Muñoz 1

Eduardo Muñoz

ENG 3840

23 Apr 2018

"Bird" is Charles

Charles "Bird" Parker was an influential American jazz saxophonist who led the

mid-1940s' Bebop movement—a form of jazz consisting of fast tempo, intricate chord

progressions, and improvisation based on harmony that was a response to the popularity of

Swing and Big Band. Parker was known for his heroin addiction, and when he passed in 1955, a

plethora of poets—including Bob Kaufman, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Michael Harper, and

others—paid tribute to Parker by writing "Bird" poems that circulated during the Beat

Generation and the Black Arts Movement. According to Sascha Feinstein, author of "Yusef

Komunyakaa's 'Testimony' and the Humanity of Charlie Parker," he believes that only a few of

these poems deserve a lengthy discussing, noting the following:

The vast majority of Parker homages rely on clichés, most obviously "Bird Lives!" but

also "Blow, Bird, blow!" as well as a host of dreadful ornithological metaphors …

equating him to Christ, Buddha, and other gods and saints. In verse, he was always Bird,

but rarely Charles. (Feinstein 757)

Michael S. Harper's cliché-titled poem, "'Bird Lives': Charles Parker in St. Louis," however,

humanizes Parker by representing his submission to heroin as a microcosm of oppression that is

inclusive of all people, while particularly focusing on the Black community through a literary

and musical tradition. The following paper will also attempt to address what Robert Parker, the

scholar, has expressed in regards to the scholarly work on Harper in that "too many reviews of
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Michael Harper's writing discuss[ing] his 'musical influences' and 'the oral tradition' while

neglecting the eclectic variety of literary and poetic traditions" (qtd. in Jones 68). Moreover,

Michael S. Harper has stated that the "individual connection one has with the history of one’s

people is only an aspect in a much larger connection with all people. There is always a

relationship between the particular experience and the more generalized application to mankind"

(qtd. in Walton 94). As such, he invites the reader to a discussion on the oppressed.

Lines 1-2

Harper writes the first two lines with a literary and musical approach that conveys an

overall tragic melody. He starts the poem with "Last on legs, last on sax, / last in Indian wars,

last on ​smack​," where we, as the reader, know that "last" refers to Parker because of the reference

to "sax" (short of saxophone) and "​smack​" (slang for heroin)―which one can imagine, knowing

the history of Charles Parker, as his defining characteristics (Harper 1-2). Each segment begins

with a variation of the phrase "on one's last legs," referring to a person near death, or in this case

Charles. As a result, Parker nearly dies in each part of these two lines, which emphasizes his

fragile state of being as succumbing to heroin—made evident by the remark "last on ​smack​."

With the repetition of the single syllable word "last," the speaker develops a form of

​ a new melodic variation over a preexisting structure—which creates two lines of

dactylic dimeter (a two-foot line of verse consisting of a stressed syllable followed by two

unstressed syllables) (Gross 214). In music terminology, the form of the couplet is in triplets, the

basic swing rhythm in jazz as shown below:

Figure 1: basic swing rhythm, courtesy of Guitar Noise (Hodge)

In the poem, the preexisting structure ("last on legs") is overwritten by the different melodic

variations ("last on sax," "last on ​smack​"), while the part "last on Indian wars" can be seen as a

form of improvisation (spontaneous composition)—a characteristic of jazz and more specifically,

the Bebop Movement of which Parker was a leading figure. Furthermore, the phrase "last in

Indian Wars," may allude to Posey's War, also known as "The Last Indian Uprising." In 1923,

fighting occurred in the San Juan County between Utah settlers and a mix of Ute and Paiute

Indians led by Posey—both of whom fought over limited resources because of the land

resettlement, forcing the Indigenous people to rely on white settlers for provisions (Brandon).

With this possible allusion, Harper reinforces the idea that Parker's subjugation is indicative of

the maltreatment of ethnic minorities, underlying the calamities committed by the oppressor on

the oppressed.

