- Sonnet Ending with a Line by Miles
'Trane, of course, could start with a phrase & keep shattering it until he'd been through every shuffled combination until, fracture upon fracture, he blew the phrase from every different angle, the run collapsing back into itself, the quicktransit of his fingertips blurred in the sweep of those furious calisthenics
The man had a lot to say, & the truth is culmination was hard, so he tended to carry on . . . When he asked his colleague Miles ('Trane was still a sideman) how to end a solo, Miles only laughed, took a swig,& rasped, you take the damn horn out your mouth. [End Page 489]
Stephen Cramer's first book of poetry, Shiva's Drum, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Grace Schulman. His second, Tongue & Groove, was published by University of Illinois Press in 2007. He teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont.