Things....

A motto I saw:


A conversation I'm surprised I haven't had:


A snippet of my own writing that I rather like:


A sunset:


A cat in my chair:


A kick-off to my current vacation:


And on it goes!

National Poetry Month, day eighteen

All the world writes poetry, so it makes sense that one should read poems from all the world. Doing so is yet another way to remind oneself that no matter where humans live, no matter which gods they worship or what challenges they face by virtue of their geography, they are still often confronted by the same issues, and they wrestle with the same problems, and their poets and artists grapple with the same themes.

Here is a Persian poem, written by Hafiz, and translated by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Clearly it is best to read poetry in its original language, but I don't believe that we should fail to read poetry originally written in other languages if translation is our only recourse. Even if one can't get the complete sense of the poem, because of the missing connotations and the emotional heft of the cultural references, we can still find our way to the common area of humanity that underlies all art and all poetry.

I said to heaven that glowed above,
O hide yon sun-filled zone,
Hide all the stars you boast;
For, in the world of love
And estimation true,
The heaped-up harvest of the moon
Is worth one barley-corn at most,
The Pleiads' sheaf but two.

If my darling should depart,
And search the skies for prouder friends,
God forbid my angry heart
In other love should seek amends.

When the blue horizon's hoop
Me a little pinches here,
Instant to my grave I stoop,
And go find thee in the sphere.

National Poetry Month, day seventeen

A longer poem today, but the poet who may be my favorite of all time: Alfred, Lord Tennyson. His work often has a mystical, fantastic tone that appeals to me, and his language is old enough to feel like I'm entering a different poetic world when I read him, but his concerns are universal enough that I don't feel a lack of relevance. Tennyson appeals to my sense of language even more than Shakespeare does, and he always seems to describe the world in terms that reflect its sadness and its beauty.

The Lady of Shalott
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Part I
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
     To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
     The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
      Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
      The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
      Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
      The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
      Down to tower'd Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers " 'Tis the fairy
      Lady of Shalott."

Part II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
      To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
      The Lady of Shalott.

And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
      Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
      Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,
      Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
      The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
      And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
"I am half sick of shadows," said
      The Lady of Shalott.

Part III
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
      Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
      Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
      As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
      Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
      As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
      Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
      As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
      Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
      She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
      The Lady of Shalott.

Part IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
      Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
      The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance—
With a glassy countenance
      Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
      The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right—
The leaves upon her falling light—
Thro' the noises of the night
      She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
      The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken'd wholly,
     Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
      The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
      Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
      The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
      All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
      The Lady of Shalott."

National Poetry Month, day sixteen

Wow, we're now on the back half of the month! So a brief post today about that wonderful form, usually used to comic (and sometimes bawdy) effect, the limerick.

The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

Or:

The limerick’s an art form complex
Whose contents run chiefly to sex;
It’s famous for virgins
And masculine urgin’s
And vulgar erotic effects.

When I was in junior high, I suspect that all my male classmates had committed to memory a limerick beginning with "There once was a man from Nantucket".

Here's just one that I found that made me happy:

There once was a young lady named bright
Whose speed was much faster than light
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.

A nerdy limerick! I find this pleasing on multiple levels.

I wonder: has any limerick ever been composed that was also a truly great work of poetry?

Symphony Saturday

You know how sometimes you want to listen to a piece of music that is light and airy, that flits around like the will o' the wisp, that is imbued with bright charm and delicate wit?

Well, forget all that, because now we're meeting Anton Bruckner!

Bruckner, in my experience, is one of those "love him or hate him" composers...or maybe that's not quite fair. Maybe it's not "hate", but I've definitely encountered listeners for whom Bruckner is amazing, and for whom Bruckner is just someone they don't really care if they ever hear again. His symphonies are long and, at times, repetitive; he thinks nothing of writing a five-minute exposition and then putting in a repeat. His orchestrations are, at times, very heavy and dense, and if Bruckner himself wasn't quite a Wagnerian, there is at least a part of Wagner in the scope of his works and their weighty nature.

Unlike Wagner, Bruckner was a man of very deep faith, and I find it impossible to listen to Bruckner without feeling some of that spiritual nature coming through. He writes for the orchestra, at times, as though it were an organ, and his music seems almost designed to fill the cavernous spaces of enormous cathedrals, with long fugal passages and gigantic chorales and a general sense of vastness that is leading the way to Mahler.

