Trading Fours, with Douglas Cole, No. 25: “How I Hear Music: ‘Feel the Sway,’ A Song in Three Movements”

July 5th, 2025

Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film.

In this edition, due to a current and ongoing obsession with drummer Matt Wilson’s 2006 album The Scenic Route, he writes another poem in response to his experience listening to the track “Feel the Sway.” (see Vol. 24 for the original – and completely different – poem).

A recording of Mr. Cole reading his work is found at the conclusion of the poem, as well as another poem, “Liner Notes,” which is Doug’s poetic inspiration for each of the tracks that make up The Scenic Route.

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Jimmy Baikovicius from Montevideo, Uruguay, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Matt Wilson, 2017

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How I Hear Music:
“Feel the Sway,” A Song in Three Movements

It is recommended that you listen to this clip of “Feel the Sway” prior to (or during) your reading the “First Movement” of the poem

First Movement

it comes in on the bass
like he woke up with that riff in his head
goes into the studio and says
hey, check this out…
and they listen
the drummer is leaning on a drum
starts tapping his stick on the rim
just a little time clock
nothing more than a hitch and a huh
a little ghost in the background
sort of chewka-choo chewka-choo
like trying to get a train going
or a fire started…
if you listen
and that door opens
piano sussing it out chordally
two-stepping Bill Evans-like
and just sort of marching along
as the trumpet comes in asking
hey what’s this now?
and mulling it over
saying it this way…
then trying it this way…
piano saying yeah I hear you…
trumpet listening as much as thinking
as he walks around in it
a little more convinced
every moment….

It is recommended that you listen to this clip of “Feel the Sway” prior to (or during) your reading the “Second Movement” of the poem

Second Movement

and after an inward turn
the trumpet player rests his bell against his chest
and pauses…mumbles…humbles
getting down deep
and picking up bones to live
with a trill of light-giving
life-giving cemetery magic
waking up and, ohh yeah…
he finds the idea in the idea,
hear it? Hear him hearing it?
on a roll and pulling the voices in
quiet from the background
……………….sway now
like sirens at sea they call
……………….feel the sway
……………….feel the sway
feel this way in what the music says
piano picking it up
and opening another door…

It is recommended that you listen to this clip of “Feel the Sway” prior to (or during) your reading the “Third Movement” of the poem

Third Movement

the drums make a mighty entry
pounding out a big I am
on the scene in a sound like Go!
And…Go! Go!—let’s go!
we can’t get there fast enough
trumpet out ahead
pointing There! There!
which gives the piano new ideas
as the trumpet flies up and over-weaving
with a bit of before in his back pocket
new light fingers horse-prancing
I mean that’s joy
that’s what joy sounds like
and break through and ah ha
in the clouds all sashay and sass and glee
like a sailor coming home from the sea

with voices
and tick tock drum again
like they got it
all of them got it
and the sun setting
and the waves rolling smooth
and quiet
under a black dome mirror ball sky
as they wander off
goodbye…
bye bye…
bye bye…

Listen to Douglas Cole read his poem

Listen to “Feel the Sway” in its entirety [The Orchard]

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The following poem, “Liner Notes,” is Doug’s poetic inspiration for each of the tracks that make up Matt Wilson’s album The Scenic Route

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Liner Notes

The Scenic Route:
Code flying quick morse shots with pulsing pop of Wurlitzer chop chop and bass uh huh uh huh and muffle wow wow trumpet growling out a hey come on…brawing, calling and self-responding good-felt sounding all uptick cheer…then around the bend…all we catch now are little dashes, cosmic soundwaves bending, an idea lying down to think and thought in terrible bytes—somebody send down a hot pot of coffee…here we go…

We See (Thelonious Monk)

A fast, you can hear echoes of “Salt Peanuts” with hops and runs and running bass. Muffled trumpet why so fast? Then why not…let’s drive!

25 Years of Rootabagas

Trumpet echoes of maybe King Oliver in the slower organ moments, New Orleans church service, ragtime stroll down Bourbon Street with a coffin light on your shoulder. Piano…bebop in sensibility but more swing-centered. Wurlitzer strolling in, all carnival and back-bar chattering blithely, why… you know, it’s nothing but time passing, just time passing…

Feel the Sway

A meditation in three parts. An evocation. A tidal action.

Rejoicing (Coleman)

Fashionably bebop out the gate with ghost trailings of Tatum and Dizzy trill statements, tectonics with the velocity of Charlie Parker and hints of Ray Brown and Freddie Hubbard trumpeting and Gene Krupa wailing on drums…

The Bat

The ease of a sunset drive from Montecito to the Lighthouse west coasting into evening bridge crossing bar hopping and one smooth organ ordering up the magic puff cloud floating us on.

In Touch with Dewey

Tempo slurring, down bass-diving, searching around in the under-belly dark, down keyboard noodling, clap along swing-time, almost a shuffle. Yeah. Talking along with you my friend and some tea on the tracks.

Little B’s Poem (Hutcherson)

A trilling in the night room, like a child’s mobile in the moonlight, bass sway and piano dialing down, then leaping up…smooth after hours…in reflection, everything looks…sounds back to elemental wind, creek-riff in a Guaraldi way without the holiday but a holiday spirit gliding trumpet, saying, yeah, yeah I know my sorcerer, my surrey…don’t have to talk about it.

Tenderly (Lawrence, Gross)

Catch that moon river in the bassline, that Chet Baker “Autumn in New York” trumpet plea and plaint as the past goes floating by. But we’re not bummed. We’re snapping our fingers. Ordering another round, lighting up and tapping away… Always a good swing, even back to the street.

Our Prayer (Ayler, Lennon-McCartney)

Solemn climb to the field ahead my mariachi friend. We’ll pour a libation and sing a hymn, walk with the moon through the empty arcade, all the rest abed, barely the scurry of a rat, the walls as white as snow, horses snorting in their stalls as a little light comes through the tavern doors. And we drift along with ghostly band, harmonium of such finality even the grass lies down. Everything wants for home, restless in their dreams, tied to a deep river beat then a quickening pulse, shadow of a kid in the doorway hitting a pot with a knife, a call to dance.

The Players:

Accordion, Piano, Organ – Gary Versace
Bass, Clarinet – Dennis Irwin
Drums, Percussion, Vocals – Matt Wilson
Flugelhorn, Trumpet – Terrell Stafford

Listen to the entire album [The Orchard]

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Click here for Matt Wilson’s Wikipedia page

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photo by Jenn Merritt

Douglas Cole has published six collections of poetry and The White Field, winner of the American Fiction Award. His work has appeared in several anthologies as well as journals such as The Chicago Quarterly Review, Poetry International, The Galway Review, Bitter Oleander, Chiron, Louisiana Literature, Slipstream, as well Spanish translations of work (translated by Maria Del Castillo Sucerquia) in La Cabra Montes. He is a regular contributor to Mythaixs, an online journal, where in addition to his fiction and essays, his interviews with notable writers, artists and musicians such as Daniel Wallace (Big Fish), Darcy Steinke (Suicide Blond, Flash Count Diary) and Tim Reynolds (T3 and The Dave Matthews Band) have been popular contributions. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart and Best of the Net and received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry. He lives and teaches in Seattle, Washington.

Douglas’ poem, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Kind of Blue,” published as part of his “Trading Fours” series, was nominated for the XLVIII Pushcart Prize

Click here to visit his website.