Transcircularities

by Quincy Troupe

(Coffee House Press) $17

After a nasty initial encounter with higher education, Quincy Troupe decided to try his luck with the army and left for the land of France, ultimately landing a chance encounter with "this little French guy" by the name of Jean Paul Sartre.

Upon his return, he pursued a basketball career that was brought to an end by repeated knee injuries. He began to write poetry in earnest, giving poetry readings on the beach accompanied by none other than Jimi Hendrix. In 1968, he began teaching at UCLA and other notable universities, and in the late '80s produced a best-selling book on his hero Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography.

It was not until he had published 13 books, won two American Book Awards, and been awarded California's first official poet laureateship that an unfortunate secret surfaced: He had lied on his resumé and transformed his single, ill-fated semester of college into "college graduate." In October of 2002 he resigned that laureateship and gave up his $141,000-a-year chair at the University of California, San Diego.

The vast scope of Quincy Troupe's experiences and observations (both his extreme highs and lows) are recorded in Transcircularities, the culmination of 36 years of poetry and prose. As a child, guests at his home often included musical giants such as B.B. King, Duke Ellington, and Bo Diddley, and this exposure to jazz and blues is evident in his flowing, musical style, which alternates between formal and free verse, with topics that range from racial injustice to phonetics, to even wastewater management.

Though the size of the book (352 pages) may seem daunting (at over an inch wide, it's thicker than the Holy Koran), part-time intellectuals need not fear: Some poems are only three lines, and the more "difficult" poems are still aesthetically pleasing sans comprehension.