Bruckner does not seem to have been the most self-confident of composers, which makes his works problematic for musicologists as he was constantly revising earlier works and muddying the waters as far as determining which versions are definitive. Look at the list of known revisions for today's work, and you'll see the problem.

This symphony, the Fourth in E-flat major, is often cited as the best starting point for Bruckner, and I tend to agree. The symphony does have one of the most magical openings to any symphony ever written, with the shimmering strings and then the high horn calls that seem to beckon from a distance. For the listener willing to go where Bruckner is leading, he draws you in, slowly and gently, so that when it all opens up in glory, there's simply no question that this is where he was going all along.

I actually have not heard a lot of Bruckner, but what I have heard, I love. Here is Bruckner's Symphony No. 4, the "Romantic".


Next week: another Bruckner. We'll be doing three of these altogether, so if Bruckner's not your thing, well, I'll see you in May!

National Poetry Month, day 15

For me, poetry is usually about the beauty of the language and the skill with which it evokes emotion, but there are also times when a skilled poet uses words to convey a visual sense so keen that I feel like I'm there. This is another great reason why writers should read poetry.

I read this poem for the first time this morning, after I literally opened a collection and flipped through it to come to a random stop...here. And this poem hit me between the eyes, so incredibly vivid are the details the poet uses to create his word-picture. This is just amazing.

Working in the Rain
by Robert Morgan

My father loved more than anything to
work outside in wet weather. Beginning
at daylight he'd go out in dripping brush
to mow or pull weeds for hog and chickens.
First his shoulders got damp and the drops from
his hat ran down his back. When even his
armpits were soaked he came in to dry out
by the fire, making coffee, read a little.
But if the rain continued he'd soon be
restless, and go out to sharpen tools in
the shed or carry wood from the pile,
then open up a puddle to the drain,
working by steps back into the downpour.
I thought he sought the privacy of rain,
the one time no one was likely to be
out and he was left to the intimacy
of drops touching every leaf and tree in
the woods and the easy mutterings of
drip and runoff, the shine of pools behind
grass dams. He could not resist the long
ritual, the companionship and freedom
of falling weather, or even the cold
drenching, the heavy soak and chill of clothes
and sobbing of fingers and sacrifice
of shoes that earned a baking by the fire
and washed fatigue after the wandering
and loneliness in the country of rain.

On the poet.

Bad Joke Friday

National Poetry Month, day fourteen

After a really long cold spell, we're finally getting some spring-like weather here in WNY. Who knows how long it will last...but as long as it's here, this poem seems appropriate.

Spring, the sweet spring
Thomas Nashe

pring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:
    Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:
    Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet:
    Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo!
        Spring, the sweet spring!

Something for Thursday

When you're writing a swashbuckler of a novel with young lads first learning to use a blade and pistol as your hero and dastardly men on black horses with eye-patches and a big red feather in their black hats as villains, you need to listen to some swashbuckling music to get in the mood. Erich Wolfgang Korngold is my go-to composer when there's some swash to be buckled, so here's a suite from his score to the Errol Flynn historical adventure film, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.

National Poetry Month, day 13

Not all poetry is about positive things. Poetry can be angry and visceral, as in this poem by Wilfred Owen. Owen is known as one of the great poets to write during World War I, and he was actually killed in action on November 4, 1918 -- just a week before the armistice ending the war was signed.

The Latin phrase at the end of the poem means: "It is sweet and noble to die for one's country."

Dulce et Decorum est
by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

ROGUE ONE and other thoughts on the state of STAR WARS

So, the first trailer for ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY dropped last week, and...well, it looks good. How good? I won't hazard a guess, but it does look like a Star Wars movie. Felicity Jones as the heroine looks fine, although the trope of the good guys having to trust everything to a rogue whose methods or motivations are questionable isn't the freshest thing in the universe. Also, I'm a little turned off by the apparent gritty tone of the film, which looks to me like Star Wars melded with Battlestar Galatica. Maybe it's not full-on grimdark, but the film's producers have noted in past interviews that their story isn't as morally unambiguous as the main-line Star Wars story, which isn't something I'm thrilled about. There's a place for morally ambiguous stories of war in science fiction, but Star Wars to me is about mythic storytelling, so I'm not sure how the tone will fit.