Lines 3-9

As lines 1-2 outline the lamentable theme of oppression, the next few lines indirectly

follow the same themes through a juxtaposition and an objective correlative. Line three rejects

the imagery of a dying man established in the previous lines and insists, "Bird is specious, Bird is

alive." In other words, the rejection of death and enunciation of life mimics the enduring spirit of

Parker and, by extension, vocalizes the tenacity of ethnic minorities like the Ute and Paiute

people. Harper wrote his poem 1972 when it is likely that the racial tensions of the 1967 Detroit
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Race Riots, the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the 1971 declaration of the

"War on Drugs" by then-President Richard Nixon had influenced Harper's writing. Another

interpretation of the third line can implicate the phrase "Bird is specious" as disavowing its

predicate "Bird is alive," which creates a different analysis that exemplifies the drug's effect on

the psyche. The fourth line portrays the drug’s invasive influence over Parker’s playing ability:

"horn, unplayable, before, after." The next lines further expound on his deteriorating agency:

"right now: it's heroin time: / ​smack,​ in the melody a trip; / ​smack​,​ ​in the Mississippi; / ​smack​,​ ​in

the drug merchant store; / ​smack​, in St. Louis, Missouri" (Harper 5-9). At first glance, the

repetition of "​smack"​ is indicative of obtaining heroin in different places, but because of the

anterior phrase "in the melody a trip," it is plausible that "​smack​" refers to its musical

connotations: "​smacking"​ the snare drum or, since Charles Parker is a saxophonist, "​smacking​"

the lips when playing a wind instrument. The word "​smack​" then, becomes an objective

correlative—"a set of object(s), a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that

particular emotion such that when the external facts … are given, the emotion is immediately

evoked”—especially when considering its denotation of striking someone as a form of

punishment (Olsen 31). Consequently, the wretched emotion evoked from "​smack​" identifies

with the history of violence within minority groups.

Lines 10-13

With the poem thus far, Harper has not portrayed Parker to be a hagiographic figure, but

a human being who has experienced subjugation. Lines 10-13 reads from a bystander's

perspective that exemplifies a type of prejudice: "We knew you were through— / trying to get

out of town, / unpaid bills, connections / unmet, unwanted, unasked." By using the pronouns
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"we" and "you," the phrase "we knew you were through," establishes a xenophobic dynamic,

where the collective "we" is against the outsider "you." These lines can refer to the judgement

against Parker’s heroin addiction, which affected his ability to perform and his reliability; the

lines can also pertain to racial, ethnic, and sexual discrimination—all of which Harper

recognized during the 1970s. Moreover, the alliteration in "unmet, unwanted, unasked,"

emphasizes the prefix "un," which (because of the poem's focus on oppression) suggests a

rhythm of muffled grunting, implying a suppressed pain on the body. Through the rhythm of

pain, the speaker recollects the origins of jazz, the African tradition of call-and-response—a style

of communicating that starts with a melody by one person and is answered by another

person—which originated during slavery as a means of intragroup communication that paced the

workload and provided a psychic relief from the debasement of captivity ("African-American

Music"). Having acknowledged the hardship with drug abuse, Harper indirectly relates Parker's

struggle to the struggle of slavery.

Lines 14-19

Although call-and-response was introduced in lines 6-9, the form is adopted in lines

14-19. The speaker finishes the second stanza with the following: "​Bird's ​in the last arc / of his

own light: ​blow Bird! /​ And you did— / screaming, screaming, baby, / for life, after it, around it,

/ screaming for life, ​blow Bird!​" (Harper 14-19). The line "of his own light: ​blow Bird!"​ contains

a call-and-response in that "of his own light" (the call) is succeeded by "​blow Bird!​" (the

response), a case made evident by the colon, which functions as a linkage between the two

phrases (Harper 15). This form of communication is also evident in line 19, "screaming for life,

blow Bird!"​ but notice the last words of the first clause "light" (15) and "life" (19), both of which
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are attributed to the fourteenth line, "​Bird's ​in the last arc"​ ​(Harper 14). Since an arc is a part of

the circumference of a circle, the phrase "in the last arc" presumes the trajectory of a full-circle

as nearly completion, and when combined with the rest of the phrase—the next line that is—"of

his own light," then the relationship between "arc," "light," and "life," becomes an interweaving

association with rebirth (since the connotations of "light" can include "white," "Heaven," and

"life"). By referencing "​Bird,​ " the commentary of rebirth extends to a phoenix—a mythological

creature known for its ability to reincarnate out of the ashes of its predecessor. Evidently, "​Bird"​

is the nickname for Charles Parker, thus becoming a phoenix near death, "​Bird's i​ n the last arc /

of his own light" (Harper 14-15). He is also a phoenix who undergoes a state of endless turmoil

because of his drug addiction: "And you did— / screaming, screaming, baby, / for life, after it,

around it, / screaming for life, ​blow Bird!​" where "blow" is slang for cocaine (Harper 17-19).

