Pete Unseth, CC BY-SA 3.0, by way of Wikimedia Commons.
I don’t normally write to music. I’m too vulnerable; I discover it can provide what I’m writing a false, unearned resonance, like slipping a poem into Garamond to make it “higher.” However there are two songs which might be rhythmic sufficient, every in their very own manner, that I typically placed on a loop once I’m revising. There’s one thing concerning the cadence and the breath in them that works for me, that creates a type of chamber that retains the surface world at bay. And although I’ve heard “writing about music is like dancing about structure,” (a quote so apt, it’s attributed to a minimum of a dozen folks), right here goes:
“Spiegel im Spiegel,” 1978—Arvo Pärt
The piece—in English, “Mirror within the Mirror”—begins with a easy ascending arpeggio, little triads that subtly alter, mirrored forwards and backwards like gentle on water, a mirror wanting right into a mirror. The melody stretches over and thru the scales, extending like an extended breath. The left hand on the piano arrives, finally and sparingly, to floor the upward craving, timber reaching towards gentle from the roots. The work is minimal in its composition, but by no means fails to tug me out of my momentary preoccupations right into a broader sense of time, drawing me into eternity by way of the little window of now. There are lots of lovely recordings, however Angèle Dubeau’s model is an effective place to start, I feel. For those who put it on and shut your eyes, all the things will quickly really feel softer.
“Fleurette Africaine,” 1962—Duke Ellington
Mingus begins the tune with a spiraling, skeletal stuttering on the upright bass, a sleeping animal rousing itself, just a little tousled. It’s all very natural, the rise and fall of a respiration physique. Ellington’s piano wanders in, elegant, stately. Max Roach’s drumming is the nest—he drums across the tune as a lot as into it—weaving the thatch that holds the chicken that sings the tune.
—Michael Bazzett, writer of “Autobiography of a Poet”
When Charles Simic died lately, I pulled his books from my shelf and reread them from the start. I assumed I had way back metabolized his poetry, but it surely seems these early collections, particularly, might nonetheless shake me. Simic, who grew up in Belgrade throughout the Nineteen Forties, lived within the vortex of the best horrors and atrocities of the 20th century. His poems neither identify nor catalog these historic particulars; as a substitute, these occasions exert a strain on the poetry by lurking simply off stage, as if they’ve solely simply occurred, or are about to. Simic had no real interest in being the hero of his personal poems, that are usually delivered from the angle of a mystified idiot gazing on the object world, uncovering its historic and terrifying knowledge—these deeper dream meanings. His is a poetry so in contrast to our present interval model! It supplies the most effective studying expertise: enchanting, unsettling. Begin with Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk, although any of his books from the late Seventies or early Nineteen Eighties will do. Every is a marvel.
—Dobby Gibson, writer of “Small Craft Speak”
You may learn our Artwork of Poetry interview with Simic right here.
Right here’s an expertise I can’t precisely suggest however which has its specific pleasures: getting actually sick, mendacity flat in your again with an eyeshade on within the afternoon, and listening to the audiobook of Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast. I did that for the primary time once I had a concussion in faculty whereas I used to be compelled to lie in a darkish room for every week with out studying or writing. I don’t know why I selected this specific textual content. Every time I’ve tried to select up the precise e book, I’m much less sympathetic to it—I discover it treacly, which it usually is. However listening to it, particularly in a state of heightened vulnerability and self-pity, I’m moved by its cadences and straightforward romance. One passage, on snowboarding, that I prefer to take heed to, however which works alright on the web page too:
I bear in mind all of the sorts of snow that the wind might make and their completely different treacheries while you had been on skis. Then there have been the blizzards while you had been within the excessive Alpine hut and the unusual world that they’d make the place we needed to make our route as rigorously as if we had by no means seen the nation. We had not, both, because it all was new. Lastly in the direction of spring there was the good glacier run, easy and straight, perpetually straight if our legs might maintain it, our ankles locked, we working so low, leaning into the velocity, dropping perpetually and perpetually within the silent hiss of the crisp powder.
—Sophie Haigney, internet editor
