Piano Practice

Glenn Gould, Photographer Uknown

Piano Practice

For Frances Dillon Hayward

1

Such splendid icecaps and hard rills, such weights

And counter-weights, I think I scale the heights

When pentatonic Chinese crewmen start

Up in a cold sweat from the bottom of the keyboard

Only to arrive at some snow-stormed valley

To dissolve in steam-holes and vanish out of sight.

2

The left hand's library is dull, the books

All read, though sometimes, going under velvet,

An old upholsterer will spit out tacks,

Turn them into sparks and smartly hurl them

Up and down the loudest bowling alley—

His pressure of effects can last all night.

3

Two bird notes endlessly repeat themselves.

Or are they fish scales—iridescent, hard?

Mica into marble back to mica?

No images in trills. They're formal. Take

Your foot off the pedal. You're in a wood

Near the sea. And every tree and wave is fake.

4

An underwater haircut by Debussy?

Oh, that's too easy. Astringent lotions

Let the swimmer down by easy stages

Down among the flashy soda fountains

Down to the bottom where the light bulbs waver

Down where all the mirrors eat their hearts out.

5

Grammar becoming poetry is what

You're after—say, a rational derangement

Requiring that you forget technique

And concentrate on what is harder like

A fireplace that burns pine needles only,

Before which spills the gore of Persian rugs.

6

A vial of antiseptic meant for Schubert,

One modest, flat meticulous translation

Of Chopin's lightning undercurrent Spanish—

These are the mere necessities of travel.

Someone you must meet is Dr. Czerny.

Then, through him, Domenico Scarlatti.

7

Seizure are occurring. Despite snow-lightning,

The black keys are bent on mountain climbing—

All of it against a doctor's warning.

Soon they're descending like the black dots of

A wirephoto in transmission. An

Erotic black wing hovers up above.

8

Bach is more like opening an ember

And digging hard into the heart of fire.

The heart of fire is another fire.

When it comes to Mozart, just say nothing.

Think of it as milk, and drink it slowly.

Slowly you will taste the cream of angels.

9

This black and white's deceptive. Underneath

The spectrum rages. Did you ever see

The calmest waters quickly come to life

Because a minnow's tinfoil flash in sun

Had rent them suddenly? It came. And went.

We take two thousand takes before we print.

10

Don't try to catch that lion by Rousseau.

Before you wake, he'll eat you up. If you

Should meet the sleeping gypsy, let her sleep.

Tomorrow they'll be gone without a trace,

Half fact and half enigma. Now your hands

Are on the mysteries of the commonplace.

Howard Moss

“Now your hands are on the mysteries of the commonplace.” Music – it takes us places, calls up images, stories, people, scenes – but how? What happens to us when music enters? What is it doing? Will we ever know? And does it matter, just as long as it keeps on?

Painting a Wave

Lia Melia , "Songs of Melusina"

Painting a Wave

"Painting a wave requires no system,"
The painter said, painting a wave.
"Systems may get you flotsam and jetsam,
Seaweed and so forth. But never a wave."

There was a scroll or fine-lined curve
On the canvas first, and then what looked
Like hair flying or grayish nerves,
Which began to move as the painter worked.

"Painting the sea is a lot of trouble;
It never stops still for a moment, so
I try to make it internal, mental,
As though I stopped it, then let it go."

Something began to pulse and tumble
Out of the brushes, the ink, the chalk;
A long black line commenced to tremble,
Then, like a fishline, started to jerk...

With what at the end? "I think I've caught it,"
A drop of water hung by a hair,
"If I could only stop it a minute!"
The drop began to race somewhere.

Spreading out in every direction,
A bird of thread, caught in a storm,
Trying to say "Connection! Action!"
But in the end it was very calm.

Soon there was water under water,
And over the sand a sun...a moon?
Who could have seen that wave of water
One night ago? Or a thousand and one?

Who could have seen the lid of water
With its thin mascara of buoys and corks,
With its lined horizon's distant glimmer
Of maybe a skyline like New York's?

Now there will be that morning evening
Tide dyeing the water's pulse,
The wave drying in ink. The Wave.
Moving, momentous, motionless.

Howard Moss

Here is the question - how do you capture motion in art? Imagine the days before photography, before slow motion, the days when people didn't know if all four hoofs of a running horse left the ground midstride, or if one was always touching the ground. The things we have seen since! I've spent my share of time watching extreme slow motion videos of bursting water balloons and watermelons on Youtube, and it's utterly fascinating. But how does an artist approach the task of portraying motion - in a still, unmoving medium? I love how this poem looks at that question. 



  

Beach Glass

@nataliefeddema

Beach Glass

Mr. Calava rises at five

A.M., the first on the beach, but not

Because he's crazy about the sea.

He's crazy about beach glass. He has

Two thousand pieces

At the latest count.

An industry of idleness,

He's a connoisseur of broken glass.

Sucked candy bits as hard as lava,

The shards are no longer sharp and come

In every shape and every color -

The commonest are white and brown;

Harder to find are blue and green;

Amber is rare; yellow rarer;

And red the rarest of all. The sea

Is a glassblower who blasts to bits

Coca-Cola and Waterford,

Venetian as well as Baccarat,

And has carefully combed its five-and-ten

For anything made of glass. It isn't

Fussy. It knows that everything

Will be pared down in the end:

Milk of magnesia bottles honed

To sky-blue icy filaments,

And smoky cordial bottles from

Brazil - sunglasses of an eclipse.

Mr. Calava's kaleidoscopes

Are kept in apothecary jars,

As if the sea were a pharmacy

Of lozenges and doled them out

Without a prescription, especially

For Mr. Calava, who firmly believes

The best things in life are free.

But what the sea has relinquished it

Has relinquished only in part. You know

How childish it is in it's irony.

The jigsaw puzzle is here. But then

Its missing pieces are still in the sea.

Not all the king's horses and all the king's men

Could ever put it together again,

Though - chip by chip,

And bit by bit -

Rouault could make a King of it.

Howard Moss

from "Beach Glass and Other Poems" edited by Paul Malloy


Mr. Calava. Who is this Mr. Calava? What kind of person gets up at 5am. to search the beach for seaglass? I like how this poem jumbles different stories together. First there is this collector and his dedicated search, then the story of the rareness of each colour of glass, and the sea as an artist, a glassblower who doesn't care about the quality or origin of it's material because, and this is my favorite line, "It knows that everything will be pared down in the end." I love that. Think about that awhile. It's so true. What does it matter the quality of my possessions ? What matters in the end is what was useful to me, what I actually did something with, what I took and turned into something more. And then there's the story of the sea as a pharmacy - that gets me too. For myself, and I know I must speak for so many, the sea has so many medicinal benefits - how could I even name them all?! And then, the story of the puzzle pieces forever scattered - I don't know if I feel sad about that, or happy. Is Mr. Calava slowly gathering these puzzle pieces  together again, or is he intent on putting them together in a new way? A new art from a scattered and broken original? What a thought. (Georges Rouault was a French artist whose painting "Old King" looks very much as if it could've been a mosaic of seaglass.) All these parts of stories jumbled together seem rather like the bits and chips of coloured seaglass collected in Mr. Calava's apothecary jars, don't they?