Poem: 'Teaneck Blues' (for Ulysses Kay)

At the Puffin Cultural Forum's poetry series in Teaneck last month, the township's poet laureate, Scott Pleasants, had just arrived from reading an original poem at a street renaming.

Alicia Avenue between Evergreen Place and Pinewood Place has been temporarily (for 90 days, starting May 23) renamed "Ulysses Kay Way," honoring where Ulysses Kay lived for the last 21 years of his life, "in recognition of his significant contributions and accomplishments in the advancement of 20th century music and musicians."

As Mark Trautman, director of music and administrator at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Essex Fells, wrote on Facebook: "Ulysses Kay was a well know, prize-winning composer of the 20th century. His wife Barbara was a Freedom Rider and led the fight to integrate Englewood Schools in the 1960s. Their remains are buried in the columbarium at St. Paul's Church, 113 Engle St., Englewood."

Inspired by this, I wrote and read a poem at last Friday at June's S.P.E.A.K. (Sharing Poetic Expressions, Art & Knowledge) event hosted by MC and poet Toney Jackson. Toney leads an evening of intimacy, creativity, and positivity, open to aspiring poets and listeners. The next event is July 25.

Here's a recording of me reading this poem.

 Teaneck Blues

(Music: “Tender Thought” on Damien Sneed's album, “Classically Harlem”)

 

This is the summer of composer Ulysses Kay

where there’s a street named in his honor,

for 90 days.

Away from the heart of town,

the double-parked cars on Cedar Lane,

and Bischoff’s closed ice cream shop,

where bow-tied ghosts wear paper hats.

 

This is a mile and a half away,

amid haunted sounds:

rustling trees,

occasional birds,

gravel crunched by tires

in the lot facing his plain house

on Ulysses Kay Way.

 

This is Teaneck, NJ,

in the shadow of New York:

discordant, hesitant, forlorn,

a syncopated bass,

a trace of harmony,

a counter-melody of sadness,

defended by tanks on the lawn of the Armory.

 

This is his spectrum of sound:

a diversity of voices,

reflected in a single tender thought

rendered on a lone piano.

Come, hear the legacy of Ulysses Kay

in the summer of 2025,

where there’s a street named in his honor...

for 90 days.