When the Saints

Abstract

A problem is a stumbling block, something thrown in the way. Problem comes from the Greek-pro (before, in front of) + ballein (to throw)meaning anything thrown before you, directly ahead of you. You either face your problem, a potentially null encounter, or go back the way you came. There is no way around the problem. Parable is a form of problem. Like problem, parable also comes from Greek. The difference is between the para (to the side) and the pro. The parable is something thrown to the side, a by-word, the stumbling block alongside you. And like a parabola, the parable is a curve whose ever-widening, infinite symmetries most often escape notice and so close in on you. The parable, like the parabola, is both open and closed. It's a matter of looking in the right direction. John Taggart's latest book, When the Saints, the second part of which first appeared in this magazine and the whole of which was published by Talisman House last fall, is not a parable. As Taggart writes in the opening lines: The subject was roses the problem is memory that was the subject roses piled to burn intensity of a fire in summer intensity in intensity ashes in a ring pale rose hue of the rose ashes that was the subject the problem is memory the problem a problema the problem a problema a problem to find a problem to find the unknown Memory is a stumbling block. The choice of roses as a subject is not incidental. Of all the things to write about, roses are most difficult, most like a stumbling block. What can you do about roses? Taggart uses the stumbling block as material on which to inscribe the poem. The problem is how to remember without being overtaken and closed in on by memory. memory is musical memory is musical in suggestion suggestion of a progression of a progression to a destination the destination of music is harmony everything joined to fit to fit together closely fitted close harmony which closes on a close which closes in on itself there are other harmonies there are other harmonies which do not close which close to open which close in open harmonies Invoking figures as various as Simonides, Simon Weil, and Charles Mingus, When the Saints is an extremely ambitious poem that manages to maintain its focus through seventy-two pages. It is an elegy for Taggart's friend, the sculptor Bradford Graves, a photo of whose stone xylophone graces the cover. It is a meditation on Coltrane's A Love Supreme. It is a collection of quotations, including some from Coltrane's poem on the inside cover of A Love Supreme, taken, cut up and rearranged. When the Saints is not, however, a collage. Like the New Orleans funeral dirge from which Taggart has taken half his title, When the Saints is a procession of the saints of Taggart's imagination. The primary figures in the procession are Coltrane, Rilke, and Sainte Colombe, the late-seventeeth-century and early-eighteenthcentury century French composer whose main contribution was the addition of a seventh string to the viola da gamba, thus giving the instrument a more mournful tone. Taggart is deeply influenced by each-the long riff of Coltrane, the elegiac and spiritual concerns of Rilke, and the almost dronelike vibration of Sainte Colombe's seventh string-but the connection is more than his admiration. …