St. Louis poet Quincy Troupe mentioned the same range of numbers – “15, 16, 17” – twice in a conversation about his returning home to perform with trumpeter Keyon Harrold 7 p.m. Friday, October 11 at the Saint Louis Art Museum.
He guessed that Harrold was 15, 16 or 17 when Troupe first heard him play trumpet; though Harrold is half Troupe’s age, the two men are cousins and both hail from the St. Louis area. “I couldn’t believe how mature and good he was then,” Troupe said. Harrold has since recorded music across genres with Jay-z, Beyoncé, and Keith Richards and been called “The Future of The Trumpet” by Wynton Marsalis.
Then Troupe estimated that he rewrites each of his poems “15, 16, 17 times” before finishing one. “I got the dates on them to prove it,” Troupe said.
With his cousin playing his compositions on trumpet, Troupe said he will perform “some new poems, some old poems” at the museum. They rehearsed for two hours over the past weekend at Troupe’s home in New York and will rehearse another two or three times before the show. “I feel really good about it,” Troupe said.
The Saint Louis Art Museum concert will not be their first live performance together. Previously they performed at the Harlem Arts Salon curated by Margaret Porter Troupe, the poet’s wife. Will Calhoun of Living Color also was on that gig. “People were hanging like bats from the ceiling,” Troupe said.
Troupe will be able to draw both old and new poems from one of the books he is working on now, to be titled “Duende,” a large compilation of poems from 1966 to the present forthcoming in 2020 on Seven Stories Press. He also has two recent books of poems, previously reviewed here, a long poem titled “Ghost Voices” and another compilation, “Seduction.”
When he spoke to The American on Monday, September 30, Troupe had been working that morning on a new poem titled “Hugh Masekela” and talked about another poem of recent vintage about the Trump years titled “Maggots.”
He had been walking around in his wife’s hometown of Gloster, Mississippi when he came upon an “evil smell” and discovered that somebody had put a dead dog in a trashcan. “There were all these maggots everywhere,” Troupe said. “It was an amazing image. I took that image home and didn’t know what do with it, I just wrote it down.” Then he thought of the president of the United States and thought, “Oh, I know what I will do with it.”
Troupe being Troupe, he has too many other creative projects in the works to keep track of. He continues to forge ahead on a novel, “The Legacy of Charlie Footman” (“I can’t seem to finish it because I’m always finishing something else,” he said). It’s a family story loosely based on his own family. And he is working on a memoir titled “The Accordion Years.” Like his upcoming collection of poems, it starts in 1966.
“That was when I seriously started writing,” Troupe said. “I moved to California when I came back from the Army. I moved to Los Angeles, Watts. That’s when I met Jane Cortez, Ornette Coleman, K. Curtis Lyle. My life as a writer started over there. It chronicles me becoming writer instead of a basketball player” – he attended Grambling State University on a basketball scholarship and played on the U.S. Army team in France – “and other crazy shit growing up in St. Louis.”
Then there is the much-delayed film “Miles and Me,” based on his previous memoir about working with Miles Davis on his as-told-told autobiography. It’s produced by Rudy Langlais, formerly Troupe’s editor who assigned him the Spin magazine profile on Davis that evolved into the book. Langlais now produces films and made “Hurricane” with Denzel Washington, who also is committed to directing “Miles and Me,” with Michael K. Williams (“The Wire,” “Boardwalk Empire”) playing Davis.
Why the delays?
“Denzel really, really, really wants to get it right,” Troupe said. “He is a perfectionist. Denzel asks really good questions about the script. I respect him as a human being and for his craft, his dedication to craft.” At this point, Troupe mentioned how many times he revises his poems to affirm his own dedication to craft.
Langlais has not exactly helped speed the project along.
“Rudy is also a precise kind of guy, very painstaking,” Troupe said. “I work quick. He calls me ‘Q.’ He’ll say, ‘Q, let me do this. You know what Hollywood is like.’ I don’t care. I just want to do this film!”
Troupe also knows what St. Louis is like – and he loves it.
“I love St. Louis,” he said. “I grew up there. People can talk to me any kind of way in St. Louis, people who have been knowing me all of my life, and I can talk to them.”
Quincy Troupe and Keyon Harrold will perform 7 p.m. Friday, October 11 in the Farrell Auditorium at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Their performance is related to “The Shape of Abstraction: Selections from the Ollie Collection,” an exhibition of abstract works by black artists now on view at the museum. Tickets are $10 and available in person at the museum and through MetroTix.