More troublesome to me is that we're going to the Death Star well again, this time to tell the story of how the Rebellion got the "complete technical readouts of that battlestation" in the first place. I'm not sure this is a story I've ever really cared about hearing, especially since this will be the fourth movie in the Star Wars universe where a big spherical planet-destroying space station is a major plot point. This, coupled with the derivative story in The Force Awakens, and with the coming films centering on young Han Solo and young Boba Fett, seems to indicate that Star Wars is heading into a period of self-referential self-milking. And it's not just the movies: we've had numerous novels and comics over the years that told versions of what happened in between the movies, and Disney's first act of business upon acquiring Star Wars was to strike all that from the record and then...immediately start producing more novels and comics that tell versions of what happened in between the movies.

Frankly, I'm starting to get a sense of Lather, rinse, repeat from Star Wars. It's the feeling I had during the second season of Star Trek: Voyager, when it became clear that we weren't going to see exciting new stories but just more TNG-flavored tales told on a new ship with a blander crew. Maybe I'm wrong and these movies will be great, but I want new stories, not constant revisitings of the old ones. I'm not interested in Star Wars as ritualistic theater where the same stories are told all the time.

::  Something crystalized for me a few days ago, via a post on Tumblr, regarding the approach Disney is taking to Star Wars as a whole, and the misgivings I had about the characterizations in The Force Awakens. Someone wrote this:

There are posts about Finn that come across my dash frequently that really concern me.

It’s not that I don’t think musings about what a sweet innocent soul he is and imagining what his humble life must’ve been like are coming from a loving place, but Finn’s character has already been filled in via a canon source, and it was not humble.

Read the novel “Before the Awakening,” where you will learn that while FN-2187 may have pulled shifts as a janitor just like any military trainee has to work some shit jobs, he was actually the absolute rock star of his elite band of Stormtroopers. He was the natural leader, the best of them all, the highest scores in every possible measure, someone Phasma and Hux were well aware of as the shining example of what their pet Stormtrooper program could accomplish. He was everything they’d worked for for years.

The only problem was, he cared too much about his fellow Stormtroopers, even though they didn’t return the feeling, due to indoctrination and some envy of his superiority. It is pretty obvious, reading BtA, that Finn is Force sensitive. It is that Force sensitivity that set him apart, and made him the one who could overcome a lifetime of indoctrination and get out.

I know it’s the fault of the film for sketching him so lightly, but guys, it is crucial that we start acknowledging who Finn is, and his strengths. Which, canonically, are leadership, strategy, all the skills a commander must have. I worry that there is too much PRECIOUS PURE CINNAMON ROLL going on and not enough shared knowledge of his *canon character background and gifts*.

Please spread the word about Finn. This sort of thing shortchanges him horribly. When the FO lost FN-2187, they lost more than just another Stormtrooper. They lost a future general, and the Resistance picked one up.

There are so many ways this makes me crazy (none of which are the poster's fault), but at the crux of it is this:

NONE OF THIS IS IN THE MOVIE.

And I'm not exaggerating here. There is not ONE thing in the movie that supports any of this. The Tumblr poster says that the movie "sketches Finn lightly", but I think that's drastically understating things. The film strongly suggests that Finn is a space-janitor who is seeing his first space action. There's no other reasonable reading of what we see in the film: the way Finn is stunned by the single death of a single stormtrooper, the way Finn lowers his weapon when he's supposed to be killing innocents, the way he just stands there slackly as Kylo Ren wanders through, the way he has to rip off his helmet to try and regain his composure...sure, Finn's training comes through at times, just by virtue of his knowing stuff ("Fly low! It'll screw up their scanners!"), but mostly, there isn't one thing in The Force Awakens that establishes Finn as "the absolute rock star of an elite band of stormtroopers". There really isn't one thing that clearly establishes him as being Force-sensitive. There isn't one thing that establishes that Finn is held in any particular esteem by Hux and Phasma (who are still awful, terrible characters). As far as the movie is concerned, Finn is just some random stormtrooper who inexplicably develops a conscience one day. Nothing of his background is established in the movie, no context is given at all for his change of heart, and to be told "Well, you gotta read this other novel to get it" is incredibly weak tea.

And that's what makes me crazy about how Disney is approaching Star Wars now.

