Episode 27: Suicides and Skeleton Jazz (REISSUE)

In the midst of excitedly preparing for AWP 2017, we record this episode in which we discuss two poems by Rita Banerjee, “The Suicide Rag” and “Georgia Brown” This week’s discussion both took us back and made sure that none of us would see the world the same way again. With images of breakdancing, gospel choir, and the not-so-innocent Georgia Brown, we were in it. Whether we’re distinguishing jazz from jazz or figuring out what a clapper is, this episode is filled with risky moves. Join us in the campaign to have your local library carry lesser-known authors and small presses. Let us know what books you’ll be requesting with #getsomebooks! Let’s support libraries, small presses, and the authors who write for them. Make sure you follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and let us know what you think of this episode with #longandskinny! Stay tuned to hear about our AWP 2017 experience–we hope to see you there! And of course, most importantly, read on! At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Tim Fitts, and Sara Aykit Rita Banerjee is the author of Echo in Four Beats, CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps, and Cracklers at Night. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA from the University of Washington, and her work appears in Hunger Mountain, PANK, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele Magazine, Nat. Brut., Poets & Writers, Academy of American Poets, Los Angeles Review of Books, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She is the co-writer of Burning Down the Louvre, a forthcoming documentary film about race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France, and serves as Senior Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. She received a 2021-2022 Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the opening chapters of this memoir, “Birth of Cool” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. The Suicide Rag Billy played ragtime on the church organ but we lunch hour kids, kept time by another name. Behind St. Augustine’s we learned to hit the pavement, sound like an anvil crack hammers hitting steel, Billy playing skeletons on the fifth, we arpeggioed haloed, froze on the black top. Learning to cakewalk This was our battle— tar-mat babies doing handsprung suicides for the girls standing ’round with knife-like eyes That’s all we needed— a rolling beat, a firing squad and schoolyard skirts scouring the lot as we fell face forward hands locked & stiff, the only thing that could’ve come between us was a kiss. Georgia Brown Harlem had yet to be born, the globe had not been spun, but we knew how to whistle, how to call clappers and skirts on cue: That summer, we first met Georgia, she was an echo in four beats, we learned to hum her story. Mike played her with a licked reed but she was all brass, sharp like an abandoned railroad cutting through wild wood, and when she took stage, she made those trombone boys whisper, “Sweet Georgia, Sweet.”