Eileen left this morning to drive to Whitehall to take her Mom to a doctor’s appointment. After she left, I went to the Farmers Market and then Meijer. Earlier I had lain in bed and read the poetry of Derek Walcott on my ereader. I found an interview of him and discovered that I could highlight and send sections to myself in an email. I am digging deeper into his poetry. Yesterday while Eileen and I relaxed at the beach, I read poetry by him.
I also read in Oilio by Tyehimba Jess. I am loving how he rewrites specific Dreamsongs by John Berryman. It’s very clever as well as moving to me. When we got home my copy of Olio had arrived in the mail. Woo hoo!
I was delighted when I turned to Don Saliers’s July 2017 column in the AGO mag. It’s called “Who needs poetry?” He makes a case for the need for poetry. He quotes from Jane Hirshfield’s Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. “Poetry,” she writes, “when we give ourselves to it, becomes within us a playable organ of perception, sounding out its own forms of knowledge and forms of discovery…. Seeing through poetry’s eyes, hearing through poetry’s ears, we come to know ourselves less tempered, more free than we were, and connected to … a larger world.”
Hirshfield’s book is sitting on the shelves at the local library. I will be picking it up later today no doubt.
Lest you think that I’m only dabbling in poetry these days, here’s a composer who is new to me: Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1875-1912). He is a British born composer who did many settings related to the African American experience.
Not Samuel Tayler Coleridge the poet.
I was playing through an interesting collection yesterday before going to the beach: “Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora” Volume 3 Early Advanced. I ran across a setting by Samuel Coleridge Taylor of “Deep River.” What the heck is this, I wondered? It was copyright 1905 by Oliver Ditson. It was clearly written, not exactly nostalgic but not modern that’s for sure.
I want to write more about this, but the internet is craaawwwwling and I’m losing patience. More another time.