Reading Response: "Slugs in the far East"

          In “Slugs in the Far East”, David Henderson, a writer and poet of the book Low East, uses certain poetic techniques that are similar to his other poems in the handout. Some of these are included: sound, theme, structure and vocabulary words. All of these poems have a similar main theme that involves musicians, instruments, and more specifically “Jazz”. All of the poems are linked to Jazz in various perspectives by certain words such as the words drunk or drinking, black face, Forty acres and a mule, south, black music, miles, birds, bass, and many more. Even though the poem “Slungs in the Far East” did not have a lot of sound compared to other poems, it did have rhythms, beats, and emotions like the others. As for the structure, the poems “Lee Morgan” and “Poem for Painters” have the same poetic structure with “Slungs in the Far East” which is uses stanzas. For vocabulary words, Henderson tends to uses words that illustrate imagery and emotions. Some of his words are simple with deep meaning while other words require translations in order to understand its meaning. In my opinion, “Slugs in the Far East”, has a few sounds that can be observed. This poem has rhythm because every line has a beat in them. This poem also has the words that rhyme with each other such as place from line 2 and bass from line 4. For overall musicality, the tone and emotions of this poem is portrayed as reminiscing about the past, cheerful, and yet depressing. Henderson structures his poem with stanzas. The effect of using stanzas as a structure is that it makes the poem easier to read and understand. Stanza also illustrates the completion of the poem that shared the same topic. Henderson also uses simile in his poem as he states, “showed up looking like a stevedore” (9).

           “Slugs in the Far East” is a poem that portrays the situation in a Jazz club. The setting is implied from the title itself. Slug in the Far East is referred to a popular jazz club, Slug’s Saloon. This club attracted regular jazz performances in the lower east side of Manhattan during the 1960s-1970s. The beginning of the poem gives an image of an enthusiastic person walking down the club like a jazz bass prodigy. In the club, one can see that people were dressed up for the events as the poet described as “fashionable gentlemen of the lean years” (7). Henderson uses allusion when the line states, “a young boy played with miles and bird” (8). The young boy, who dresses like a stevedore, was playing music with two famous American jazz musicians such as Charles Parker or bird, who was a jazz saxophonist, and Miles Davis or miles, a jazz musician specialist in trumpeter. They were playing music beautifully as the melody line was ‘intertwining’ together. Sometime in the club, they will always have illegal things such as drugs and smoke. The poem states: “many rpms above smoke (or coke) / in a new age” (11-12). The readers can imagine a scene where the music was playing while people were using tobacco and cocaine. Even though everyone was having a good time with music and other activities, one can feel the tone of reminiscing about the past as the poem states: “ancient melodies haunt vacant/ night spots” (13-14). These ancient melodies can referred to the development of melodies in the Afro-American music that mentioned in Amiri Baraka’s book Blues people.

           I think jazz is an important topic to Henderson because his works mostly involved with jazz music and musicians. He also performs on jazz recording. Since David Henderson is an American with African descended, jazz can be used as a symbol since it is a popular music genre that has been developed from the African and European music. This poem also portrays the social and philosophical implication in the Jazz world. The poem illustrates that there was no segregation happening in the Jazz club in terms of age and appearance. There was no segregation between two famous jazz musicians and the young boy because they were shown playing music together. Even though most people were dressing up for jazz events, there was this young boy who showed up with stevedore look which did not match with the event. However, they were still having fun together. These examples illustrated the union in the Jazz world. The idea in this poem is about remember our roots. I feel like Henderson wants to teach us that it doesn’t matter where you go. You have to remember where you came from and feel proud of your roots. When I read this poem, the last two lines reminded me of Baraka’s book that portrayed the origins of jazz which came from the development of Afro-American music. These music included work songs, religion song and the Blues. I believe that the sound, structure, and topic are important as it is work together to keep readers in the right position on the topic and help them to understand more about the texts and its ideas.