For decades, Michael S. Harper has written poetry that speaks with many voices. His work teems with poetry configured as awe, poetry as courtship, and poetry as elegy and homage. Infused with tales and riddles, sass and satire and surprise, Harper's poetry takes the form of psalms, jazz experiments, soft serenades, and radical provocations. In Use Trouble, his first major collection since Songlines in Michaeltree, Harper renews poetry as the art of taking nothing for granted. In three groups—"The Fret Cycle," "Use Trouble," and "I Do Believe in People"—he draws on his seemingly inexhaustible resources to paint, sing, sympathize, and sorrow. Here are his tributes to his father and family, his irrepressible playfulness, and his lifelong romance between poetry and music.| Contents I. The Fret Cycle Fret (A Tune Near Composition in the Studio) A Note from Cathy at Yaddo The Lesson for Paul on Catherine Clarke?s Birthday Fret in the Woods Table Notice Fret Skips Town for a Gig in New London Fret Deep in the Woods Fret Leaves Yaddo Ghost of Fret at High Table: Mansion Fret's News from the Front: Yaddo After Martini Glasses Galore Fret Shows Up at the Metropolitan The List: Yaddo Fret Leaves Yaddo In Disguise Fret Having Survived Modernity Fret Discovers the Blues, Again Ass Fret In Studio With the Ancestors Fret Finds the Instrument of Archipelago Mt. Pleasant Local Library Fret Finds the Open Field II. Use Trouble A Photographic Guide To the City Use Trouble Portrait Esther Truimphs Homage To Jay Saunders Redding On His Natal Day: 10 13 04 Praisesong For Bb Goodbye To All That Public Letter: Visible Ink Dubonnet Archives: The Public Library I Archives: The Public Library Ii Legend of Jeannie Turner Tcat Serenade Sherley Anne Williams: 1944-1999 Chloe: Black Pastoral Luminous Handmade Book On the Theme of the Beloved Pigeon Artist On A Cellphone (Yaddo) Vote (Providence) Marilyn Tattoo Copenhagen Notes On Our Resident Humanist: Mahler B. Ryder Ostseebad Ahrenshoop Ribs Charlotte And Nathan Exchange: 50th Anniversary Charlotte To Nathan Notes On the Hopi Critical Mass Hemingway?s Iceberg Saint Dolores (Phillips Exeter Academy) ?Days Remaining?/Bloom's Day, Dublin Freud: Lessons On Boundaries George J. Makari Blues Songbirds (Habitat) ?Ponta De Areia? [Brazil] Tagore On Brodsky's Collected Three Poems: October 17, 2004 I. Archival Secrets of Mary Lincoln II. At the Square III. The Secret Lore of Will?s Presidency Zen: The Trainride Home to the Welcome Table The Flight Home Tatum Baseball (Orb) Josh Gibson Blackjack Lookbackwards: Henry Aaron?s Hammer A Centenary Ode to Eke: The Duke of Ellington Ray Charles Robinson Dead at 73 Womb of Space (Yaddo) What I Know This Very Day Along Came Betty Repeat Button Digesting Dexter Gordon at 80 Goodbye Pork Pie Hat Photo: Letter (Joel Chandler Harris) Ernesto Victor Antonucci ?Craft? Talk Elder On the Theme of Self-Knoiwledge And Education ?In Society? Though Not Defined By Falsehoods Joseph Santos Ileto The Broke And the Unbroken Jacuzzi Serenade On Arrival Christine Frey?s Resurrection The Open Studio Iowa (1961) Or ?How To Use Trouble? [Writers Workshop] Shirley of Little Falls Philip Roth ?American Masters: Pbs? (Ralph Ellison) Neighbors Leonard Brown. Musican/Teacher Richard Davis?s Trampolines Year of the Firepig In Chinese New Year Eulogy Framed As Requiem Mass On the American Frontier: Gordon Parks Modulations On A Theme?Josephus Long Eva?s Song at the End Los Angeles Coliseum Olympic Swimming Pool Frederick Armstrong Hetzel Zambia Massey?s Ministry The Tank And Its Narrators Judge & Jury The Revolutionary Garden Royce Hall (Ivie Anderson) Gwendolynian Staccato Dance Muse Spencer Trask?s Den Spoon Newk Horacescope For...