The morning revealed
as an imaginary hand
pulls a coverlet back
to unconceal the skies.
And though stars
of a poet’s versifying
fade into the light
-the day undenying-
they remain watchful
for hopes and wishes and dreams
gratifying.
I was on a quest last Sunday.
I had to seek out a new strand of white cord, clear light (not LEDs*), non-blinking icicle lights. This was because a) I had to replace a strand that I had tested prior to installing on the eaves of our humble abode (and it worked), yet after hanging them, one section of lights stopped working (arghh) and b) I was tired of troubleshooting this strand of lights with extra bulbs and fuses.
I was out running another errand when I got sucked into a newly built megastore (Oh..I’ll stop in there) – Like I had a bullseye on me or something.
First of all…it was as if the retail master had thrown all the quest ploys in my path. I entered the store, and had to decide to go straight ahead or turn left. I don’t know where the holiday section is here, but..just to the left, there is a token holiday light display, with the simple green string lights (white twinkling and multicolored variety), but no icicle lights. Surely there is more, I thought. I decided to turn left into the main thoroughfare and begin my descent into the labyrinth. I was met by all manners of shopping chaos, carts going across the aisle, people standing in the middle of the aisle talking…After weaving in and out of traffic, I hung a sharp right through the greeting cards and cut through the kitchen linens and was almost popped by a shopping cart rounding the corner. After exchanging apologies with the nice lady, I resumed my journey into the retail hell.
In the center of stores they like to place shelves that engulf you like some sort of canyon in which you lose your way, and by some fortunate circumstance find your way back. I moved to the left towards kitchenwares and tchotchkes so that I could get a better view of the landscape. I rounded the corner just in time to see the same lady that almost plowed me over in linens. We shared an uncomfortable smile and I quickly looked for a means of navigating out of there. Scanning the horizon, I saw red placards hanging from the ceiling. Further back in the store to my left, I saw one labeled HOLIDAY.
This was like some sort of heavenly sign – I swear I heard an angel choir.
They placed their entire holiday section in the back, the farthest corner from the entrance, with no indication of where it was. I moved toward the holiday zone with its bustling activity, and noticed the light displays on the back wall. Cautiously peeking around every corner, I walked through the prelit tree display and found myself among a huge throng of shoppers, the likes that I have never seen in one retail aisle.
The great equalizer in holiday decorating is that everyone uses lights, but everyone has different tastes in style of lights. Men, women, and children, young and old, wearing boots or slippers, fleece sweaters or jerseys, well made up or just woke up, all seeking quality holiday lighting.
On one 15 foot stretch of aisleway.
In the very back of the store.
I quickly scanned the available products and found icicle lights, but they were only available in green strand lights and that does not match our sense of decor. Green strand lights go in bushes and trees. White strand lights hang from eaves and windows.
Dejected from my lack of finding proper icicle lighting, I turned and began the walk out. To console myself I purchased a small strand of green lights on green strand (knowing that I needed an extra hundred lights for the final tree decoration in the front yard). Then, staying to the main aisles this time and moving slowly as to properly scan the intersections for oncoming traffic, I went to check out.
As I waited to pay, I pondered my trek through the maze and decided that even though I had not found what I wanted/needed, the excitement of the afternoon was exhilarating. I also purchased a diet green beverage to slake my thirst. I then thanked the cashier for her pleasantness and walked out of the store.
I found the icicle lights I needed later that night at a different store.
But it was all about the journey.
********************************
a great equalizer
funneled into the
cosmos
to seek
enlightenment,
where she wanders-
how she sulks
and saunters,
and nothing
can be
ventured without
the journey
in the maze.
*Lest you chastise me for not choosing energy efficient LEDs, in my opinion they are cost prohibitive (in the retail sense), and only available in small strand lengths.
As with a string
pulled in from the darkness
and away from
from the murder of
snowflakes, in paths
swarming
between the linear
and the not.
Away from
the hollowness
that echos
off cylindrical walls
towards a light
embraced in supple warmth,
its source unseen,
encased in distorted glass.
draping
the boughs of
a wintered tree
accrued
and angel-cared,
one two three,
yet subtraction
agreed,
with a
disappearance
forseen –
the implosion grown
abridged,
dripping
and small.
*********************
one of those little verse items that creep into your brain and don’t let go until you formulate a poem.
In songs
I play
the sound peaks.
Pizzicato
-the splash of a pebble
breaking the water’s surface-
then hide from the rushing
sounds
of swelling streams
where,
as in triumphant marches,
I reemerge
marcato –
thrust
and struck.
