The Feel Trio

Author: Fred Moten 

Publisher: Letter Machine Editions (2014)

The Feel Trio is Cecil Taylor, Tony Oxley and William Parker. Or is it that The Feel Trio are Cecil Taylor, Tony Oxley and William Parker? See, that's the amazing problem and chance, right there! In the wake and air and light of The Feel Trio, what it bears and what propels them, which is everything in particular, The Feel Trio tries to put some things together. Alabama runs through those things like nobody's business. I kept trying to visit the uncounted space James Brown forms around the one. To celebrate the varieties of black devotion. But coalition can't be too easy; it's in our nature not to come naturally lyrically, beautifully violently. The organizing principles, in our extramusical tailor's retrofit of fitting, sharp as a tack from the tone worlds of east by southeast of Sheffield, the Bronx's compassionate project/s and fly, flaired, flared Corona: listen to everything, relax the shape, approach with love, be worthy of a lovely t! 

"To start with the obvious, The Feel Trio is a book in three parts and a book about parts. That does mean piano, bass, and drums (the trio Moten acknowledges: Cecil Taylor, William Parker, and Tony Oxley). But it can also mean maybe you’re not from these parts, so you might have to listen for a while before you get enough of a handle on it to take it with you. In fact, Moten’s work seems to claim a place for composition as listening, the way a musical improvisation engulfs and builds upon its own sounds. As a reader, you might find yourself tripping (in both senses) on the reverb of a phrase even after the music of the line has carried you elsewhere."

–Elizabeth Willis

2014 National Book Award Finalist

Winner of the California Book Award in Poetry