The Best American Poetry

Why Lee Wiley?

Lee Wiley (1908-1975) was the greatest girl singer you may never have heard of. Try her interpretations of these tunes:

Let's Fall in Love
O! Look at Me Now
Manhattan
Street of Dreams
Soft Lights and Sweet Music
Time On My Hands
Looking at You
More Than You Know
My One and Only
Ghost of a Chance
How Long Has this Been Goiung On?
I've Got a Crush on You
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Glad To Be Unhappy

--DL

Invisibility Leaves Traces [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

    My grandmother Alichka, whose birthday I always remember as it coincides with International Women's Day in March, had a Singer sewing machine. It occupied all the wall space between the door and her bed. It had a pedal to step on for the machine to work. Just like my father's Lada car had pedals: a pedal for gas, a pedal for the brake, and even a pedal to make the car roar like a bear. 

    Alichka could mend things without the sewing machine. She had a special plastic mushroom for simple fixes. Let's say you had a hole in your trousers. Alichka would then find the thread of the color of your pants (she had a magical chest of various threads, needles, and buttons; her collection of buttons deserves a poem dedicated to them alone.) Alichka would take her plastic mushroom and place it inside your trousers right under the hole (you must not wear your trousers at that time, of course!) and stitch them in a way you would never guess that the hole was there. Unless it was in a prominently visible place, but even then, it would be noticeable only if someone paid close attention to your trousers. Which rarely happens. 

    Sometimes, there would be no hole yet, only a tear or just the traces of a future tear. Then it was not necessary to undress; you could keep your trousers on while Alichka mended the tear without her Singer machine and without her plastic mushroom – just with her hands. In such cases, out of superstition, she would cut a piece of the thread and give it to you to hold in your mouth during the entire mending procedure. It would ensure that the needle did not accidentally stitch your brain. Not sure exactly how the whole thing worked, but it must have worked just fine. Alichka often mended my clothes, and every single time I held a thread in my mouth while she worked, and I don't believe my brain was accidentally sewn. Or, if it happened, we didn't notice it. 

    When Alichka was stitching, her hands would leave traces in the air. Quick horizontal traces. Just as a conductor paints music with a baton. Conducting lesson 101: imagine you're a painter, and the baton is your brush. Invisibility leaves traces. 

Do you know who composed the theme of Perry Mason?

It was Fred Steiner, who died at age 88, at his home in the town of Ajijic in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

but let's not overlook, Jerry Goldsmith, who wrote the music for Patton and did some of the incidental music for many episodes of Perry Mason,

and while we're at it, let's saluter another Jerry, Jerry Fielding, who wrote the music of The Wild Bunch.

Judy Garland: The Road Gets Rougher

On June 10, 1922, Judy Garland was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, at 6 AM. With her moon in Sagittarius, and her Mercury and Venus in Cancer (her rising sign), the great singer had the heart of a poet, the sensitivity of an eternal diva, and a really good voice. If only there had been more Virgo or Taurus in her chart, the girl who embodied Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” might have had greater career endurance. The absence of earth signs doomed her to a nervous disposition and the likelihood of an early death. The 2019 movie Judy did Judy no favors.

On June 10, 1922, Judy Garland was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, at 6 AM. With her moon in Sagittarius, and her Mercury and Venus in Cancer (her rising sign), the great singer had the heart of a poet, the sensitivity of an eternal diva, and a really good voice. If only there had been more Virgo or Taurus in her chart, the girl who embodied Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” might have had greater career endurance. The absence of earth signs doomed her to a nervous disposition and the likelihood of an early death. The 2019 movie Judy did Judy no favors.

Born Frances Ethel Gumm, Judy craved the approval of father figures, was easily bruised by criticism, sometimes affected nonchalance but really cared very deeply about other people and wanted to be included in group activities. Her Saturn in Libra helps to explain her outstanding musical talent, and her will to succeed in motion pictures may be inferred from her midheaven in Pisces conjunct Uranus.

         The death of Judy's father at age thirteen stunned the young actress, who eventually broke off relations with her mother. The amphetamines helped in the short run. She had five husbands and a torrid affair with lyricist Johnny Mercer (pictured right) when she was eighteen and he, thirty. He wrote the words of “That Old Black Magic” and “I Remember You” with her in mind.

         An old astrological adage: The stars favor the stars.  From the moment the teenage Garland sang to Clark Gable's photograph ("You Made Me Love You"), her astonishing rise to the heights of Hollywood glory was in the cards (Queen of Hearts high) as was, alas, the inevitability of internal conflicts and demons postponed but not resolved by the habitual use of narcotics. She was still in her teens when she and Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr sang as they danced along the yellow brick road leading to the wonderful wizard of Oz. That was in Technicolor. Already in the black-and-white of Kansas cornfields, she sang the anthem of eternal aspiration, “Over the Rainbow,” which was named the greatest song of the twentieth century in a survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America in 2001.

          As kids Judy and Mickey Rooney teamed up in movies, and their duet versions of “Our Love Affair” and “How About You?” are the best out there. She did “The Trolley Song” in one picture and “The Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” in another. The two best versions of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the best American Christmas song not written by Jews, are hers and Sinatra's. She would have made a great Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin’s “Annie, Get Your Gun,” and we still have tape of the one song she did (“Doin’ a What Come Naturally”), but she was too fucked up to do the movie and the part went to Betty Hutton.

         In Chinese astrology, Judy was born in the year of the dog. Her element is water. This is consistent with her destiny. Her relation to Minnesota mirrors that of Dorothy to Kansas except that there was no home to go back to. The three farm hands in the dream were almost recognizably there, surrounding her bed, when she awoke in Hollywood. Why did gay men have a thing about her? Because (a) they had good taste, (b) they could identify with her suffering, (c) they could admire her indomitable will, (d) they could smell the tragedy on her breath, (e) even macho boys could identify themselves with Dorothy Gale, (f) where gossip and conjecture overlap, anything goes, or (g) all, some, or none of the above. And remember: she was the mother of Liza Minelli, and all you need to do is see the 2014 revival of Cabaret (2014), good as it is, and compare Michelle Williams’s performance as Sally Bowles with that of Liza in the 1972 movie, and you will see the difference between an actress who is trying as hard as she can and a natural-born diva, with the vocal cords of a heroine and the soul of Judy Garland’s daughter.