First of all, it's simply not reasonable to expect people to be up on the minutiae of every single thing out there that has been declared to be "Star Wars canon". I'm not planning to read any of these novels; at most I'll read some of the comics. Most people who see the films will do even less than that, but now we're leaving crucial bits of information out of the films entirely. That bit about Maz saying "That's a story for another time!" when she's asked how she got Luke's original lightsaber? Well, there's no doubt in my mind we'll get that tale in some other media format, and that's a ridiculously cynical approach to storytelling. "We'll just leave crucial stuff out, so people who want a coherent tale will be forced to indulge all this other stuff!" Ugh.

The movies have to be coherent, and if they're not going to be, then I have a problem. I'm not going to sit back and enjoy Daisy Ridley and John Boyega and the others if the story they're wandering through is leaving out key details as a selling point for books, comics, and video games. In truth, I'm going to find it hard to care. If the movies can't tell the entire story -- and that means playing fair with the characterizations and explaining the presence of major items like Luke Skywalker's first damn lightsaber -- then the movies are at best lazy and at worst they are reduced to marketing devices. And wouldn't that be an irony? To see Star Wars movies reduced to pushing other media tie-in stuff so that fans can learn what the hell is going on? Years after people were busily accusing George Lucas of selling out and using his creation to sell stuff, we'll cheerfully look the other way because now Disney is doing it.

So yeah, I call bullshit -- utter, complete bullshit -- on the idea that if I didn't read some novel, I don't really understand Finn as a character. That is the job of the movies, and if they're actually not going to do it, well then, I for one will pine for the days of George Lucas being in charge.

National Poetry Month, day 12

For being "dead" as poetry is always said to be, I sure have met a lot of poets online. I sure have met a lot of folks who still practice this "dead" art form and who are still invested in its future. I sure have met a lot of people who are knowledgeable about poetry and who still insist that there are new things to say, or new ways to say old things, or new ways to say new things, using the tropes and mechanisms of poetry.

When I go to bookstores, I always see people browsing the poetry section, and I see lots of new poetry books adorning the shelves. I even buy some myself, on occasion. I've bought several poetry chapbooks for my Kindle.

Poetry is dead? Well, if it is, there sure seems to be large number of people who never got the memo.

Natasha Head is a poet I first met on Instagram, and then on Tumblr and Twitter as well. She's active on Facebook, and what's more, she's very active in the Canadian poetry community, and she has appeared on podcasts to read her work and she's been printed in Canadian journals and she has published several collections of her own work. She's quite a wonderful poet who has become an essential voice in my own writing world.

Poetry is dead? I'd tell you not to tell her, but really? I don't think she gives a shit. She's too busy writing poems.

Losers Like Us
by Natasha Head

I had the car and the notebook
You had the weed and the beer
We both had the urge for leaving
Get up and get out of here

We made it as far as the sidewalk
Never knew that at one point it ends
Never knew where the concrete would take us
Never knew that we'd never again

Hid the car in the lot at the old rink
Took the path beaten on the forest floor
Took the notebook the weed and the beer
Took again and then took some more

The camp wasn't much to look at
There really wasn't much to see
Just me with my little notebook
And you with your bag of weed

The bench was hard and splintered
But to us it was good as a throne
The smoke was heavy and skunky
If it wasn't, we would have stayed home

The soundtrack was a walkman
With blaster speakers doctored by you
Suicidal Tendencies, Social Distortion
Back then, the balls and chains were few.

You let me tell you stories
I let you read what I had wrote
I let you sing my simple words
Even then it was poetry you spoke

All we knew for certain
Was that we couldn't be caught
Losers like us have a way of evasion
We slip away with barely a thought.

(via)

National Poetry Month, day eleven

I've occasionally seen comment that JRR Tolkien's poetry in The Lord of the Rings is generally weak, but from my perspective, it's one of my favorite aspects of the book, and I find myself enjoying the verse in LOTR more each time I read it. My favorite poem in the book is almost certainly the "walking song" that is quoted a number of times throughout, and each time has a variation to reflect the events surrounding it and everything that has happened.

