There is so much music in poetry and poetry in music (and I hope I don’t have to convince you of this!) that I just merge the two into one without thinking. I don’t worry about such things since I know that art is not physical reality. Toward the end of this rambling, I will give you an example of how I automatically blend music and poetry.
During my six years working closely with the Zuni People back in the 1970s, I discovered a little about how they recorded and maintained their history, from ancient times down to the present. Until recently, the Zuni had no written language, although they had just competed a working one in the late 1960s and were in the process of distributing phrase books and other books when I arrived.
As did all Native American tribes and groups, the Zuni had passed on their history orally. Over the centuries, their history became mixed with their religions and with their myths to become a mixture of art, myth, tradition and religion. Through all their time, however, their songs told stories and their words became stories so easy to remember that all children come to know themselves and their times exactly as their elders did. Theirs was a wonderful mixture of art, music, dance and history, and dancing through everything was their beautiful spoken words – their poetry!
There is no border between the various Zuni arts; their music and poetic renditions move right along with their dance.
I began to explore more deeply my experiments in music and poetry six years ago at a Writers and Artists Residency at the Hambidge Center for the Arts in North Georgia. There were five of us In Residence at the time – two classical musical composers, a university professor who crafted and played old and new stringed musical instruments, one of New England’s most gifted and popular artists, and poor little me – a mere poet.
As we got to know each other over required dinner gatherings, and through many hours of conversation, I saw the relationships among all of our arts. And somewhat to my surprise, they deeply respected Poetry and were supportive of my work as we took turns sharing during weekly gatherings.
I still remain in touch with the gifted New England artist who shares her watercolors on Facebook. She was particularly taken with my description of my poetry-writing process (“I just keep writing until the poem emerges on the page. I then erase all that is not the poem.”) You may recognize this quote since it is similar to one attributed to (among others) a Native American artist who had carved a majestic Bald Eagle from a piece of granite. When asked how he had done it, he replied, “I just chiseled away everything that was NOT the eagle.”
If you read more than one or two of my poems from the past few years, you can see the influence other artists of all forms have had upon me and my work. I steal from everyone, and I hope that I have had a small influence on them as well.
Here is an example of what I have been talking about, a conscious effort to examine the complexities of music, voice and poetry, while at the same time attempting to express some wonder about those connections.
One morning, after watching a video of the Kruger Brothers picking (banjo and guitar) and singing their best, I picked up a book of poetry given me by a friend. I soon found one particular word so out of place in one poem that it stopped me cold. I tried to continue, but soon I just had to put away the book and surrendered it to a bookcase.
Later, my thoughts began to combine the story being told by the Krugers with my attempts to deal with the offending word in the poem. Here is what I wrote (a conclusion of sorts) a few days later:
EMBODY
I read this poem called “Interlude”
by an otherwise good poet,
but ride up hard against the word
“embody” in the second line.
That whole poem begins to suffer
right there inside this hard cover book
from Port Townsend, Washington,
but I persist and the rest of the poem
is not that bad. Yet, against my will,
my eye has been captured by that word
“embody”, which has begun to build
a dam around itself. Sometimes
I read a poem so pure
I never have to read it again.
That’s when a rare music lifts
and floats even before I finish
my coffee. Like this morning
with my cream cheese and bagel –
the television glowing,
a banjo picker from Switzerland,
in love with Kentucky,
picks with eyes closed
while his chubby brother
sings sweetly about
waiting for their mother
who will soon return
from an un-named somewhere
to a bay filled with icebergs that could be
Norway, from which she had sailed
for a reason never told. They sing,
“Seems like you were gone forever,
but for you I’ll wait forever and a day, “
and I think: Bays and great Norse sagas
certify mothers and why they leave
and why they return to sons in winter.
And “embodied” in faces and chorus,
of patient sons with banjo and mandolin
is the Norway of frozen seas… and Oslo
and Port Townsend, Washington… where
the ebb and flow of cold winter tides
surge out to vast unknowns
then must return.
– Charles Brady
