a struggle for some musicians to learn to play it in a way that satisfies-him. But the -musicians do eventually learn their lessons. The concerts here went off practically without a hitch, despite the absence of the group's drummer, Danny Richmond, who couldn't make it to Ann Arbor. Even without a drum beat to cement the sound together, the music was as disciplined as that of any Mingus session. It worked so well that Mingus even flashed a rare simle or two at the musicians. 'What's more, the drummer's absence gave Mingus the oppor- tunity to perform some theatrics on stage. At a point in one set where a drum solo was called for in "Better Get It In Your Soul," he marked off the time with a scat-singing imitation of a drum solo, failing his arms in the air while clutching an imaginary pair of drumsticks, beating out occasional notes on his bass and kicking wildly in the air. At the concerts the scat-singng was barely audible, but during the rehearsal it was a high point, lending charm to the numbers and evoking memories of the old days when jazz scat- singing was in its heyday. The scat-singing brought home the fact that Mingus's music takes its style--not its harmonies or form but its general style-from the jazz of earlier times, the jazz of the be-bop era and the Duke Elling- ton era. Mingus's music is different but not radically different from that older jazz, and so it's not the kind of music that sells well these days. BUT MINGUS INSISTS that his style is substantially different from the style of the music he used to make when he played with Charlie Parker ,and Duke Ellington. In an interview after his last concert, he declared that he's not a conservative musician. "My harmony is not conservative," he said. I suggested that his arrangements are quite similar to the older jazz. "The lines are not conservative," he retorted. "Charlie Parker played 32-bar songs and 12-bar songs. I don't have any set bars in my songs. I always have different bar lines." But when I persisted, saying that the flavor and general form of his music seems to have remained static throughout most of his career, he asked, "What form? If the bars aren't the same, then the form can't be the same." But after the afternoon rehearsal, folding chair and relaxed for a fe the audience. Mingus is a very lar is getting slightly long, is tinged w his forehead. He was wearing a gri jacket, which made him look som He wore a kind of bemused ex began to shout their questions. I were somewhat pointless, but he asked him to name some of his fa mentioned Stravinsky, Rebussy a strongest praise for another musica " LIKE THAT COLORED compos ven. I don't like his arrangem I like his string quartets best." As to tips on composing, Mingu who plays the saxophone, and he playing the saxophone he's whistii sometimes - you've got to get y you can get onto something new. B I was always whistling, too, or w ming. Composing isn't any differ Another spectator asked if M cians who have played for him in Dolphy, the masterful saxophonist who played with Mingus frequentl school together. Mingus protested day's musicians, but suggested, n jazz greats would be better directe Charlie Parker. "Charlie Parker used to play choruses," Mingus recalled. "If he do today, they'd still be home prac wouldn't dare get close to the mi mike. To just hear the bigness of t- thought he was seven feet tall an "That stuff he played isn't eas yourself." MINGUS SEEMED IMPATIENT stage Saturday afternoon. By t mood seemed a little more impati the ensemble would be playing witl took the stage he shot back that a sence wasn't necessary. "If we wouldn't be here," he said. By The end of the second sho started the day with had pretty m that show that he consented, to an i ile rooms upstairs from the Union chair, looking tired. He briefly ans the meanings behind some of his revealing. When my questions started to his music or toward his creative asked what the process of writing asked why I wanted to know. With "If I'm on the toilet and there's peeing and I whistle, I whistle a tt and I play a concert there, and th write. Either that or I don't write By this time Mingus sounded v too kindly to my next question. I a niscences about the days when he and how his feelings about the m his feelings about the music he usi he didn't want to discuss his feeling "A critic is supposed to be a p sit down and analyze an event and "That's the critic's job. He doser Kong, did you like that white girl girl in your arms-can you feel h Why should I do that for you? Yoi of question. "You know what I did," he w derisively. "We played four concert drums, and that's a miracle in itse ,ne these docksucker questions. Gel you need to know?" That cut the interview short, Mingus doesn't seem to like answering questions about his music. Stephen Hersh is a former Dail;