It begins like this, at the end of The Hobbit:

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

This is when Bilbo is about to return home to his beloved Shire, but he is forever changed by the things he has seen beyond his home's borders. The next time we encounter a version of this poem, Bilbo is striking out again, after giving up the Ring and heading for Rivendell:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

Much later we hear it again spoken by Bilbo, when he is starting to age quickly and after the entire adventure and the War of the Ring have ended. Bilbo is old and tired, and the walking song's symbolism here is obvious:

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Finally there is a haunting variant that Frodo sings, not long before he boards the ship that will bear him, along with the last of the Elves, to the faraway land:

Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

Is Tolkien a great poet? I don't know, and I'm prepared to allow the experts to have their say, but it does seem to me that there's something to be said for the fact that his verse is still being read, recited, and set to music this many decades after it was written.

National Poetry Month, day ten

I always loved it when Bill Watterson interjected a bit of verse into Calvin and Hobbes, and this one might be my favorite.

National Poetry Month, day nine

The intersection of music and poetry is a fascinating one. There are song lyrics, which are almost always poetry, and then there's the way in which poetry and music both can sometimes reflect the world in similar ways. There is often a mystery at the heart of both poetry and music, in that the poets and the composers have things to say about the world that really can't be said in any other way.

This is a poem about music. Someone said something once to the effect that "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture," which is clever and pithy and...well, a little wrong. Words can never quite express what music does, but that doesn't mean that words can't point the way or capture something of the emotion we feel about a work of music. This poem does something else, though: it expresses gratitude that music even exists.

There is a story here, of course. When Sergei Rachmaninov premiered his Symphony No. 1, the work's reception was so disastrous that it sent the young composer into a depression that lasted several years, until he finally received therapy that helped him recover enough confidence to finish his Piano Concerto #2, which is merely one of the greatest concertos of all time. Rachmaninov went on to a long life of composition, and lovers of his work -- amongst whom I count myself -- are indebted to Nikolai Dahl, the physician who conducted Rachmaninov's therapy.

This poem, by Diane Ackerman, expresses that very gratitude. I read it in a book called The Music Lover's Poetry Anthology, which I bought whilst in New York City last November. Nikolai Dahl is a curious footnote in music history, but what a footnote!

Rachmaninoff's Psychiatrist
by Diane Ackerman

I'm listening to Rachmaninoff's
Piano Concerto No. 2,
which he dedicated to Dr. Dahl,
the psychiatrist who guided him
through the straights of fever,
not long after Sergei had heard
his own first symphony played.
Horrified by its many defects
which seemed a sewage of noise,
he had fled the hall, ashamed,
a quagmire of self-doubt.

We cannot know all the sounds
Dahl and he exchanged,
but rubbing one word against another,
Dahl gradually restored
Sergei's confidence. History tells
that Dahl used affirmations
and auto-suggestion:
"You will compose again."
"You will write a piano concerto."
"You will write with great facility."
Repeated until the words saturated
His gift from head to fingers.

In truth, nothing can kill a gift,
but it may become anemic
from great shock or stress-
a sprain of the emotions will do,
or a traffic accident of the heart,
or a failure dire as a clanging bell.

For two years, Dahl worked
on Sergei's shattered will.
at last he collected up his senses
in a burst of blood fury
and composed his triumphant
2nd Piano Concerto,
full of tenderness and yearning,
beguiling melodies, raging passion,
and long sensuous preludes
to explosive climaxes,
frenzy followed by strains
of mysticism and trance.

Loaded with starry melodies,
it was a map of his sensibility,
and a wilderness rarely known
-the intense life of an artist
seen in miniature, with rapture expressed
as all-embracing sound.

Will you tell me if you know,
how Dahl might have received
such a gift? I cannot imagine it.
With hugs and shared enthusiasm?
With an austere thank you?
In his private moments, did he weep
at the privilege allowed him?
For a time he held the exposed heart
of a great artist, cupped his hands
around it like a flame, blew gently,
patiently, until it flared again.

For that, he earned the blessings
of history, and soothed millions
of hungry souls he would never meet.
Listening to Rachmaninoff's
concerto today, intoxicated by its fever,
I want to kiss the hands of Dahl,
but he is beyond my touch or game.
Allow me to thank you in his name.

Symphony Saturday

A symphony today by an American woman.

In the late 19th century, the American musical tradition was pretty much an extension of the European musical tradition, which is generally why American composers of that period aren't generally held in the highest regard; American concert music was still maturing, and the first real American musical forms -- rooted in the emergence of jazz -- had yet to fully emerge. But there was still good music being written, and it's really Eurocentrism that keeps a lot of it from being heard more.