Harper imagines the addiction to be excruciating, where Parker is continuously enduring his pain

in a cyclical pattern.

Lines 20-25, 28-30

Harper begins his third stanza with an aside (an unheard comment directed toward the

audience), where the speaker directly addresses oppression and continues the call-and-response

communication. Although an aside is used exclusively in drama, the speaker's line of questioning

creates an almost out-of-body experience for the reader, "What is the meaning of music? / What

is the meaning of war? / What is the meaning of oppression?" (Harper 20-22). To clarify, the

positioning of these three lines appears untimely because of the questions' irrelevancy to Parker

specifically. However, by introducing these philosophical questions in the middle of the poem,

the poet is opening the discussion for the audience to consider the themes that he wishes to
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address. These questions as a whole are reminiscent of what the scholar Antony Walton poses in

his analysis of Harper's poem "Here Where Coltrane Is": "What is the country’s true legacy?

How is one—especially one who is so deeply ensnared in this legacy—to live with and in it?"

(Walton 86). Consequently, Harper reminds the reader to stay vigilant about how the question of

music, war, and oppression relate to one another, indirectly associating Parker's plight with the

subjugation of other minority groups. Lines 23-25 resume the call-and-response exchange, "​Blow

Bird! ​Ripped up and down / into the interior of life, the pain, / ​Bird​, the embraceable you,"

except the syntax is reversed in comparison to lines 15 and 19. The reversal marks another

example of ​contrafacting,​ where the same melodic structure of oppression ("Ripped up and

down / into the interior of life, the pain") is overwritten by a new melody ("​Blow Bird! ​/ … /

Bird, ​the embraceable you") with the inclusion of "embraceable you" and the capitalization of

"​Blow Bird!​" (Harper 23-24). He also builds a similar musical structure in lines 28-30: "the

hardest, longest penis / in the Mississippi urinal: / ​Blow Bird!"​ In these lines, the speaker alludes

to drug use in restrooms, where the repetitive phrase "​Blow Bird!​" personifies a direct command

at Parker to follow through with drug consumption.

Lines 26-27

Harper engages in the theme of oppression through a musical allusion within lines 26-27.

By writing, "how many brothers gone, / ​smacked ​out: blues and racism," he reintroduces the

word "​smacked​" as "​smacked o​ ut," which denotes a violent use of force in the past, referring to

its antecedent "how many brothers gone," specifically the subject "brothers." Parting ways with

its drug connotation, the speaker focuses on oppression, although he may be focusing on Black

oppression more precisely. The lines, "​smacked o​ ut: blues and racism," call to mind Louis
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Armstrong's rendition of Fats Waller's "Black and Blue," where Armstrong sings, "They laugh at

you, and scorn you too … My only sin is my skin / What did I do to be so black and blue?"

(Armstrong). The phrase "black and blue" can refer to the skin's discoloring by bruises, but

because of Parker’s race, the phrase can also call back to the unjust violence during slavery, the

Race Riots, and the Civil Rights Movement. In other words, Harper recognizes the history of

oppression for Blacks and the ongoing struggle of racial discrimination. Although the poet

inverts the phrase "blues and racism," he uses this inversion to introduce the different parts of

jazz history (since the blues genre led to the development of jazz), which is encountered through

the rest of the poem.

