244 chapter six
presence of poetry as opposed to the progression of prose. In both «Salute»
and «File 0» presence has been spread thin and stretched to the point
of resembling progression—but one can more or less enter and exit
anywhere, and enjoy a worthwhile engagement with the text.
If only to reclaim kinship with music for poetry, in response to
Krol’s provocative linkage of music and prose, I will end this section
by suggesting an analogy with works by two masters of the jazz saxo-
phone. The bebop solos of Charlie Parker must travel by the harmonic
progression of fixed chord sequences, commonly called the changes, but
large parts of the solos Steve Coleman plays with the Five Elements
materialize over the constant harmonic presence of one chord. Parker’s
astonishing melodic versatility and coherence within the time reserved
for any one chord or scale are undeniably poetic; but harmonically,
across chords, contrary to what Loss Pequeño Glazier claims, he must
remain prosaically in sync with a compelling, linear, (con)sequential
structure that assigns to each moment a relative value and cannot be
reshuffled.^22 By contrast, many of Coleman’s compositions generate
unchanging, non-linear harmonic environments, with temporal limits
set by on-cue termination at the bandleader’s discretion, not comple-
tion of a harmonic narrative. As long as the analogy is with free verse,
harmonically and in their entirety, Coleman’s solos are more poetic
than Parker’s.
3. Fringe Poetry
Ever since their publication, both «Salute» and «File 0» have been
called poems. As much as from their textual qualities, this classification
may stem from the metatextual fact that both Xi Chuan and Yu Jian
were well known as poets when the two texts appeared. I hope to have
shown that the text-based classification of both works as poetry rather
than prose is justified but by no means straightforward, and that this
classification must be complicated and conditional instead. To add
another spatial metaphor to those used at the start of this chapter, one
could think of «Salute» and «File 0» as fringe texts within the overall
scope of poetry. What separates them from the heartland is most of
all their length. Length comes in for every single one of the angles we
(^22) Glazier 2002: 26.