Proms Poetry Competition (and your favourite musical poetry)

[Guest]

Did anyone enter the Proms Poetry Competition? If so, here's a space to share your entries with the board. If not, I thought it might be an appropriate way to celebrate by posting our favourite poetry, musical or otherwise. I seem to remember some highly original musical poetry on the old board...if you're feeling poetic, why not write your own and share it now?

Here's a paragraph from the competition guidelines to get you started:

So, think about the piece of music. How does it make you feel? Does it remind you of a place you've been to, a person you know? Does it feel like a story or a description or simply a bunch of words thrown into the air? Any of those are fine: what I'm looking for is your personal response to a piece of music in the Proms. You don't have to tell me the tale of how the music got written or what the composer meant by it, unless you really want to. Think outside the box as marketing people in bright ties and designer glasses say. And remember: I want to be startled!

He asked for it, so let's have it!

[cavatina]

Anyone feel like sharing poetry? Just tonight, I found two poems that describe what their authors were thinking and feeling at a concert...hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

"AFTER MUSIC OF LOVE..."
Nina Gorsky
(From Juan Ramon Jimenez)

After music of love had eventually ceased off to sound
And, like petals of blooms, hands had fallen on pearls of the keys,
They were long mad of Schubert – the strings, raised to heavens and downed
By the river of grief with aroma of wonderful breeze.

Blanca slowly said, "I think Germans are boring a little…"
And the wife of a lawyer – oh, muses! – yawned slightly: "A bore!"
"Yet Beethoven’s the best, his sonatas are perfectly distilled",
Added Rosa from Cuba – "an expert a public before".

I didn’t answer all them - swelling tears made me utterly smothered,
To the garden’s fresh roses, I ran from the music and farce…
And in green of sad night, I met Schubert – my dear composer –
The refined cavalier, decorated with heavenly stars.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

That's rather beautiful.

[cavatina]

Thanks, glad you like them! I'll post a few more tonight after I'm full of Brahms.

[cavatina]

Here are a few lovely lyric poems Brahms set to music...enjoy!

IT MOVES LIKE A MELODY
by Klaus Groth

It moves like a melody,
Gently through my mind;
It blossoms like spring flowers
And wafts away like fragrance.

But when it is captured in words,
And placed before my eyes,
It turns pale like a gray mist
And disappears like a breath.

And yet, remaining in my rhymes
There hides still a fragrance,
Which mildly from the quiet bud
My moist eyes call forth.

***

TO AN AEOLIAN HARP
by Eduard Mörike

Leaning up against the ivy-covered wall
Of this old terrace,
You, an air-borne muse,
A lute-melody full of mystery,
Begin,
Begin again,
Your melodious lament!
You come, winds, from far away,
Ah! from the boy
Who was so dear to me,
From his hill so freshly green.
On your way, streaking over spring blossoms
Saturated with sweet scents,
How sweetly, how sweetly you besiege my heart!
You rustle the strings here,
Drawn by harmonious melancholy,
Growing louder in the pull of my longing,
And then dying down again.
But all at once,
The wind blows violently
And a lovely cry of the harp
Echoes, to my sweet terror,
The sudden stirring of my soul,
And here, the ample rose shakes and strews
All its petals at my feet!

[Serial_Apologist]

In Just Spring by E E Cummings

Which expresses better than anything else the child-like euphoria of awakening to a spring day.

In just spring
When the world is puddle wonderful...

[...]

Nobody can stop it!
Not all the policemen in the world!

Unfortunately someone nicked my copy of Cummings poems, so I forget the rest of it; but those lines suffice me. I first heard it in a setting by Patrick Harrex, iirc, back around 1969.

Less means more, innit

[mangerton]

On the basis that less certainly does mean more, here is one of my favourite poems.

On yonder hill there stands a coo -
If it's no there it's awa noo.

And here is a link to my favourite musical poem:

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bagpipe-music/

[vinteuil]

In Just Spring by E E Cummings

Which expresses better than anything else the child-like euphoria of awakening to a spring day.

In just spring
When the world is puddle wonderful...


Unfortunately someone nicked my copy of Cummings poems, so I forget the rest of it; :

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame balloonman


whistles far and wee


and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring


when the world is puddle-wonderful


the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing


from hop-scotch and jump-rope and


it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed


balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

[vinteuil]

In Just Spring by E E Cummings

Which expresses better than anything else the child-like euphoria of awakening to a spring day.


[...]