Lines 31-32

In the fourth stanza, Harper alludes to the oppression of musicians during the Bebop

Movement. He sets off the stanza with the following lines: "Taught more musicians, then forgot,

/ space loose, fouling the melodies," (Harper 31-32). The speaker is attentive to the history of

bebop when he writes, "Taught more musicians, then forgot" since Bebop had originated during

the 1942-44 recording ban by the American Federation of Musicians or AFM. James Petrillo,

president of AFM, had opposed recordings in radio or "canned music," which had replaced live

sessions among musicians, leading to unemployment (DeVaux 295). Since the Supreme Court

had recently declared that artists had no control over their recordings after the point of sale,

Petrillo had demanded that record companies pay a fixed fee from every recording to a union

fund for unemployed musicians (DeVaux 295). Because of this demand, Petrillo called for a ban

on new recordings, which lasted between 1942 and 1944. Consequently, the ban resulted in a

lack of recordings and a small audience for Bebop. To reiterate, the line "Taught more
 Muñoz 9

musicians, then forgot," refers to the history of Bebop, having an awareness of the economic

oppression of musicians. The next line, "space loose, fouling the melodies," pertains to the

development of Bebop. Scott Knowles DeVaux, a music professor at the University of Virginia

and author of "The Birth of Bebop," outlines the development of Bebop:

As the [Big Band] Swing Era inevitably cooled off, competition stiffened and the

underlying inequities of race were felt with renewed force. Entrenched patterns of

segregation, both in the music industry and in society at large, automatically gave white

musicians a nearly insuperable advantage in the mainstream market, blunting black

ambition and forcing it into new channels. Bebop was a response to this impasse, an

attempt to reconstitute jazz--or more precisely, the specialized idiom of the improvising

virtuoso--in such a way as to give its black creators the greatest professional autonomy

within the marketplace. ​(​DeVaux 27)

The speaker, then, recognizes that there was space for the Black musician to flourish (“space

loose,”), but the oppressive forces of a white-dominated jazz-market (“fouling the melodies”)

obstructed such an opportunity.

Lines 33-39

Harper alludes to the oppression in slavery and ends the stanza with the phrase "​Blow

Bird!​" The poet writes, "the marching songs, the fine white / geese from the plantations, / syrup

in this pork barrel" (Harper 33-35). The phrase "the fine white / geese" could refer to white slave

owners, who thrived on the exploitation of African-Americans for their plantations. This possible

reference to slave history is confirmed in the next line, "syrup in this pork barrel." The term
 Muñoz 10

"pork barrel" is believed to have originated during slavery, according to Chester Collins Maxey.

In a 1919 article written for the ​National Municipal Review​, he wrote the following:

On the southern plantations in slavery days, there was a custom of periodically

distributing rations of salt pork among slaves. As the pork was usually packed in large

barrels, the method of distributing was to knock the head out of the barrel and require

each slave to come to the barrel and receive his portion. Oftentimes the eagerness of the

slaves would result in a rush upon the pork barrel in which each would strive to grab as

much as possible for himself. (Maxey 693)

The poet is conscious of the history of oppression in slavery, much like the history of Bebop

when he lists "Kansas City, the even teeth / of the mafia, the big band [swing]:" (Harper 36-37).

To end the stanza, Harper brings the reader back to Parker's subjugation, "​Blow Bird! ​Inside out

Charlie's / guts, ​Blow Bird! g​ et yourself killed." (Harper 38-39). By presenting the phrase "​Blow

Bird!​" again, the speaker reminds the reader of the agonizing pain "Inside out Charlie's / guts,"

which will ultimately lead to Parker's demise (Harper 38-39). The imperative ​"Blow Bird!"​

transitions between the call and the response, highlighting the drug's heightened authority over

Parker.

Lines 40-45

Harper's final stanza begins with an inverted syntax, transitioning into an overview of the

venues at which Parker played. Lines 40-41 encapsulate the theme of endless suffering that

surpasses time and space, "In the first wave, the musicians, / out there, alone, in the first wave."

Repeating "in the first wave" at the beginning of line 40 and at the end of line 41 illustrates the

cyclical nature of oppression in the past (slaves, Ute and Paiute) and in the present (Parker with
 Muñoz 11

heroin, Civil Rights Movement), which can also allude to the first wave of Feminism developing

during this time. By including the word "musicians," the speaker notes Parker's vocation but also

what Ralph Ellison believes jazz represents. Ralph Ellison, in his collection of essays "Shadow

and Act," wrote that jazz is "an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal

experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not

by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism”

(qtd. in Walton 88). Thus, jazz embodies the emotions associated with oppression—the need to

suppress suffering and the yearning to communicate it. Because of this, jazz musicians can

represent the human element of expression found in non-musicians alike. As a result, the lines

"In the first wave, the musicians, / out there, alone, in the first wave" is interpreted as the

perpetuating oppression that is inclusive of all people (Harper 40-41). The rest of the stanza
1
gives a synopsis of the venues Parker played at, which gives the impression of a biography ,

"Everywhere you went, Massey Hall. / Sweden, New Rochelle, ​Birdland,​ / nameless bird, Blue

Note, Carnegie, / tuxedo junction, out of nowhere," (Harper 42-45). By chronicling the life of

Parker near the end of the poem, Harper foreshadows the inevitable death of a victim of

oppression.

