Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bill Zavatsky’s "To the Pianist Bill Evans" is a dense, elegiac meditation on music, memory, and loss, centered on the legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans and the tragic death of bassist Scott LaFaro. The poem moves through layered recollections, shifting between the visceral reality of physical destruction and the ethereal persistence of music. The associative, fragmented structure mimics both improvisation and the way memory works—looping, reframing, returning to certain images and themes, much like a jazz motif repeating in variation.

The poem opens with a direct invocation of Evans through one of his most famous pieces, "My Foolish Heart." The act of hearing it triggers an immediate sense of loss, as the speaker is “clouded / remembering more than / Scott LaFaro’s charred bass.” The word “clouded” suggests a kind of emotional haze, an overwhelming mix of memory and grief. The mention of LaFaro’s bass introduces one of the central tragedies in the poem: LaFaro, Evans’ bassist, was killed in a car accident in 1961 at the age of 25, just ten days after recording the legendary Live at the Village Vanguard sessions. His bass, physically damaged in a separate fire, becomes a symbol of fragility and destruction, paralleling his own premature death.

The bass appears again, resting “against a Yonkers wall / in its transit / from accidental fire,” establishing movement, both literal and metaphorical. The poem is filled with images of transition—between life and death, between physical destruction and the persistence of art, between fire and music. The bass, an extension of LaFaro’s body, is now a ruined object, its fate bound to the fire much like his own. The poet describes it as “like a shadowy / grace note / exploding into / rhythms of Lou / insanely driving.” The “Lou” here is likely Lou Levanthal, a friend of LaFaro’s who was involved in the accident. The description of the bass as both “a shadowy grace note” and a “canvas swan” evokes something both delicate and ominous—an object of beauty caught in violent circumstances.

The tactile relationship between musician and instrument is foregrounded in the lines “my hand clutched, / fingered, refingered: / steel strings as / of the human neck.” The transition from steel strings to the “vulnerable neck” is striking, collapsing the divide between instrument and body. Music and mortality are linked inextricably, and the repetition of “neck” emphasizes its fragility—whether that of the bass, the musician, or the music itself.

The speaker then turns inward, expressing a deeper personal loss: “I crushed out of the music / before I killed / by accident / whatever in me / could sing / not touching the keyboard.” There is a self-reproach here, an acknowledgment of an internal destruction parallel to the external ones already described. The phrase “not touching the keyboard” suggests a disconnection from creation, a failure to engage fully with the music or life itself. The repetition of “by accident” echoes the circumstances of LaFaro’s death, reinforcing the theme of unintended loss.

A shift occurs with the reintroduction of snow, repeating as a standalone word: “and snow / snow.” This recurrence creates a cinematic effect, emphasizing a quiet, almost suffocating atmosphere. The transition to fire immediately after—“falling as canvas and / wood and hair flamed / behind a windshield”—turns this moment into an apocalyptic vision. The elements—snow, fire, air—combine into an image of devastation, of bodies and instruments consumed by flame. The line “I imagined being / trapped inside, still / see it in my heart” suggests survivor’s guilt, an inability to separate from the trauma of loss.

The poem then moves toward an act of purification: “our terror magnified / note by note / purified each year.” Here, music becomes a means of transmutation, turning grief into something lasting, something bearable. The image of “the gentle rise / and circle of / cinders in / February air” evokes ashes floating upward, a transformation of physical matter into something more ephemeral, much like how music outlives the body.

Yet this transformation is not entirely redemptive. The poem refuses to romanticize loss. Heroin, a notorious presence in Bill Evans’ life, reappears in haunting imagery: “a space / where heroin / does not slowly wave / its blazing arm, / like smoking ivory.” The juxtaposition of heroin’s destructive presence with the image of “smoking ivory”—evoking both piano keys and opium pipes—suggests the way addiction, like music, consumes the artist’s body. Evans’ struggles with heroin are not directly addressed, but they hover in the background, an unspoken shadow over his genius.

The motif of cigarettes—objects both intimate and self-destructive—returns: “teeth and fingers / scorched by the / proximity / of cigarettes laid / on anonymous piano / lips that crush.” The image of cigarettes resting on a piano—perhaps left burning as Evans played—connects personal addiction with artistic creation. The piano itself becomes an extension of the body, its “lips” crushed, its function compromised. The inanimate and animate blur, much as the poem blurs the distinctions between body, music, and mortality.

The closing lines push toward a final plea: “we must save by song! / for which we are paid!” The exclamation signals both urgency and irony. Music is what saves them, but it is also a profession, something commodified. The poem does not idealize the artist’s devotion—it acknowledges that musicians, however transcendent their work, still exist within a system that demands their labor.

The final image is of insistence, of perseverance: “continuing to be / used, insisting / our hands present / themselves / and keep / on taking our hands.” The hands—the physical tools of the musician—become both subject and object, continuing to play even as they are worn down. There is exhaustion here, but also a compulsion, a refusal to stop. The repetition of “hands” suggests that music is not just something made but something that takes, that consumes, that demands presence.

"To the Pianist Bill Evans" is a meditation on music’s ability to hold memory and grief, but it is also an acknowledgment of how art and life are often entangled with destruction. The poem moves between physicality and abstraction, between the personal and the historical, between presence and absence. LaFaro’s bass, Evans’ playing, the heroin, the fire—all exist in a shifting landscape of recollection and loss. Through its fragmented structure, Zavatsky mirrors the improvisational nature of jazz itself, allowing emotion and memory to surface organically. The result is a tribute that is both deeply personal and universally resonant, a recognition that even as music preserves, it also exacts a toll.

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