If they asked me to choose one of my favorite words leaving out the pronouns I would skip to "if."
At the heart of rhetoric is "if" or sometimes "as if."
If has the greatest potential.
If they asked me I could write a book.
And then then I put on the Modern Jazz Quartet and they asked me about improvisation
and I improvised
on the theme of "if"
and the greatness of the subjunctive mood,
and the secret is that the hypothetical becomes the imperative in one fell swoop.
All you have to do is turn "if" into "let," and what you get is a cordial imperative, a command concealed as an enthusiastic suggestion from an avuncular friend.
Listen to "Pyramid" (MJQ) or Thelonious Monk ("Straight No, Chaser") or John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" (1964). Just let it happen, man. Listen attentively or let your mind wander. Let it be the background music of your life in elevators and office buildings and your own backyard. If you play "Pyramid" or Monk or Coltrane and continue with your day, ignoring the music but hearing it and soon becoming conscious of it and conscious of your listening, it's as if your mind has traveled from a Mozart symphony to a Rachmaninov piano concerto in the company of Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, Connie Kay, and John Lewis, and the pace is the pace of your heart because you live in the city of caffeine, and well, that's what poetry does, too, it jumps all over the place, it cant stay still for long, it takes up a theme and rides with it, then it lets another instrument have its say, and if you're that way, you get up, blow your horn, sit back down, take another sip, and write a poem.
-- David Lehman