Lines 46-48

In the last three lines of the poem, the speaker ends the poem with a synecdoche in the

form of a chant. Harper applies the call-and-response interaction once again, "​confirmation,

confirmation, confirmation​: / ​Bird Lives! Bird Lives! ​and you do: / Dead—" (Harper 46-48).

Note how the response comes at the end ("and you do: / Dead—") instead of coming

1
Massey Concert Hall in Toronto, Canada; Malmo, Sweden; New Rochelle, New York; Birdland—the New York
City jazz club; the Blue Note (jazz club); and Carnegie Hall, renowned New York City concert hall. (Levine 772,
note 3)
 Muñoz 12

immediately after the call ("​confirmation," "Bird Lives!"​ ). Prolonging the response sustains the

call as a reverberating chant, which behaves as a "​confirmation​"​ t​ o the extensive history of

oppression in America—especially since this repetition is reminiscent of the field holler (vocal

music sung by slaves while laboring) ("African-American Music"). The word "confirmation"

then acts as a synecdoche representative of the history of oppression and the legacy of Charlie
2
Parker —one that is confirmed in the next line, "​Bird Lives!Bird Lives!"​ (Harper 47).

Additionally, by repeating "​confirmation,"​ the poet stresses the reality of oppression by

acknowledging the history of maltreatment, which is also a facet Anthony Walton remarks on

about Harper's works:

placed in the context of Harper's work, [they] become a tracing of the wounds in the

nation's soul: blacks in this country have served historic function of the ​sparagmos o​ r

ritual victim. Tracing the wounds inflicted on them becomes a bearing witness to the

nation's sins and needs. (Walton 92)

As a result, the speaker allows the reader to reflect on the pain and the sense of loss in Black

history or human history more broadly. Finally, Harper ends the poem with an antithesis of

"​Blow Bird,​ " with the phrase "​Bird Lives!"​ This expression embodies Parker's enduring spirit, as

well as humanity's spirit, where history will not forget the tenacity of those who challenged

oppressors, in spite of death, "​Bird Lives! a​ nd you do: / Dead—" (Harper 48). In short, the

speaker illustrates Parker not as "Bird" Parker, the musical giant, but as Charles Parker, a

humanized Parker who was a victim of heroin addiction that corresponds with history's victims

of oppression.

2
Charlie Parker composed a Bebop standard, "Confirmation," in 1946
 Muñoz 13

Conclusion

Throughout the analysis, this paper has addressed the literary and musical tradition

inherent in Harper's poem, which resulted in a humanization of Parker through the theme of

oppression. Overall, Charlie Parker, arguably the most influential jazz saxophonist in jazz

history, continues to stand with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington as the most important

figures of jazz history. In the article, "Thrivin' from a Riff: Charlie Parker as Multicultural Icon,"

Brian Flota, of George Washington University, wrote the following:

It was Parker's greatest weakness that made him so endearing, rebellious, dangerous and

“authentic" to his many fans—his addiction to heroin. The stakes of the suffering artist

were raised in the instance of Parker, in large part, because of his ethnicity. Parker was

able to be triumphant in his art, this line of argument would contend, despite the fact that

Jim Crow laws limited his mobility and accessibility to a broader (i.e whiter) audience.

(Flota 110)

In this poem, "​'Bird Lives'​ : Charles Parker in St. Louis," Michael S. Harper reimagines Charles

"Bird" Parker as an afflicted soul whose submission to drugs is part of a larger discourse between

the oppressor and the oppressed, where an individual's experience is inseparable from the

collective human experience. In short, "Bird" becomes human. "Bird" becomes Charles.
 Muñoz 14

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