Interview Poem by Jared Carter

Now this here rag is the one they used to call
the lost rag.

Sort of thing everybody knew and nobody ever bothered
to write down.

It was just a few licks, something you'd sit and play
by yourself,

when there was nobody else around. Maybe it was
some old man

showed you how to play it, a long time ago. You turn off
that machine,

I'm going to play it for you now. I said
turn it off.


From After the Rain. First published in The Harbor Review.


Photograph below: James P. Johnson (1894-1955) , American pianist and composer ('The Charleston') . A major proponent of 1920s stride piano style, he is one of the two most important figures - the other is Jelly Roll Morton - in the transition from ragtime to jazz.