            In the 1960s Judy was hell on wheels to work with, if Mel Tormé's account in The Other Side of the Rainbow is to be trusted. Mel Tormé was the music director on her short-lived television program, “The Judy Garland Show” on CBS, and Tormé says she tormented him. Judy would call you in the middle of the night, make you come over and hold her hand, make capricious decisions, stand up guest stars like Lena Horne, skip rehearsals, tell fart jokes on the set. On the other hand she was who she was, and you loved her when she lifted her glass and said “l’chayem.” She was so earnest you couldn’t help pulling for her. “This television jazz is all new to me,” she said. “The Blue Lady helps to get my heart started.” She couldn’t stand what she called the Smothers’ Brothers “goyishe humor,” and the show had other guests of that ilk. But when Barbra Streisand was the guest star, it was incredible. The two divas did a duet of “Get Happy” and “Happy Days Are Here Again” that you can listen to over and over again – it is the ideal rendering of two of the Depression’s enduring hits.

           Judy sang and danced with Gene Kelly (“For Me and My Gal”) and with Fred Astaire (“Easter Parade”), and the saints of St. Louis marched in and sang "The Trolley Song" in unison on June 22, 1969, the day of her death. She had a natural talent for the Al Jolson songbook ("After You've Gone"). At Carnegie Hall in 1961, with composer Harold Arlen in the audience, she sang "Get Happy," "Stormy Weather," "The Man That Got Away," and "Come Rain or Come Shine." Five Grammy awards! She was dead at 46.

            If Judy and Frank Sinatra had been lovers, they would have scored very high in passion, high in intimacy, average in synergy, and below average in commitment.

-- from the archives; first appeared, in somewhat different form, on Judy Garland's birthday in 2014. 

Dick Lourie: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

____________________________________________________________________________

Justice

It’s been reported that when the Beatles

were introduced to Steve Cropper—white genius

of Black Memphis music—the four of them

all stood as one and bowed from the waist: an

 

appropriate homage I’d say     displaying their

good sense—and making me wish that those who buy

records were that astute     instead     as we know

Steve Cropper’s name is not yet a household word

 

except when compared with that of Lowman Pauling

his own acknowledged inspiration now

forgotten     who all through the forties and

fifties played guitar and sang with The 5 Royales

 

Black musicians making Black people’s music

in the USA of lynching and Jim

Crow     colored water fountains and early

death for Negroes who didn’t know their place

 

in a better world we would all stand up

you and I     John     Paul     George     Ringo     and Steve

“The Five Royales” we’d say     as if we were

up on stage proudly introducing them

 

before a huge enthusiastic crowd

“Johnny Tanner and Eugene Tanner on

lead vocals” we’d say     “Jimmy Moore     Otto

Jeffries     Obadiah Carter singing

 

harmony    and on bass harmony and

guitar: Lowman Pauling     Ladies and

Gentlemen” we’d say “this is like gospel

sweetness caught and held by the sting of that

 

guitar—soul starts here” we’d say “and doo-wop

starts here     so will you please welcome The 5

Royales”     and then we would all kneel and kiss

their shiny shoes

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Dick Lourie’s new book, Jam Session and Other Poems (Hanging Loose), reflects his half-century of engagement with two professions: he’s both a poet and a professional blues sax player. In the book’s title poem, Jazz and Blues are two old friends sitting in a café.  A previous book of poems, If the Delta Was the Sea, was inspired by his twenty years of visiting and playing music in the Mississippi Delta. In 1966 he co-founded Hanging Loose Press with Bob Hershon, Emmett Jarrett, and Ron Schreiber. He is still active as co-publisher and co-editor.

[Click for more information on Steve Cropper, Lowman Pauling, and the 5 Royales.]

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

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A Hundred Years from Today [by Doris Day, Maxine Sullivan, Frank Sinatra, and June Hutton]

I like New York in June (how about you?) [music Burton Lane, lyrics Ralph Freed]

When a girl meets boy,
Life can be a joy,
But the note they end on,
Will depend on little pleasures they will share,
So let us compare.

 

I like New York in June, how about you?
I like a Gershwin tune, how about you?

I love a fireside when a storm is due.
I like potato chips, moonlight and motor trips,
How about you?

 

I'm mad about good books, can't get my fill,
And Franklin Roosevelt's looks give me a thrill.
Holding hands at the movie show,
When all the lights are low
May not be new, but I like it,
How about you?

 

I like Jack Benny's jokes,
(To a degree.)
I love the common folks,
(That includes me.)
I like to window shop on 5th Avenue,
(I like banana splits, late supper at the Ritz,
How about you?)

 

I love to dream of fame, maybe I'll shine,
(I'd love to see your name right beside mine.)
I can see we're in harmony,
(Looks like we both agree)
On what to do,
And I like it, how about you?

Marilyn Monroe as Chanteuse [by David Lehman]

We don't think of her as a singer, but Marilyn Monroe (whose birthday it is) sang -- and sang well. Unlike Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak in Pal Joey, Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, she needed no dubbing. (They shouldn't have dubbed Ava Gardner in Show Boat but that's another story.) See Marilyn making the most of a secondary role in Niagara, or fighting with her beau in Bus Stop, or teaming with Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, or joining Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, Mitzi Gaynor, and Donald O'Connor on the Irving Berlin bandwagon in There's No Business Like Show Business, or cavorting with cross-dressers Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot. She sings in each of these movies and the songs are noteworthy, each and all.  

Some songs with male chorus and big brass solos, such as Berlin's "Heat Wave" ("she started a heat wave / by making her seat wave") are extravaganzas of sexual desire and energy. You can't keep your eyes off her, which is as it should be, but one consequence is that you don't hear enough of the voice. And wait till you hear her sing the same songwriter's "Lazy" and “After You Get What You Want You Don’t Want It.” Sublime.

Listen to her rendition of "I'm Through with Love," or "I Wanna Be Loved By You," "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" or "Bye Bye, Baby" -- but listen to the songs without looking at the visuals. You'll hear a melodious voice of limited range, thin but accurate, with a husky low register, a breathy manner, and a rare gift of vibratro. When her voice trembles over a note -- over "you" or "baby" -- the effect is seductive and yet is almost a caricature of the seductress's vamp. The paradox of her singing is that she reveals her sexual power and flaunts her vulnerability -- to flip the usual order of those verbs. She can be intimate and ironic at the same time.

