Steve Pick hangs out with poet Quincy Troupe
Photograph courtesy of Coffee House Press
Quincy Troupe, narrow eyeglasses pinching the tip of his nose, dreadlocks lying just out of his eyes, leans forward, shifting his weight from leg to leg. If the book he’s reading from were a saxophone, he might very well be playing it—he holds it slightly above his waist, just an inch or two in front of his body. All eyes are on Troupe, who transports his listeners into a realm of language, sound, rhythm.
“Organizing against the war/in Iraq in America/is like trying to stir heavy/concrete with an eyelash.”
This short piece, titled “Shared Poem,” is from Troupe’s latest collection of poetry, The Architecture of Language. It is the most explicit expression of political activism in a book filled with references to oppression, war and concern for the actions of those in power.
“I’m always optimistic,” Troupe says after the reading, sitting at a spare dining table in his cousin’s University City home. “I think that we have to work hard, each individual, as well as our country and community, at making things work.”
Troupe, who spent the first 20 of his 66 years in St. Louis, is one of the most visible poets in the United States. He’s better known for co-writing the autobiography of Miles Davis and the autobiography of millionaire Chris Gardner (the basis for the film The Pursuit of Happyness), but his deepest work is his poetry.
“In my early twenties, I was on the all-Army basketball team, over in France,” Troupe reminisces. “I found that I really loved writing poetry as much as I loved basketball and reading. I started writing over there. As I got better—I went through learning villanelles, sestinas, haikus, and sonnets—I discovered that it was about language, and I abandoned all that. I still do forms sometimes, but I found that I could almost be a painter and a musician writing poems through metaphor and imagery.”
Troupe spent decades in academe, respected as a teacher while he was building his reputation as a writer. In 2002, he was named poet laureate of California, an accolade that led to his early retirement when it was revealed that he had never actually acquired the bachelor’s degree listed on his résumé.
“I did it, I admit it,” says Troupe. “I admitted it when it was happening—but at the same time, you don’t get to be a full professor, highest-ranking person in your department, based on something like [a bachelor’s degree]. I was sorry I did it. I apologized for it. But it didn’t take away any of the other achievements.”
Certainly it takes nothing away from the power of the work in The Architecture of Language. Whether he’s telling the whimsical tale of a little girl who believes that eggplant bushes are where eggs come from or describing the horrific after-effects of Hurricane Katrina, Troupe uses a whirlwind of imagery and the solid, sensual sounds of words to envelop the reader in many-layered ideas.
As a child, Troupe wanted to be a meteorologist. “That’s why you see all these tornadoes in my work,” he explains. “I started really paying attention to weather when I was in St. Louis, but because I lived in an urban situation, I didn’t employ the whole concept of weather until I lived in La Jolla [California], and I could see the weather changing. I could see rains coming. It started to come into my work out there. So when Katrina came, I already had the whole idea that weather is a language, just like music and just like art. [Katrina] happened to be a destructive thing.
“My largest influence is Pablo Neruda,” Troupe says. “Neruda wrote about artichokes, he wrote about love, he wrote about his own body, but he also wrote really politically charged poems. I think that’s my influence. I don’t believe it’s my assigned role … but that’s what I choose to do.”
The Architecture of Language is available through Left Bank Books (399 N. Euclid, 314-367-6731, left-bank.com) and Coffee House Press (coffeehousepress.org).
