The Scale
Simplest to start with the most obviously remarkable thing about Nathaniel Mackey's great double poem: the scale. In April 2021 he published Double Trio, a three volume box set totalling over 1,000 pages of poetry. Compare standard editions of Pound's Cantos -- around 800 pages; Zukofksy's A -- about the same, but only if you include more than 200 pages primarily given over to a musical setting of the rest of the book; Olson's The Maximus Poems -- a little over 600 pages; Reznikoff's Testimony -- under 500.
Those works by Pound, Zukofsky and Olson were the singular products of an adult life time. Double Trio, however, was composed more or less in the last five years, and according to this profile in the New Yorker, he has already written the first two volumes of a projected Double Quartet.
But there's more. Double Trio is the continuation of a double poem he has been writing for decades, the previous parts appearing (sometimes alongside other poems) in six earlier volumes. With the projected Double Quartet, this will be an epic, or double epic, of well over 3,000 pages.
The Double
Is this one poem or two? Mackey has described it as "braided." What we have are two serial poems in numbered parts. One is titled "Song of the Andoumboulou" and the sections are numbered ("Song of the Andomboulou: 1" to -- thus far -- "Song of the Andoumboulou: 254"). The sections of the other poem have individual titles, but subtitles attribute them to a sequence called "mu." We are up to "mu - two hundred and thirty-eighth part."
The two sequences are largely indistinguishable in form. They share wordplay and images. To the extent there is a narrative, both narrate a journey or quest by an unstable, shifting group of figures (Dorn's Gunslinger might be a reference point here).
The Jazz
Jazz, and especially free jazz, is central to Mackey's practice. The title Double Trio is in homage to a small group led by Glenn Spearman (Double Quartet would be an obvious homage to Ornette Coleman). "Mu" pays tribute to a seminal album by Don Cherry. The song of the Andomboulou was found by Mackey on a 1956 recording of traditional Dogon music. Well informed jazz fans will also detect a reference to Julius Hemphill's album Dogon A.D. ("Mu" also hintes at mythos.)
The poetry itself reflects the influence of the music. It is easy to read it as a free-flowing, improvised instrumental solo, by turns harsh and melodic, following the logic not just of events or images but the music of the words themselves. Like John Coltrane, Mackey can't seem to stop playing -- there's always a next musical idea flowing from the last. It's also notable that the band of characters drifting through "Mu" is literally a band on the road, although the name of the band, the number of musicians (is it a septet, an octet?) and the instrumentation constantly fluctuates.
It's not just jazz. Although most of Mackey's touchpoints are jazz, the reader also finds references to flamenco, fado, reggae and a range of traditional African music.
The Form
In Maximus and A, and to a lesser extent The Cantos, there are a wide variety of poetic forms. Not so here. The form of the two poems has evolved from the earliest volumes, but it is now firmly established. Each section begins with a two or three page statement of a theme, which is then followed by a series of two or three shorter developments.
Mackey's distinctive contribution -- and I think it's as distinctive as William Carlos Williams's triple stepped lines -- is to link the three, four or five line stanzas of each section with a single word or two set off to the right of the preceding line. The effect is to lead the eye effortlessly from stanza to stanza. This underlines the sense of a endless flow of improvisation, and encourages the reader to keep reading.
The Difficulty
The only real difficulty of Mackey's poem is the length. I should qualify that by saying that it's not always clear what's happening from page to page, but once immersed the reader doesn't need to care. The overall shape of the poems -- an epic journey (or two epic journeys) undertaken, likely in an attempt to evade the threatening atmosphere of the Republic of Nub -- "polis as we know it" -- and achieve an alternative, musical-erotic state of being.
Unlike the Cantos and Maximus, the reader isn't constantly reminded that he hasn't read all the texts and sources to which the poems allude. There is no requirement to be steeped in Confucius, the Jefferson-Adams letters or the mythology of the Mayans. Each reader will bring his own stock of knowledge. I knew Camarón de la Isla; I did not (then) know Julius Hemphill. Obscure references -- for example to traditional African religions or musical instruments -- are easily Googled. Sometimes the search will send you back to Mackey, because it's his own invention.
One other possible source of confusion for the reader is the way characters and locations "segue" into each other or change their names. The Beulah-like Republic of Nub can turn into Rub or Run. Speaking of Beulah, it's an instability reminiscent of William Blake. When I read Blake as a young man, I tended to keep a reference work at my elbow, purporting to explain his whole mythology and the part played in it by his countless characters and their "emanations." When I re-read Jerusalem last year, I decided to go with the flow. I'd recommend that approach here too.
The Pleasures
Above all the pleasure comes from the rush of the words. Mackey can achieve the highest of linguistic registers -- his vocabulary seems inexhaustible -- but what is, again, distinctive is the melody he can conjure from sequences of the simplest words, often through repetition. "So" and "we" are two of his favorite words, but he also loves portmanteau words like "insofar" and "inasmuch" and -- I think his own invention -- "whatsaid."
Unlikely words are adopted, perhaps for their sound, and recur throughout: "flute," "lute," "loquat." One of the most remarkable sequences (it's in volume two or three of Double Trio, but it would take some thumbing to find) is a series of poems in which a lute is caressed and played: it's as musical as anything in Zukofsky.
So What?
"So what" is a very Mackey-like phrase. The word "so" guides this epic, and conceals and reveals another word "sough." Sough is a moaning, whistling, sighing sound associated with the wind, or perhaps the wind in the trees. It can be likened to a breath; a breath breathed by nature; the breath of the poet; the long breaths associated with saxophone or trumpet solos; the breath of the world; the breath that can be choked out of you.
Mackey's great double epic is political because it is about polis and what polis has the potential to be. It's not a commentary on current events, but when the time comes he confronts the murders of George Floyd and Eric Garner directly: the terminal interruptions in sough, the solos cut short.
A Note
The six earlier volumes containing parts of the double poem are Eroding Witness, School of Udhra, Whatsaid Serif, Splay Anthem, Nod House and Blue Fasa. I should add that there are numbered parts of both poems which do not appear in these volumes -- whether they are missing altogether or were published as brief chapbooks or elsewhere is something I am still trying to find out.