Compare her version of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" with Carol Channing's definitive Broadway treatment, and you get the essential difference between theater and cinema, New York and Hollywood. Channing's is the superior theatrical experience: funny, charming, a show-stopper of the first order. But Channing serves the song where Monroe makes her songs sound like illustrations of her life. Monroe's treatment of "Diamonds" may not be as effective as Channing's in its service to Leo Robin's marvelous lyric for Jules Styne's delightful tune. But Monroe's version is younger, friskier, sexier. When she sings it, the song is about her. Music is the food of love, and sexual ecstasy is on the menu, for dessert.

Nowhere is she better than "I'm Through with Love," which she sings in Some Like It Hot. Gus Kahn's lyric, which rhymes "I'm through" with "adieu," is as apt for Marilyn as "Falling in Love Again" was for Marlene Dietrich. In "I'm Through with Love," the singer feigns nonchalance, affects an uncaring attitude. But melodically during the bridge, and lyrically in the line "for I must have you or no one," the song lets us know just how much she does care. Monroe implies this pathos in "I'm Through with Love" at the same time as she struts her stuff. She vows that she'll "never fall again" and forbids Love -- as if the abstraction stood for a Greek god or for the entire male sex -- to "ever call again." But we don't quite believe her, because we know temptation is just around the corner. In a sense, her voice thrusts out its hips when she sings. It's a feast for all the senses.

June 1, 2017

Ed. note: All BAP blog posts by David Lehman are copyright c David Lehman. All rights reserved.

Some other time. . .

 

 

Out of Reach [by Lera Auerbach]

Ink on Music Paper © Lera Auerbach

 

When something is out of reach – sometimes it is just out of reach by a tiny bit, not close enough to grasp, but almost there. At other times, it is so enormously out of reach that reaching for it is altogether unthinkable. 

Jessye Norman was giving a masterclass at the Juilliard School. A student singer had difficulty reaching the highest note; it kept sounding flat and unrefined. The harder she tried, the worse it sounded. Norman stopped the student. She whispered to her, "The note is already there. All you have to do is let it sound. Just like that." And Norman sang a perfectly executed passage without any preparation.

 

Great Songs of Cinema [by Elizabeth Samet]

What do you think of first? “Over the Rainbow,” “As Time Goes By,” “Singin’ in the Rain”? Win, place, and show on the AFI’s “Top Movie Songs of All Time” list. My pick, Judy Garland’s devastating “The Man That Got Away,” from A Star is Born, comes in at #11. It was another Garland song, “Get Happy,” the triumphant final number in Summer Stock, that launched what became a feature in my film class this semester: “Movie Song of the Day.” This innovation was inspired by some extremely music-savvy students in the class—astonishingly well versed in everything from Alternative Country to Tin Pan Alley, nearly impossible to stump, able to hum obscure covers of obscurer originals. Lately, owing to their tutelage, I find myself with a rather eclectic mix on the iPod.... It is one wild ride to work in the morning. After Garland, I brought in everything from Fred Astaire’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz” (Blue Skies) to The Rolling Stones’ “Monkey Man,” one of the many songs featured in that magnificent montage toward the end of Goodfellas. One morning I played The Doors’ “Peace Frog,” featured in, of all movies, The Waterboy—a fact one member of the class announced even before Morrison had time to warm up. My students also began to bring in their favorites: Bobby Bare’s cover of Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s alkin’” (Midnight Cowboy), Keith Carradine’s “I’m Easy” (Nashville), Citizen Cope’s “Bullet and a Target” (Alpha Dog).

from the archive; first posted Novdmber 22, 2014

From My Diary No. 3 – February 2020

 

Inner Voices – Oil on Canvas by Lera Auerbach

(1.)

I think of the mountain from Rafael's childhood.
Once upon a time, there lived a woman.
Her name was Soledad.
Nobody lives on that mountain now.
Nobody is left who remembers Soledad,
only Stella (Rafael's mother) and Rafael.
She's also in my memory.
And if you are reading this, she's now in your memory, too.

You may forget about Soledad as soon as you finish reading this.
Or, perhaps, I may make her a bit more memorable
or bring her name again later, so if you forget her now,
you will remember when you see her name later on.

Soledad was 82 years old when she died.
The house, high in the mountains, had no electricity,
and each morning, she would milk cows and look around for snakes.

Snakes loved the sun and would come out to lie on the stones.
Some of the snakes were poisonous, but they only bite if frightened.

Nobody knows how Soledad appeared and from where she came.
She was always living with Rafael's family, although she was not related to any of them.

Soledad never married.
Every night she would make bread in the oven,
enough for the whole family.
She would drink coffee all day long,
and her hands smelled of coffee, bread, and milk.

When we moved to our house in Florida, Rafael bought a machete to protect against the snakes.
He never used it, and the machete was lost,
just as so many things tend to get lost and never found again.

(Where do all these lost things go?)

 

(2)

Before coming to the Mayo Clinic, I was preparing to perform my 'Arctica' with the Oslo Philharmonic.
In my hotel room in Rochester, I had a piano, and after long days of tests and doctor's consultations,
I would return and practice for the upcoming concert.

Very few people knew I was at the Mayo Clinic. One of them was Enric Sala.
Enric is an explorer with National Geographic and my partner in the "Arctica" project.
Enric encouraged me to put my health first and not to postpone the surgery.
I don't know if I would have the strength to cancel my performance in Oslo without Enric's support and perspective.

Fortunately, the presenters found another pianist who was able to learn the solo part in time.
The performance in Oslo went on as scheduled.
I felt like the captain who abandoned the ship, yet the ship miraculously sailed on,
while the captain was left alone on the reefs, bruised and confused.

Each day in the hospital, some part of me was in Oslo, rehearsing with the choir,
rehearsing with the orchestra, practicing alone.
Another part of me was back in the Arctic, listening to its silence (which is never silent)
and trying to grasp the enormity of its solitude.

Arctica – the fragile giant, the North of the North.

Only a small part of me, the least real one, was in the hospital,
trying to walk around my room (ten steps in each direction)
while holding onto the IV stand.

