poem as chant in three voices, with accompaniment

On the floor of your mind, then–is it not this that makes you a poet?–rhythm keeps up its perpetual beat. Sometimes it seems to die down to nothing; it lets you eat, sleep, talk like other people. Then again it swells and rises and attempts to sweep all the contents of your mind into one dominant dance. Tonight is such an occasion.

Virginia Woolf

—Virginia Woolf  (A Letter to a Young Poet)

 

 

I Am in Need of Music

Elizabeth Bishop

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.

Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

—Elizabeth Bishop 

 

Three Things

I carried two things around in my mind
Walking the woods and thinking how to say
Shiver of poplar leaves in a light wind,
Threshing of water over tumbled stones,
A brook rippling its interrupted way–
Two things that bring a tremor to the bones.

May Sarton

And now I carry around in my head a third.
The force of it stops me as I walk the wood,
Three things for which no one has found a word–
Wind in the poplar, tremor under the skin
Deep in the flesh, a shiver of more than blood
When lovers, water and leaves are wholly one.

—May Sarton

 

 

 

Accompaniment:

Amanda Maier – Violin Sonata

Amanda Maier

 

Posted by Jillian Parker