I have recently added the Shakespeare Sonnets to my morning poetry ready. I found an excellent site and am reading them there since I have misplaced my two or three hard copies. The online notes illuminate subtleties of word meaning change and very helpful. I realize I have always misread the sonnets basic meaning. I knew they were addressed to a noble. But I didn’t understand the consistency of the argument in the first few sonnets (I’m on number 12). Always fun to open up a text in a new and better way.
Just for the heck of it, I clicked on the What’s New Music tab on Spotify for suggestions yesterday. It recommended the Swiss Woodwind Quartet’s CD which has Ligeti, Hindemith and Janaceck pieces on it. I played it and quite liked it. Go figure.
It put me in the mood for Hindemith, so I played through his second piano sonata yesterday and remembered why I like him so much.
Glen Gould does a good job with the first movement.
While I usually find Gould’s playing fun to listen to, often I think he distorts the music. In this case, he seems to preserve what I think of as Hindemith’s meaning.
I think Hindemith might be out of fashion these days. I’ve liked him for most of my adult life. Play his organ works.
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Sunday Poem – I read this poem yesterday and quite liked it. Anne Sexton has captured something about how I understand my own weak faith.
Small Wire
My faith
is a great weight
hung on a small wire,
as doth the spider
hang her baby on a thin web,
as doth the vine,
twiggy and wooden,
hold up grapes
like eyeballs,
as many angels
dance on the head of a pin.God does not need
too much wire to keep Him there,
just a thin vein,
with blood pushing back and forth in it,
and some love.
As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.
So if you have only a thin wire,
God does not mind.
He will enter your hands
as easily as ten cents used to
bring forth a Coke.by Anne Sexton
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Kansas – Law Bans the Use of Foreign Legal Codes – NYTimes.com
It is so disheartening to witness such typical displays of American chauvinism and disdain of the “other.” Such is our time, I guess.
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Plantations, Prisons and Profits – NYTimes.com
Charles Blow writes a moving description of Louisiana’s terrible prison for profit. Time and time again, I see us “privatizing” our public lives and am sad about it.
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I agree with Governor Brownback.