 I'm David Banish, Dean of Libraries here at Tulane. This poem I'm going to read is by Philip Larkin, and it's called For Sydney Bichet. That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes like New Orleans reflected on the water, and in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes. Building for some, a legendary quarter of balconies, flower baskets, and quadrills. Everyone making love and going shares. Oh, play that thing. Mute glorious story bills, others may license. Grouping around their chairs, sporting house girls like circus tigers priced far above rubies, to pretend their fads while scholars monkey nod around unnoticed, wrapped up in personnels like old plaids. On me, your voice falls as they say love should, like an enormous yes. My crescent city is where your speech alone is understood and greeted as the natural noise of good, scattering long haired grief and scored pity. Philip Larkin was an English poet. In addition to being a poet, he was also a librarian, and he was the head librarian at the University of Hall in East Yorkshire for many years. This particular poem, of course, references New Orleans, and more specifically, Sidney Bache, who was a saxophonist contemporary of Louis Armstrong, and one of the pioneers of early jazz, particularly the concept of soloing. Larkin wrote, in addition to his poetry, and being a librarian, he also wrote about jazz, and was the jazz record reviewer for the Telegraph newspaper for many years. So his writings are collected in a collection called All What Jazz, which we have here in the library.