I also used the IV stand in my symphony as a musical instrument –
it is how "Arctica" starts – with the sound of drops falling from an IV stand.
Sound of time passing, ice melting, seconds and droplets melting away.

(Sound of a hospital, of a medical emergency, of life passing or life renewing itself.)

 

(3.)

Generally speaking, quarantines need to be continuous –
since at any time in any given place, there are plenty of contagious illnesses.
One quarantine should melt into another.

Quarantines shouldn't be limited to viruses.
For example, when there is a spike in fatal crashes while driving,
there should be a few days per week when driving is forbidden.
Or at least limited to certain hours.
Let's say one would be allowed to drive between 2:00 and 5:00 AM at night
when nobody drives, but not during rush hours.
It would certainly balance things and improve statistics.

The researchers at the Mayo Clinic explained to me that Cushing disease
has only a 30% success rate of treatment by operation in Germany,
while in the USA, the rate of success is 100%.

"How could it be?" I asked.

"We operate on healthy people," the researcher explained. "In Germany, they wait
until you are damaged by the illness. Healthy people have a 100% recovery rate."

Statistics are a powerful thing.

For example, if there is a spike in divorces, let's freeze all marriages for a while.
Fewer marriages result in fewer divorces.

It's not a bad idea to quarantine all children; they seem to get ill much more often.
Healthy children equal healthy nations.

And definitely forbid people from gathering.

(Let's approach life in a way to improve statistics.)

 

(4.)

Why would anyone want to gather anyway? I never understood that.
Much better to stay at home and read good books.

Or you can listen to orchestral music using noise-cancelling earphones.
Noise cancellation is vital because this is how audible viruses (for example, news) get in.
The earphones don't fully protect you from noise, so when you are not listening to symphonic music,
you should wear earplugs with noise-cancelling earphones on top of the earplugs.

If someone asks you a question, just nod in response.
Nobody expects you to listen anyway.
Nodding is similar to clicking likes under social media posts –
you just add your support to the ego-boosting activities of your friends.
Nobody expects you to actually read their posts or click on their links (unless they contain cute animals, of course.)
After all, if you start reading and clicking on all posts of all your friends, most of whom you have never met,
you will never live to be 82 like Soledad, who lived alone in the mountain and never owned a computer.

The other positive side of a continuous quarantine
is that the Apocalypse loses its edge after a while.
One can scream, "We are all doomed!" only until one loses one's voice.
After a while, it's no longer believable.

But I'm worried about my parents. They are 82 like Soledad.
They don't fully understand the weight of the impending disaster, even though they have a computer and television and other viral spreading news outlets. They still venture outside and are reckless enough to visit various doctors wherein the waiting rooms they wait for sick people to spread more germs around.

Their refusal to quarantine themselves saddens me.

I have quarantined myself from everyone long ago, for that's what a writer must do anyway.

(It comes with the territory.)

 

(5.)

Can poetry and music, serious music, still be written?
In times when people have forgotten how to listen,
how to keep silent, how to remain still?

Perhaps I am starting to sound depressive.
As my doctors have warned me, cortisol deficiency can take its toll.

Every week, I receive a questionnaire from the Mayo Clinic.
The questionnaire is always the same.
It compares my attitude and feelings before and after the surgery.

I don't think my answers have changed so far, but I do not know for sure
since I did not keep my previous answers.
Probably, researchers may find my data disappointing.
They would like to see a graph. A graph is when lines go up and down.
Flat graphs are boring. Flat graphs are unremarkable.
Like rubber ducklings in a bathtub of a polar bear hunter.

Keep it together, I say to myself.
But I am worried that I may not be able to keep it all together
and may turn into a soundwave or break into tiny particles
that no longer make any sense and can't be reconstructed.

(I wish I could go to that mountain and meet Soledad,
who never, I am sure, worried about becoming a soundwave.)

 

 

On the Street Where You Live [by Robert Wrigley]

 

                        “Love takes time to overcome.”--Confucius

Certain love songs beloved by men are listened to with something like derision by women.  So I have been assured, by a woman, and I wonder about that.  I don’t doubt it, but I wonder.  I have known for many years that most of the canonical American songbook “torch songs,” for example, were written by men but in their classic versions sung by women.  Imagine Sarah Vaughn singing “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry.”  We are to believe she would never get over loss of the man for whom she carried forever “a torch.”  Right. 

But I would like to consider a song almost diametrically the opposite of a torch song.  I mean “On the Street Where You Live,” jaunty and upbeat, its lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, from the musical play My Fair Lady (Frederick Loewe wrote the music), first staged in 1956, when I was five.  The film version, which I saw in a theater in St. Louis with my parents and sister, appeared in 1964, right about the time I crashed face-first into puberty.  I remember being resistant to the improbable fact that the handsome young Englishman was standing on the street and singing, with orchestral accompaniment, but I also remember thinking that such a feeling as he expressed (turns out the actor was lip-synching; someone else did the expressing), that that feeling might be—I didn’t know—real.  I suppose I wanted it to be.  Why wouldn’t I?  He seemed so happy, so thrilled, that young man, and the lyrics of the song represented his happiness very convincingly, even to, or perhaps especially to, a thirteen year old boy. 

Somehow, I’m sixty-eight now, a year older than Alan Jay Lerner was when he died in 1986 of lung cancer, impoverished, owing the IRS over a million dollars, and unable to pay his medical bills.  Lerner was married eight times.  He said once, “All I can say is if I had no flair for marriage, I also had no flair for bachelorhood.”  (Something in that quip and its delivery is in his best lyrics too.)  It seems that Mr. Lerner might have felt the exhilaration his song expresses a few more times than anyone ought to. 

The character who sings the song in My Fair Lady, one Freddy Eynsford-Hill, is lost in infatuation with Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl taken in by Professor Henry Higgins, after she comes to him seeking elocution lessons.  The play, of course, is adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.  Professor Higgins wagers with his friend and houseguest, Colonel Pickering, that he can turn Eliza into a passable young “lady,” one who can, with his lessons, function in the upper social caste of which he and Pickering are a part.