A good example is this fine symphony by Amy Beach, who lived from 1867 to 1944. She was a prodigy and a gifted performer who received great acclaim as she took the stage in her late teens, but then she married a man who decided that she shouldn't perform much and that she shouldn't study composition with a teacher, so while she continued making music, I must inevitably wonder what art was stifled by our society's sexist idiocy of the day. During her lifetime, her compositions were actually credited to "Mrs. H.H.A. Beach." The mind, hopefully, reels.

Beach's Gaelic Symphony is reminiscent of Dvorak (who was a heavy influence upon her) in its orchestration, and she used a number of Irish songs in the symphony's melodic material, creating a work that is fascinating to hear. Beach wrote this symphony early in her musical life, before she embraced native musical material, but it is still a fine and invigorating listen. In her later life, Beach would live for 34 years as a widow, composing and teaching. She never wrote another symphony, unfortunately.

Here is the Gaelic Symphony by Amy Beach.

National Poetry Month, day eight

A short poem today, short but powerful. One of the band directors at the music camp which featured in yesterday's post actually wrote a piece for symphonic winds based on this poem, which packs tremendous imagery and emotional power into just four lines. The Western wind has many connotations, few of them bad, and in this case, the speaker is praying for its return so that the "small rain" can return, bringing cleansing and healing. And then, the wish for a return to a familiar warm bed and the arms of a beloved. This is a very old poem, and nothing is known of its writer; in fact, it may be just a fragment of a larger work that is lost to us now. If so, and if the remaining work is as good as this quatrain that has survived to our time, what a loss that must be!

Western wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ! If my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again!

Nothin' good comes from a can.... (An experiment involving whipped cream)

Pie-in-the-face weirdness below the break....

Bad Joke Friday

I saw this on Tumblr:

Bwwaaaa hahahahaha!!!

National Poetry Day, day seven

OK, story time. In high school, I attended a summer music camp several times, and then in college, I served there as a camp counselor. This was almost your canonical summer camp, with cabins in the woods and campfires and singalongs and all that stuff, but for music students.

When I was heading into my senior year, I developed a big crush on a bassoon player there, and I tried flirting, which failed badly because I'm terrible at flirting. She was pretty and she had this hippie thing going on that I liked enormously, though, and when I actually conversed with her about stuff, we became pretty good friends, and we exchanged letters during the next couple of school years. All in all, typical. The first letter in the chain came from her, and she was the type to put pretty doodles and jot down poems on the outside of her envelopes, the first of which was the first stanza of this poem by Thoreau.

For that reason, I've loved this poem ever since.

Like any writing, poetry should have a personal dimension to it. I can trace many of my favorite books to times and places that are dear to me, for one reason or another; why shouldn't it be so with poetry?

To the Maiden in the East,
by Henry David Thoreau

Low in the eastern sky
Is set thy glancing eye;
And though its gracious light
Ne'er riseth to my sight,
Yet every star that climbs
Above the gnarled limbs
    Of yonder hill,
Conveys thy gentle will.

Believe I knew thy thought,
And that the zephyrs brought
Thy kindest wishes through,
As mine they bear to you,
That some attentive cloud
Did pause amid the crowd
     Over my head,
While gentle things were said.

Believe the thrushes sung,
And that the flower-bells rung,
That herbs exhaled their scent,
And beasts knew what was meant,
The trees a welcome waved,
And lakes their margins laved,
     When thy free mind
To my retreat did wind.

It was a summer eve,
The air did gently heave
While yet a low-hung cloud
Thy eastern skies did shroud;
The lightning's silent gleam,
Startling my drowsy dream,
     Seemed like the flash
Under thy dark eyelash.

Still will I strive to be
As if thou wert with me;
Whatever path I take,
It shall be for thy sake,
Of gentle slope and wide,
As thou wert by my side,
     Without a root
To trip thy gentle foot.

I 'll walk with gentle pace,
And choose the smoothest place
And careful dip the oar,
And shun the winding shore,
And gently steer my boat
Where water-lilies float,
     And cardinal flowers
Stand in their sylvan bowers.

(Oh, and that girl? The bassoon player? We're friends on Facebook and she's still really cool; she works in ecology. And as luck would have it, I still ended up spending my life with a double-reed player.)