It's the scenes, which can stand alone, which infact do, that make this poem sentimental, stark, angry, ironic and funny. It's the moments that matter.

Like the stanza about the flies that end up "With the scorched taste/Of vertigo." Or the
janitor dancing with his broom "...like a woman/ He'd have to live another/ Life to meet." I also liked the cop as the outsider.

I can't figure out how the title connects to the text--not that it has to. I'd just like to be able to make the connection.

I too was struck by these lines. It evokes a large amount of sadness to read that because he will be forever lonely, but he seems to be getting such joy from the act.

They call it dust in the mouth.
They call it horse with no rider.
They call it school with empty books.

Funny how all the grownups dream about something beautiful and better than what's around them, while the children have imagined something dark (and, to me, heartbreaking).

I'm so glad you're doing this, TNC. Friday poetry day kicks your blog from the interesting and compelling into the sublime.

Here is the world (what's left of it),
In brilliant motion,
The oil slick at the curb
Danced into a thousand
Splintered steps.

I can't tell if it's mournful or hopeful. But that's what I love about poetry. Thanks for this one.

Is there any reason to mention
All the drinks are on the house?

I think BelleIsa is right - the what doesn't matter.

But here are two thoughts:
1. Everyone rejoicing an apocalypse? There seemed to be many images of death in there. This in particular made me think of an apocalypse:

The wind that burns their wings,
The heaving, oblivious flesh,
Mountains stuffed with panic,
An ocean
That can’t make up its mind.

This too:

O, Jazz has come from heaven,” he says,
And at the z he jumps, arcing his back like a heron’s neck

If the world is broken, perhaps an approaching end would bring everyone together and cause us to dance to the music of our own demise.

2. I know it's impossible, but the widespread joy when Obama was announced the winner? A broken country, still hurting, but celebrating? That's definitely an interpretation that jumped out at me, but then again, I'm going to have Obama on the brain for weeks to come.

This one makes me think a little about NYC on 9/11, when rage, dance and tears kind of blended into each other. Eady was teaching at City College that year, and deep in work on his Brutal Imagination cycle; the piece feels looser, and more rigorous at the same time.

Thanks for the Friday gift. I haven't turned to Eady in way too long.

Thank you so much.

Anyway, "Dance Craze" is one of my favorite poems too, and I think it's rather appropriate at this moment. Don't get down on the "end of the world" stuff. This poem is about joy in the face of doom. And if that doesn't explain the weather of the country right now after eight, long, dark years, I don't know what does. The symmetry with the pictures from Tuesday night exemplify the true power of leaping imagery to makes sense of the world.

Thanks, Ta-Nehisi.

It's about joyful dance during the end of the world - but not any end in particular; the world is always ending (considering that every second is new and brings us closer to death.)

Wow, I am going to be rereading this for a while. Thank you.

We'll do some hip-hop on Monday or Tuesday.

To be unflinchingly honest about the fact that the opposites exist, that both are true, that you don't understand. To have the courage and patience to hold that paradox inside you until the mind in your heart lives into understanding, lives into comprehending how they are not really different. And how impossible and shattering that moment of comprehending is. To break the chains of rationalism that hold us back from becoming truly human.

I was first generation college and like many came out of a home filled with wretching and multiple forms of pain tied to what my family experienced as immigrants and their helplessness turned to rage in the face of that. I took solace in mathematics because unlike my life, in mathematics you could describe a problem and actually solve the problem and there was a right answer and a wrong answer.

That was a comfort to me until I faced a course in complex variables where you worked in a space that involved numbers that were the square root of -1 --- some people call it "imaginary numbers." In this space, there were no lines, only circles. I always experienced math on an emotional and spiritual level. So this was a crisis of the spirit for me. What happens when the poles disappear --- when there is no right and no wrong for instance? I took that class three times and got the highest grade in the class until we came to that proof and then I abruptly dropped out. It looked like I would never graduate with my engineering degree becasue of this class.

And in one of those interventions that change your life, someone explained to me about reconciling paradoxes and got me to work with that in my life. To strive to imagine how the pain of my life could be unspeakable but also be the greatest gift and source of joy in my life. I used to have a spoken word poem on my wall over my desk that had this tremendous image of a broken woman who is faced with a broken high voltage wire and she takes one end in each hand and becomes the conduit of power. That's how the work of reconciling opposites felt to me, but it also healed me enough to function in this world.

So yes, Cornelius Eady in this poem is talking about the courageous experience of joy in the face of sorrow. My favorite line is "his body has learned to speak." Sometimes our minds are so messed up that the joy just has to flow through our bodies and speak of its possibility and healing despite all that we are up against.

TOO YOUNG TO KNOW

One day, my father chopped down
The old apricot tree
Which used to live in my parents backyard.
My father deflected my anger at him
With a look I heard Muddy Waters sing:
"Y'all too young to know."

When I went to my mother
For the truth,
I only heard
What he must have told her:
A vague story about roots
and basement pipes,
A vague story about branches
and kitchen windows,
Punctuated by a shrug which meant:
"He just does what he does."

The blues don't know nothing about trees
Unless, of course,
It's enlisted the moon
To drag some shadows around,
Unless, of course,
Something jumps up
Out of a hollow log,
A worry you didn't need
To cross your path.

My father's gone,
The tree's a stump,
And I'm still too young to know
If one day, I'll glance
out my window
At the sycamore,
And cluck my teeth.

There is power in knowing that you get both strength and vulnerability from the ancestors. There is power in knowing that you do not know and that there are things you can't explain.

perfect

All that said, I'm sure in the dancing itself, the Ghost Dance was joyful, even if the motivation was death and destruction and despair.

It seems in the poem the dance craze is similar, only we don't know "the what," i.e., the motivation for the craze. The sadness/death precipitating the dance is not identified, but is palpable in every move.

Thanks, TNC. An amazing poem and one I had never read before.