The scene in which Freddy falls for Eliza takes place at a gathering of exceeding privilege and decorousness, at a race track.  Women in gowns and elaborate, even outlandish, hats; men in tophats, tails, and spats.  The musical number in the scene is “Ascot Gavotte” (also known as “Ascot Opening Day”—its opening lines: “Ev’ry duke and earl and peer is here/Ev’ryone who should be here is here”).  Eliza does quite well among the hoity-toity until, in the midst of the race’s final stretch she can stand it no longer and with all her suppressed Cockney fervor bellows at her favored horse, “Come on, Dover! Move yer bloomin’ arse?”  The vocal intro to “On the Street Where You Live” includes Freddy remembering, and repeating, Eliza’s unfortunate (or fortunate) ejaculation; it even suggests that that ejaculation may be what, beyond Eliza herself (played in the film by Audrey Hepburn), precipitates his headlong fall. 

Soon thereafter Freddy arrives at Professor Higgins’s house with flowers.  Higgins, Pickering, and Eliza are having dinner.  The maid takes the flowers and invites Mr. Eynsford-Hill in, but he declines and at the bottom of the stair, back on the street, sings his song.

The plays, both the musical and its Shavian model, are fraught.  Shaw took as his inspiration an ancient Greek myth.  Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with one of his statues, which—presumably so deeply and intimately loved and, much more importantly, so perfectly created—comes to life.  In Lerner and Loewe’s version, Eliza is matter, medium, raw material fashioned by a man into an acceptable, respectable, lovable, and cravable woman—made so, created even, by a man.

To say that the gender issues in the movie went right over my head at thirteen is accurate and predictable and an understatement.  Although one might also say that the issues went over a lot of heads:  both the plays and the film were enormously successful.

But Freddy seems head over heels for a fully-formed woman, as far as he can tell, one who is just enough like but not at all like the other women in his circle.  Something about class is involved in it too, of course; Eliza’s sudden coarseness is electrifying.  Who knows what it might suggest to Freddy?  But what I’m curious about is this: could “On the Street Where You Live” be one of those love songs beloved by men but derided by women?  Does the man’s infatuation seem, well, fatuous?  The word “love” is never spoken in the song.  Does infatuation really have anything to do with love?  (One might ask something similar about music or poetry.)  Freddy has seen but hardly even met Eliza—just once—but he is intoxicated by her, the possibility of her.  He’s smitten.  Is it Freddy’s smittenness itself that is suspect?  Is the very act of feeling smitten by another person suspect?  In the hetero-world, in and out of movies, it’s usually the man who is smote, so to speak, and his condition, in terms literary and historical—and in reality—is all too often dangerous for the woman.  Think of Daphne and Apollo, Zeus and Leda.  The list is endless; it is added to every day in brutal stories in the news.  Vastly more women are killed by obsessed lovers and husbands than by infatuated strangers.

Is Freddy’s smittenness a form of potentially dangerous, power-mad insanity?  Probably not.  He seems too callow to be a monster.  Shaw resisted the “happy ending,” with Eliza and Higgins in love and together; the musical, not so much.  Higgins seems to realize his love, or his loss (though of what, exactly?  His dejected song, “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” is another of the musical’s long-lived chestnuts).  But then Eliza returns.  The happy ending is at least implied.  As for Freddy, when Eliza leaves Higgins earlier, she tells him she’ll marry Freddy because he, at least, is one who loves her.  But in the end, that doesn’t matter.  She comes back to the man who, as it were, made her what she is. 

This is an excerpt from Nemerov's Door: Essays by Robert Wrigley
(Tupelo Press, North Adams, MA)

Paper $19.95

https://www.tupelopress.org

For Saint Patrick's Day: The Gaelic Symphony by Amy Beach (September 5, 1867 – December 27, 1944)

To find out more about this gifted composer, go here. 

-- sdl

Marlene Dietrich, The Original Blonde Venus [by David Lehman]

Blonde Venus

In his latest Talking Pictures column for The American Scholar, David Lehman considers the enduring allure of Marlene Dietrich, whose seductive voice and androgynous style commanded screen and stage for more than half a century. “Marlene’s eyes say she’s seen it all and a lot of it was lousy,” he writes. “She holds an unlighted cigarette between forefinger and thumb, waiting for you to light it with your Lucifer. And you will.” Read More ➢

Berio's "Sinfonia" [by Lewis Saul]

One day during my short stint at Juilliard, the composer Milton Babbitt came as a guest lecturer in one of my composition classes.

Mr. Babbitt gave us a nice lecture on 20th century music and how serial music (12-tone) was here to stay and it shouldn't be "our" problem if people don't enjoy it or "understand" how to react to it...

I recall that my friends and I were horrified at such elitism. Although I had learned a great deal of serial technique my senior year in high school at IAA, my own inclination led me to reason that music should always sound interesting and should completely engage an audience. Certainly, we all toyed around with trying to write "interesting" 12-tone music.

And then one day ...

**

I heard this piece. Actually, Berio was one of my professors, but alas, I had only one session with him and he barely spoke three words to me (he was still working on the Fifth Movement, which not completed at the premiere). I was only at Juilliard for 14 days before I was nearly killed by a drunk driver . . .The piece with the just-completed Fifth Movement was premiered eight days before my accident.

If you have been reading my previous posts, you will recall that I had the honor of performing Mahler's Second Symphony at IAA. So naturally, this piece had an extra added meaning for me:

**

Allen B. Ruch has written such a wonderful description of this piece ~ I could not do better. I hope you will read it.

Because the oversized score is so huge, it will not fit nicely into my scanner, I can only provide the first page (above).

Take a look at what the Swingle Swingers are singing! Just varied vowel-sounds -- pppp -- which quickly morphs into a frenetic text by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss from Le cru et le cuit ("The Raw and the Cooked").

By the way, Berio (may he rest in peace) could be a real asshole:

"[Y]ou know that Berio used The Raw and the Cooked in his Sinfonia. A part of the text is recited, accompanied by the music. I admit that I did not grasp the reason for this choice. During an interview a musicologist asked me about it, and I answered that the book had just come out and the composer had probably used it because it was at hand. Now, a few months ago Berio, whom I don't know, sent me a very disgrunted letter. He had read the interview, several years after the fact, and assured me that the movement of this symphony offered the musical counterpart of the mythical transformation I was revealing. He included a book by a musicologist ... who had demonstrated the fact. I apologized for the misunderstanding, which was, I said, the result of my lack of musical training, but I'm still baffled." (Wikipedia article)

The Second Movement's text is simply a name, broken down into its tiniest components of vowel/consonant-sounds: MARTIN LUTHER KING. 

