Miles Davis

Quincy Troupe

Miles discusses his life and music from playing trumpet in high school to the new instruments and sounds from the Caribbean.

Miles

James Baldwin

'I was not born to be what someone said I was. I was not born to be defined by someone else, but by myself, and myself only.' James Baldwin lived by that creed. When, in the fall of 1987, the poet Quincy Troupe travelled to the south of France to interview a critically ill James Baldwin, they knew it was his last chance to speak at length about his life and work. The result is one of the most eloquent and revelatory interviews of Baldwin's career, ranging widely over his youth in Harlem, his friendship with Miles Davis and Toni Morrison and his thoughts on race.

And Other Conversations

James Baldwin - The Last Interview

The Legacy (Touchstone Book)

The world is made of seductions. In Quincy Troupe's Seduction, the "I" becomes the "Eye," serving as metaphor and witness in a narrative compilation from a master of poetic music. Elegies and dramatic odes look at the seduction of all things loved or hated, especially the man made of color. How did the killings of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Trayvon Martin seduce the public's eye and catch the fire of racism? How did Aretha Franklin seduce us with voice and twang? How does the art of Romare Bearden or Jack Whitten still tell our truths, fantasies, and oppressions? time is a bald eagle, a killer soaring high in the blue, / music to men dodging bullets in speeding cars, / knew death, hoped it'd never come . . . In this collection we are seduced by Troupe's opus. This is the poet's art laid bare. He is our "Eye." Visions of the transatlantic slave trade, portraits of American violence, pop culture, and historical voices are the lyrical relics in Troupe's masterful verse. One of American literature's most important rhythmical artists, Troupe has created a chronicle reaching through history for the collective "I/Eye" that is all of us.

New Poems, 2013-2018

Seduction

Both epic poem and prayer, Ghost Voices is Quincy Troupe's synthesized spiritual journey giving voice to the African ancestors lost during the Middle Passage. Lacing mythical verse with touches of Yoruba, Candomblé Jejé, and American spiritual, Troupe weaves a history and reimagines from dream state the ones taken and lost between the seas.

A Poem in Prayer

Ghost Voices

The life story of master jazz artist Miles Davis in his own words & with no punches pulled

Miles, the Autobiography

A collection of poetry about men, women, jazz, and American life.

Poems

Avalanche

Amy Reed

Bhanu Kapil

Natalie Baszile

Alexis Coe

Jacob M. Appel

Judy Grahn

Eugenia Leigh

Eric Gamalinda

Susanna Sonnenberg

Tony Phillips

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Ajuan Mance

Indira Allegra

Kris Brandenburger

Chip Goldstein

Lisa Grey

John Pleucker

Liana Scalettar

Cindy Shearer

Margaret Porter Troupe

Interdisciplinary arts print magazine published annually by the MFA program at California Institute of Integral Studies

Mission at Tenth

Miles. L'autobiografia

The selected poems from over fifty years by the great poet and biographer and friend of Miles Davis. Quincy Troupe writes poetry in great waves. The words are just notes. It's the music you make with them that matters. He's not a wordsmith, he's a shaman conjuring long repetitive lines, cadences of looking across the sea towards Africa and haunted by the legacy of slavery and racism, or of remembering fellow conjurers, poets and musical artists, celebrating, always celebrating, but never only that. In the fifty-page, incantatory poem, "Ghost Voices," there is a longing to be reconnected to the past, and a longing too to be free of it. In the short title poem, "Duende: For García Lorca and Miles Davis," there lies, nakedly, Troupe's credo: "...secrets, mystery infused in black magic / that enters bodies in forms of music, art/ poetry imbuing language with sovereignty / in blood spooling back through violent centuries..." The version of the great poem "Avalanche (number 3)" that appears here is different from the version of the same poem he published nearly 25 years ago--in exactly the same way that a jazz artist picks up his horn to play the same song a little differently every time. Troupe is a generous and gregarious poet in this giant offering that includes many new poems, as well as a selection chosen from across his eleven previously published volumes. What's remarkable is the constancy, the energy, and how he's always looking right at you in the here and now, and at the same time sees something over your shoulder that others don't see yet, maybe a distant storm gathering over the waters, something we're going to need to rise up and face soon enough.

Poems, 1966-Now

Duende

"Kamoinge, from the Gikuyu language of Kenya, means a group of people acting together. ... In this most expancive Kamoinge collection to date, we share our timeless vision, lived and photographed by our mambers, from the founders to the young lions who are the next generation."--Page [5].

Timeless

Quincy Troupe's candid account of his friendship with Miles Davis is a revealing portrait of a great musician and an intimate study of a unique relationship. It is also an engrossing chronicle of the author's own development, both artistic and personal. As Davis's collaborator on Miles: The Autobiography,Troupe--one of the major poets to emerge from the 1960s--had exceptional access to the musician. This memoir goes beyond the life portrayed in the autobiography to describe in detail the processes of Davis's spectacular creativity and the joys and difficulties his passionate, contradictory temperament posed to the men's friendship. It shows how Miles Davis, both as a black man and an artist, influenced not only Quincy Troupe but whole generations. Troupe has written that Miles Davis was "irascible, contemptuous, brutally honest, ill-tempered when things didn't go his way, complex, fair-minded, humble, kind and a son-of-a-bitch." The author's love and appreciation for Davis make him a keen, though not uncritical, observer. He captures and conveys the power of the musician's presence, the mesmerizing force of his personality, and the restless energy that lay at the root of his creativity. He also shows Davis's lighter side: cooking, prowling the streets of Manhattan, painting, riding his horse at his Malibu home. Troupe discusses Davis's musical output, situating his albums in the context of the times--both political and musical--out of which they emerged. Miles and Me is an unparalleled look at the act of creation and the forces behind it, at how the innovations of one person can inspire both those he knows and loves and the world at large.

Miles and Me

The Autobiography

An award-winning author and poet offers a unique appreciation and portrait of one of the century's greatest musicians, capturing the many facets of Miles Davis's brilliant and difficult nature, and chronicling his own growth through his friendship with Davis.

A collection of tributes from the friends and colleagues of a great writer and social critic include the words of Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, William Styron, Alex Haley, and others, as well as key selections from his writings. Bibliog.

The Legacy

Chris Gardner

Mim Eichler Rivas

La ricerca della felicità

Marlon James

Jennifer Egan

Sonia Sanchez

Chris Abani

Amiri Baraka

Staceyann Chin

Kwame Dawes

Willie Perdomo

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor

Jacqueline Johnson

Hal Sirowitz

NY Writers Coalition

Making the Trees Shiver is an eclectic collection recreating the magic that is the annual Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival. Poetry and prose by Chris Abani, Amiri Baraka, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Staceyann Chin, Kwame Dawes, Jennifer Egan, Marlon James, Jacqueline Johnson, Willie Perdomo, Sonia Sanchez, Hal Sirowitz, and Quincy Troupe is interspersed with work by the talented next generation of writers from NY Writers Coalition's creative writing workshops. Making the Trees Shiver celebrates community writing at it's finest: expansive, authentic, and full of life. Like Fort Greene Park itself, these pages are noisy at times, chilling at others, but always full of spectacular views.

An Anthology of the First Six Years of the Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival

Making the Trees Shiver

The best and the newest from one of American poetry's most cool and lyrical rhythm masters.

New and Selected Poems

Transcircularities

Quincy Troupe

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