A Small Country

We literary people, even the smartest among us sometimes

need our convenient caricatures

reclusive Emily, expansive Walt

Baudelaire the flâneur

casual Frank O'Hara, abstruse Ashbery

cool Miles, eccentric, dissonant Thelonious



But in Monk's music there is a universe of music

vast territories of mood, texture, color

childlike simplicity and recondite complications

or at the very least a small country it would be nice to visit