The Third Movement is perhaps the reason why this piece achieved such universal acclaim. Berio did something so unique and interesting that it would be impossible not to simply sit back and admire it:

He re-orchestrates the Third Movement of Mahler'a 2nd Symphony (the Resurrection) in his own style -- although it is clearly distinguishable amidst the sometimes cacophonous explosion of sound and fury which is layered in and around the Mahler quote.

In addition to the Mahler symphony, Berio has inserted "quotes" (reorchestrated and carefully and cleverly inserted into the flow). Here's the complete list:

• Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, fourth movement (violent opening scale played by the brass)
• A brief quotation of Mahler's Symphony No. 4 (Mahler) just before.....
• Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, third movement (the only quotation that is ongoing)
• Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, flute solo from the Pantomime
• Berlioz's idée fixe from the Symphonie Fantastique (played by the clarinets)
• Ravel's La Valse (orchestra plays octave motif with piccolo playing a chromatic scale)
• Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps (the "Dance of the Earth" sequence at the end of the first tableux)
• Stravinsky's Agon (upper oboe part from the "Double pas de quatre")
• Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier (one of the waltzes composed for the opera)
• a chorale by Johann Sebastian Bach
• Alban Berg's Wozzeck (the drowning scene late in the third act)
• Beethoven's Pastorale Symphony, second movement (melody stated with the clarinets)
• (Schoenberg segment quoted again)
• Debussy's La Mer, second movement "Jeux de vagues"
• Boulez's Pli Selon Pli, very first chord of the entire piece from the first movement ("Don")
• Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gruppen for three orchestras (during the introductions of the vocalists near the end)

***

The eight vocalists are not soloists! They are meant to be integrated into the mix as Berio says: "a vocal group among instrumental groups" (score).

The Fourth (and later Fifth) are meant to be sort of codas to the earlier movements. They quote previous material, including bits of the First Movement and the whole-tone feel of the Second Movement.

***###

I am completely baffled as to why there is not a CD of the premiere recording, with Berio conducting the NY Phil. It is still available on vinyl (used).

I own every CD available of this piece. None compare to Berio's premiere, which I consider to be a major artistic tragedy. These two are pretty good, although I am astonished that Boulez failed to follow Berio's instructions regarding microphones and mixing. Much of the textual (and occasionally musical) details are either buried deep in this mix, barely audible, or missing entirely.

I actually attended a performance by this orchestra with Boulez conducting in Paris in 1972. It suffered from the same type of problems.

Boulez/Swingle Singers/Orchestre National de France
Eötvös/Göteborgs Symphony

Eötvös, on the other hand, gives a unique interp which is unusually intimate. Quite different from the Berio, but much more thoughtful than the Boulez...

**

Thank you, David Lehman, for giving me the opportunity to share these musical passions of mine. I enjoyed sharing my ideas and I hope some of you enjoyed some part of it.

Thank you and I wish it would rain already.

Lewis Saul

Ed. note: from the archive; first posted on July 16, 2010, as the seventh in a series in honor of the seven orchestral pieces the author vows to love forever. 

Most popular funeral songs [by David Lehman]

In the age of sabermetrics, they ("they, they who are known as they," as Kenward Elmslie has it), have tallied up the songs (and versions of same) most popular to play in funerals. Click here for a full run-down, or take away these teasers.

-- Sinatra leads the pack with "My Way." 

-- Both Richard Rodgers and Harold Arlen are represented in the top ten, though the most popular version of Arlen's "Over the Rainbow" is said to be by Eve Cassidy rather than the star of "The Wizard of Oz" -- and people would apparently rather hear Gerry and the Pacemakers sing "You'll Never Walk Alone" than, say, John Raitt.

-- Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable" comes in at number ten.

-- -- Vera Lynn's "We'll Say Goodbye" makes the list, which reminds me that the song puts in an appearance at the end of "The Singing Detective" -- which makes exceedingly smart use of songs popular in the year of the action, 1945: "Peg o My Heart," "Accentuate the Positive," "I've Got You Under My Skin," "It Might As Well Be Spring," "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall" . . .but I see I'm digressing into a different list. 

According to Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swann, authors of the celebrated biography of Willem de Kooning, say that the painter would have liked to have Sinatra's "Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night in the Week" to be playing at his funeral.

As for me, I'd have an orchestra play Arnold Newman's "Street Scene" as the funeral goers arrive. In a ceremony I would play a recording of Leonard Bernstein's "Some Other Time" as sung by the song's lyricists (Betty Comden, Adolph Green) with Nancy Walker as a third voice. I think that recording is from 1960. As the ceremony ends, I'd like "Goodbye" played by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra. An instrumental. But at a party in someone's apartment later, people will play Sinatra's vocal from the 1958 album, "Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely."

Meanwhile, I think of the wit of Larry Rivers, the painter who started out as a jazz musician and loved playing his saxophone to the end of his days. Larry arranged to have his own recording of "Everything Happens to Me" to cap his funeral. For Sinatra's memorial the choice was inevitable: his signature song on radio and TV, "Put Your Dreams Away."  

from the archive; posted March 17, 2013.

The Importance of Martin Guerre, part two [by Joe Lehman]

Ed. note: Part one of this discussion of "Martin Guerre" was posted here on February 12.

I have been poring through the lyrics of the various songs from Martin Guerre the musical. The moment that has most directly affected me emotionally, is where Arnaud takes the stand in court and proclaims:

I'm a Protestant, yes
Of this I am proud
But to bring down your lives
This is not what I vowed
I vowed to love the Lord. 

I won't stand and see destroyed
the precious times we've all enjoyed…

I could easily substitute “Zionist” for “Protestant” to describe my own identity and how it has become seen as heretical to many of my friends and acquaintances on the Left. “I’m a Zionist, yes. Of this I am proud…” has a welcome ring to it. Imagine, then, a young Jewish adult obliged to proclaim his conviction in the belief of individual rights and freedoms, while simultaneously defending the existence and prosperity of the State of Israel, only to be turned away and called a racist pig, by the same progressive-minded individuals who lay claim to ownership of the belief of individual rights and freedoms.