Nobody can stop it!
Not all the policemen in the world!

Unfortunately someone nicked my copy of Cummings poems, so I forget the rest of it; :

(listen)

this a dog barks and
how crazily houses
eyes people smiles

faces streets
steeples are eagerly

tumbl

ing through wonder
ful sunlight


- look -
selves,stir:writhe
o-p-e-n-i-n-g

are(leaves;flowers)dreams

,come quickly come


run run
with me now
jump shout(laugh
dance cry sing)for

it's Spring


- irrevocably;
and in
earth sky trees
:every
where a miracle arrives


(yes)

you and I may not
hurry it with
a thousand poems
my darling


but nobody will stop it

With All The Policemen In The World

[Serial_Apologist]

(listen)

this a dog barks and
how crazily houses
eyes people smiles

faces streets
steeples are eagerly

tumbl

ing through wonder
ful sunlight


- look -
selves,stir:writhe
o-p-e-n-i-n-g

are(leaves;flowers)dreams

,come quickly come


run run
with me now
jump shout(laugh
dance cry sing)for

it's Spring


- irrevocably;
and in
earth sky trees
:every
where a miracle arrives


(yes)

you and I may not
hurry it with
a thousand poems
my darling


but nobody will stop it

With All The Policemen In The World

Oh THANKS Vinteuil - that must have been a labour of love

I remember now - Jane Manning was the singer, and what a wonderful job she did with the poem.

[Simon]

I've never been keen on cummings, though I do feel sometimes, I think, something of what was being intended in the words ... but I did enjoy the above-quoted piece.

But I can't let any thread about spring and poetry go without posting the following, which i hope others enjoy and which for me perfectly captures that odd, faint feeling that you do get, usually in March, when you can sort of smell or sense the Spring approaching. March 1st, for me, is the best day of the year, cos look at what you have to look forward to - long days of warmth and summer!

Which is also why this time of the year is sad for me: I hate dark, foggy nights so I don't like the winters much, though snow can be fun for a while, and earlier this week I caught my first feeling of approaching Autumn in the chill of the wind and the smell of leaves beginning to die off...

Earliest Spring - William Dean Howells

Tossing his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles,
Lion-like March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath,
Through all the moaning chimneys, and 'thwart all the hollows and angles
Round the shuddering house, threating of winter and death.

But in my heart I feel the life of the wood and the meadow
Thrilling the pulses that own kindred with fibres that lift
Bud and blade to the sunward, within the inscrutable shadow,
Deep in the oak's chill core, under the gathering drift.

Nay, to earth's life in mine some prescience, or dream, or desire
(How shall I name it aright?) comes for a moment and goes--
Rapture of life ineffable, perfect--as if in the brier,
Leafless there by my door, trembled a sense of the rose.

[Lateralthinking1]

I am very keen on e e cummings. I also like the work of Andrew Motion who I feel is underrated. Here is "Frozen Music":

http://www.architecture.com/TheRIBA/175thAnniversary/Poem/Poem.aspx

[cavatina]

earlier this week I caught my first feeling of approaching Autumn in the chill of the wind and the smell of leaves beginning to die off...

Poets don't always find autumn depressing...here's a lovely one by Rabindranath Tagore that I find as beautiful and touching as anything ever written about spring:


THIS AUTUMN MORNING

This autumn morning is tired with excess of light,
and if your songs grow fitful and languid give me your flute awhile.

I shall but play with it as the whim takes me, --
now take it on my lap, now touch it with my lips,
now keep it by my side on the grass.

But in the solemn evening stillness I shall gather flowers,
to deck it with wreaths, I shall fill it with fragrance;
I shall worship it with the lighted lamp.

Then at night I shall come to you and give you back your flute.

You will play on it the music of midnight
when the lonely crescent moon wanders among the stars.

[Serial_Apologist]

One of my favourite Tagore settings was the one adapted for Zemlinsky's Lyrical Symphony in Seven Songs (1923) - imo a truly worthy successor to Mahler's "Das Lied" in terms of carrying the harmonic language forward and offering a helpful bridge to those attempting the step from Mahler to the Schoenberg school. (Berg quoted from it in his Lyric Suite).

[PatrickOD]

To be contrary, cavatina, there is a poem which contains a phrase, or aural image, that often occurs to me as a perfect description of the effect of some piece I am listening to. I don't know if this poem has ever been set, but if not, it sings for itself.

....and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing......

http://www.bartleby.com/122/9.html