As is typical of the blues form, repetition is central to Estella Conwill Majoso’s “The Malcolm Calling Blues. In this particular case, the speaker focuses their attention on “the horn,” which creates a “note low and guttural.” While the overall message of the poem is one of sadness, it is calling the note “guttural” that first conjures up the image of loss and mourning, and this image is reinforced through the explicit statement that “breath over brass,” referring to this horn, “changes how [people] mourn. This helps strengthen the connection between this poem and the origins of blues as coming from African-American hymns and jazz, which typically involves brass ensembles: the speaker is noting that the introduction of instruments into mourning, and that mourning songs evolved into blues, has led to the evolution of mourning.
The lack of punctuation and capitalization, combined with the rhythmic meter, compounds the reading of this poem as spoken word; if considered in the context of a song, it reads much like a chant. This religious sentiment is further built upon with “markings in the sand,” which echoes Jesus’s gospel that, should one look behind them on the path of life and see only one set of footsteps in the sand, that was when He was carrying a person. Realizing that He is carrying us, according to the poem, bids the spirit come in- while the surface meaning is that this refers to that of the deceased, it can also be taken to refer to the Holy Spirit, implying that God is with the mourners as a result of the call of the horn.
This connection is further reinforced through the use of true rhyme throughout the poem, as well as the imagery that the “hum of the earth” will “make the devil cry,” implying that the genre of music that most closely allows a connection with the extranatural is blues. In addition, this implies that sadness and its ability to be expressed through music is universal.
Conwill Majoso, Estella. “The Malcolm Calling Blues.” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poetes Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Edited by Annie Finch and Katherine Varnes, U. of Michigan Press, 2002, p 196.