The character of Guillaume is the consummate prejudiced demagogue of the show. He certainly has the most forceful lines:

Stand up and be counted, rise above the crowd
Say this in their memory, I will make you proud
Look around, can't you see what the world has become?
It is time we were cleansed of this Protestant scum!
By the blood of the martyrs, we will take up the sword
We will root out this cancer in the name of the Lord!
Everywhere is chaos, everywhere is doubt
Everywhere are heretics, the time has come to burn them out!

There are an infinite number of madmen throughout history, and if I follow Godwin’s Law, I could easily make an analogy to Hitler and Nazi Germany but it is just too easy a thing to do. (Ed. note: According to Godwin’s Law, if an argument goes on long enough, someone will surely compare someone else to Hitler.) Guillaume, as he is portrayed, can easily represent both a follower and a leader of a bigoted movement. He extends an appeal to lower-middle class resentments and desires:

I was born a poor man, just like each of you
Born to sweat and suffer as the poor must do
Working like a cart-horse, slaving in your field
Till my back is breaking I will never yield.

Furthermore, he exhibits a false paternalistic benevolence by reminding the fellow Catholic villagers of his roots in the community:

Baptiste, I knew your father
Albert, I knew yours too
Men who stood for decency just the same as you.

Finally, he assumes an air of traditional piety by resorting to religious exclamations:

Here I stand before you, bloody and unbowed
By the sword of Jesus
I will make you proud!

The conclusion of the show, where we have the final showdown among Guillaume, Martin, and Arnaud and Bertrande, is most illuminating. Enraged that he has no chance at winning over Bertrande’s affection, now that she is legally bound to Martin though still in love with Arnaud, Guillaume concocts the convoluted idea that it was both Martin’s and Arnaud’s plan from the start:

Right from the start, keep out Guillaume!
Keep him away, far from Bertrande, keep them apart!

All I did Bertrande, I did for you!
So true, so pure...I knew you deserved much more

(he lets Martin go and grabs Bertrande)

A Martin Guerre better than them
A Martin Guerre much more like me.

It would seem that “Martin Guerre” has become representative of both elevation and salvation -- for Arnaud, who is pure of heart, and for Guillaume, who is bitter and aggrieved. Guillaume is about to kill Martin with his knife, but Arnaud, who recognizes he has no place left in the equation except as the martyr, shields Martin and is stabbed to death in his place. He dies in Bertrande’s arms. In the melee, Guillaume too is killed, when another side character springs in and bludgeons him. Everything has come full circle.

It is Bertrande who voices the lesson to be learned from the entire experience:

When will we all learn?
We lived our lives in fear...
We say we love the same God yet there's blood on every hand!
Let him die for peace
Can't you understand?
If all we ever love is hate...
Will we ever hear?

Intolerance has indeed led the people of Artigat down the pathway to hell, from which the only recovery is reconciliation between the Catholic and Protestant factions.

Here, in 2021 America, there has been a lot of talk in the news from the Biden administration about finding unity between the various competing factions that fall under the aegis of Republican and Democratic parties. But it is still early, and the future remains terribly uncertain. I only know that I, as an individual, can strive to be, and continue to be, a better person. Perhaps I take after Bertrande:

 I will carry on
till the fear has gone
till the day I find
There's someone who will hear!

There’s someone who will hear.

Ed. note: For part one of this discussion, click here.

The Importance of Martin Guerre -- Part One [by Joe Lehman]

"Martin Guerre: Now and Then; Then and Now" [by Joe Lehman]

PART ONE

“Land to last, as it's passed, man to son, when it's done as planned. Then we'll pray it will stay as good Catholic land.”

After the experience of living through the past four years, this lyric sounds a lot like Make America Great Again. At least, that was the thought that came to mind when I listened to the music of Martin Guerre in the summer of 2018.

I had the privilege of attending one of the original performances of the short-lived musical Martin Guerre when visiting London, England, in late December 1997-early January 1998, when I was fourteen. It has had a troubled existence; rarely has it been revived. I don’t believe it has ever opened on Broadway. As I was so young when I saw Martin Guerre, I didn’t appreciate its meaning. Twenty years went by, and in a dream one night, the memory of the musical came to me. The next morning, I purchased the soundtrack of the original cast recording. The musical, and the story behind it, has held a great significance for me ever since.

The tale of the sixteenth century French peasant Martin Guerre and the imposture conducted by his army buddy Arnaud du Thil was resurrected in the 1982 French-language film The Return of Martin Guerre, as well as in a nonfiction book with the same title by historian Natalie Zemon Davis. Subsequently, the story has been immortalized as a continuing trope in many incarnations, including the 1993 movie Sommersby, starring Richard Gere and Jodie Foster, where the story is transported to post-Civil War and Reconstruction-era Tennessee, and the titular character and his imposter are veterans of the Confederate Army. It has even taken the form of satire in an episode of TV’s “The Simpsons,” where the Vietnam veteran Principal Skinner is revealed to be an imposter, a former comrade-in-arms of the ‘real’ Skinner.

It is in Martin Guerre the musical that the story is placed most prominently in the context of bigotry, nativism, and religious intolerance. The history of Catholic persecution of the Protestant Huguenots figures heavily. The setting is the provincial village of Artigat. Strangely, for reasons unknown to me, the word “Huguenot” is never uttered in the show. What is known is that Artigat is populated by a Catholic majority and a Protestant minority. Martin Guerre and Bertrande de Rols are betrothed to marry at an adolescent age, so that their families will merge in attempt to keep their shared land under Catholic ownership. But Martin is unable to perform sexually and in a fit of wanderlust, finds the only way available for French peasant to gain upward mobility: He leaves the village and Bertrande, and joins the Catholic army.

Seven years pass and when Martin is seemingly felled in battle, Arnaud du Thil travels to Artigat and almost accidentally assumes his identity, his land, and his wife Bertrande, who, despite being the one who knows about the fraud, falls in love with Arnaud, and together they clandestinely convert to Protestantism. Guillaume, an anti-Protestant fanatic who is also a jealous former suitor of Bertrande’s, discovers the truth and becomes Arnaud’s main accuser. Arnaud is arrested, brought to trial, where he continues relentlessly to insist he is the real Martin Guerre. The members of the courtroom are divided across Catholic and Protestant lines, in Arnaud’s favor and against it. The surprise witness who is able to provide the ultimate evidence of Arnaud’s imposture is Martin Guerre himself, who reappears to testify to his true identity. The musical sees Artigat burn down in an orgy of violence and Arnaud murdered at Guillaume’s hands. This version differs from the historical record. In fact, Arnaud’s case was tried, appealed, and tried again before he was found guilty and executed by hanging, while Bertrande was returned to her legal husband’s custody. I can only surmise that this modification was made for dramatic purposes. The show ends with the villagers contemplating the consequences of their hateful actions and praying for forgiveness.