At the division
in the clouds,
she gathered the
late harvest,
as light
assembled and
comprehended
before the first frost,
waving at a point below
to handfuls of borne fruit
-not yet ripened.
Radiance jumped into the crevasse,
its purpose met
and bequeathed
to sequent moments.
em>Acappella music (without instrumental accompaniment) is particularly enjoyable for me to listen to. As a poet (and an avocational musician), I am drawn to the similarities that poems and acappella music have. Lyrical phrasing, meter, rhyming, assonance, and consonance mean so much to acappella music, because it relies so heavily on the human vocal element.
**********************************
It has been a while since I did one of these.
Partly because I hadn’t heard any new inspiring songs recently, neither was I particularly inspired to seek out any songs.
Until today.
I was wondering whether anyone had done an arrangement of Emily Dickinson poems for acappella chorus. Google. What a time waster saver. I found quite a few. And it should come as no surprise, as Ms. Dickinson is arguably the most prolific of American Poets and one of the more emotive poets (and also – to her credit – concise). These characteristics make her writing great fodder for choral literature.
The first one I noticed (and I think that I’ve sung it once) was Let down the Bars, O Death, composed by Samuel Barber, who was responsible for another haunting poem/choral selection that I discussed a while back, Louise Bogan’s To Be Sung on the Water. He wrote this piece during the same summer (1936)** as the string quartet that would eventually become Adagio for Strings.
Let down the Bars, O Death*
Emily Dickinson
Music by Samuel Barber
Let down the Bars, O Death —
The tired Flocks come in
Whose bleating ceases to repeat
Whose wandering is done —
Thine is the stillest night
Thine the securest Fold
Too near Thou art for seeking Thee
Too tender, to be told.
This setting is a simple chorale, with none of Barber’s usual complex counterpoint, but it is effective at letting Dickinson’s text carry the load. Given her gift for emotionally charging phrases, it definitely works with his gift for musical conflict and resolution. The opening of the piece sounds like a call, an invocation that begins hushed, and crescendos to the conclusion, where the opening lines are repeated/declared with emphasis.
The next piece was a bit of a surprise. I have a soft spot for poetry that is light and hopeful (something that is not necessarily plentiful in Dickinson’s canon of writing), so when I happened upon “Hope” is the thing with feathers, I was hooked.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers*
Emily Dickinson
Music by Kenny Potter
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
There are several different choral arrangements of this poem, but in my opinion, none of them capture the intention of the words like this arrangement by Dr. Kenny Potter of Wingate University. Recently composed in 2011***, this piece allows the underlying message to drive the song, with the opening lines carried through as heartbeat. A carefree melody, which breaks slightly to express the seriousness of the last line (much like Barber in the effective use of chorale style), but then returns to the patter of the “thing with feathers, and sings the tune without the words – and never stops – at all” fading to the end.
I believe he created an earworm.
The video I selected is a combined performance of several pieces. The first one is “Hope” is the thing with feathers. Have a listen. You will be humming this the next day.
*****************************************************************************************
*The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)
**G. Schirmer, Octavo 8907
***Published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing (SB.SBMP-1017) 2011
All of my most
compelling photographs
have roads in them:
The lonely stretch of highway
to the left of a bittersweet sunset.
after the leaves have
all blown away.
The S-curve in a raceway,
-empty-
then full of revving vehicles
vying for the sweet spot in the turns,
to accelerate into the straightaway
that continues out of view.
The picturesque motorway,
that aligns directly with
an imposing palisade of rock and ice,
only to veer sharply
and begin mounting the range,
passing through the crags
to some apex.
The city’s avenue at dusk after
a spring shower, streetlights
glow off the pavement,
and tail lights pierce the
somberness
as if to punctuate
my transitory presence
in a moment.
A reminder
that I was there and moved on.
in the corner
where the buildings meet
is where the wind dives in
to swarm
and spiral in
a reel.
you only know that
because the tattered
blue plastic
jumps and skates
to the left
and the crumpled
kraft paper skitters away
to the right,
both fettered by an unpredictable swirl.
the one perfect thing
is the tumbleweed branch
pushed along
by this dervish
and goaded into rolling away.
In an extrusion
a mist of poems
read to the pink dusk
of September
-a pearlescent haze suspended-
before some fell like blooms
from a Rose of Sharon
– left to wane and decay with the days to bronze-
And some,
blossomed in full,
agape and yawning with nectar’s tumescence,
curled tightly in a twist,
a final coalescence suspended
there and left in her mind,
deliquescent.
Taps and Ratamacues 