French historian Philippe Erlanger in his book St. Bartholomew’s Night chronicles the bloody history of France during the turbulent century of the Protestant Reformation:

The world was changing at a bewildering pace. The old order was giving way. Men had once placed all their hopes in heaven: now they were beginning to look for happiness here on earth again.

 Erlanger describes the atmosphere of the Reformation and the Renaissance:

A society which for a great while had been preoccupied with local quarrels suddenly beheld the horizon torn wide open before it; and at the same time, it became conscious of curiosities, doubts, and wild irrational beliefs.

It seems to be a constant throughout history that with the coming of liberalization and modernization of people and civilization, comes a reactionary backlash equal in force. Erlanger writes:

Intolerance bred intolerance. Fanaticism increased in the same measure as the struggle for liberation of the minds of men.

Erlanger could very well have been describing the political and racial tribalism and its ensuing chaos that exists in present-day America, where the Proud Boys battle Antifa and Black Lives Matter in vicious street confrontations.

Ed note: this is part one of a two-part article. For part two, click here.

It's Roy Eldridge Day [by Sean Singer]

Thelonious Monk, Howard McGhee, Roy Eldridge, and Teddy Hill, Minton's Playhouse, New York, N.Y., c. Sept. 1947

    January 30th is Roy Eldridge Day. Eldridge was a major innovator in jazz trumpet, and his concept shows how jazz developed. He was born in 1911 in Pittsburgh, an industrial city with an important jazz history, into a middle-class / upper-middle-class African-American family, and he was the key figure in the development of jazz trumpet between Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie. He died at 78 in 1989.
        Notoriously competitive, and ferocious on his chosen instrument, Eldridge was nicknamed by Ellington’s saxophonist Otto Hardwick (pronounced with a long O sound)— “Little Jazz” because of the juxtaposition of his ferocity and size. Because he was a major Swing Era figure, who nonetheless was a stylistic precursor to BeBop, Eldridge is sometimes thought of as a transitional figure between stylistic eras (not unlike the transition between Romanticism and Modernism in poetry); however, he was his own thing.
         Eldridge was a child prodigy, beginning as a six year-old on drums (who buys a six year old a set of drums?) and though he dropped out of high school, practiced trumpet as a teenager between eight and nine hours a day, and was playing professionally from 16. He moved to New York in 1930 and played in many Harlem dance bands. His rhythmic power and virtuosity in the upper register of the trumpet made him a star. In the 1930s he joined the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, and recorded, with the tenor saxophone specialist Chu Berry “Christopher Columbus”
        He made some important recordings in 1935 with Billie Holiday and the pianist Teddy Wilson such as “Miss Brown to You”, also a glorious example of Holiday at her peak powers or “What a Little Moonlight Can Do”.

        In April 1941, though he received many offers from white big bands, Eldridge joined Gene Krupa’s Orchestra and made some recordings with the vocalist Anita O’Day. They can be seen in a short film known as a “soundie” singing their infectious, novelty duet, “Let Me Off Uptown,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8yaW6BluwY) perhaps their most well-known effort.
Although he was the featured soloist in these big bands, the racial segregation in the apartheid South created many terrible racial incidents that affected him. Artie Shaw, for example, said: “Droves of people would ask him for his autograph at the end of the night, but later, on the bus, he wouldn't be able to get off and buy a hamburger with the guys in the band.”
        After Krupa was arrested for marijuana possession in 1943, Eldridge tried, albeit unsuccessfully to form his own big band where he recorded “Heckler’s Hop” which shows how he influenced the development of BeBop. In the post-war years he joined Norman Granz’s tours of the Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts, toured France with Benny Goodman, and led a band at Birdland in New York City.
        In 1960 he joined the Jazz Artist’s Guild, a group that briefly existed in Newport, Rhode Island, and was formed by the business and musical partners Charles Mingus and Max Roach, and they recorded “Mysterious Blues” with the Newport Jazz Rebels. In the 1970s he performed regularly at Jimmy Ryan’s club on West 54th Street, but after a heart attack in 1980, he stopped played altogether.
        Roy Eldridge’s competitiveness and sticktoitiveness made him more than just a precursor to Dizzy Gillespie, and the revolution known as BeBop; he was an effective transmitter of his own style and personality during a the Swing Era, the time when jazz music was the most popular form of entertainment in the United States.
    In terms of poetry, the question of how to get one’s own voice across, particularly when emotional intensity and technical skill are valued, is especially anxiety-producing. In other words, how can you be more like yourself, and less like everybody else? Maybe some close listening to this music can steer us in the right direction.

Starting tonight at midnight and continuing all day tomorrow, Jan. 30th, for 24 hrs. it's the Roy Eldridge birthday broadcast on WKCR.

Sean Singer is the author of Discography (Yale University Press, 2002), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; and Honey & Smoke (Eyewear Publishing, 2015)

Silent Music [by Lera Auerbach]

Leitmotifs Photo by Lera Auerbach

 

 

At the Marlboro Music Festival, returning home at night –
my door was covered by moths. I opened the door quickly
as not to let them in, but at least twenty managed to fly in –
into the light of the dining room's lamp.

 

Today I found them dead all around the entrance,

dried angels, almost transparent in their fragile death

with the powder – angel's dust – still on their wings.

 

I think of them while listening to Chopin's mazurkas –

so fragile, so transparent, immortal in their captured beauty.

I gently lift the dead bodies of white&gray moths
from the floor – sliding them into an old glass jar.

 

There they shall rest. They look alive.

Most have their wings open, as if in flight.

My fingers are covered with the powder from the wings.

Their silence is music too.

 

When I wake up tomorrow morning

– they shall still be here, under the glass,

frozen in their death, as in a dream

hearing the music only they can hear.