Below is the link to a poem by Karla Bush (The Black Crow Writer). I think it is lovely and haunting...crafted with a natural flair:
A Seasonal Affair
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Mozart and the Ineffable Priming
How silly to use the word “ineffable” and then to go a-yammering with words.
Anyway...here's what happened.
In 1980 (or thereabouts), I began to be “bothered” by classical music. Something was there in that stuff. It whispered seductions to me, but I was too rough and dull-brained to decipher the murmuring. I was also too stubborn to let it go. Something was there, and by god, I would keep listening, keep trying to hear...to understand, to become one with it.
(It would take another dozen years or so before that night, when Beethoven escorted me into a complete affective grasping of what great music is and what it communicates.)
Hard day at work. Then driving home. Car radio on the NPR station. To that regular afternoon program of classical music. Another Mozart piano sonata! And played again by Robert Casadesus, that light-fingered Frenchman.
It was all about the cascade. The pianist offered up the score with a delicate touch and tone. With verve -- ripples of notes, almost hypnotizing me as I drove through the Little Rock traffic. An inexpressible mood would wrap around me. I was getting close to real music but was still at arm's length from its deeper significance. I had not crossed over.
This ignorance is hard to describe. An attraction was there, but I didn't understand what I was hearing and experiencing. Those of profounder sensibility would say, “You're not supposed to understand.” But after my later Beethoven epiphany, I think they would be wrong. Later, I did understand, though that word is problematic. It's more like this: later, the music bonded with fibers in me that before had been merely burgeoning threads of significance.
The intervening years passed, and a few other pieces goosed the carbeurator of my curiosity, of my accruing response: Schumann's Symphony No. 1, Schubert's Symphony No. 8, Debussy's La Mer, Chopin's Preludes.
Mozart primed me with his liquid, dancing piano sonatas. And later, with Beethoven, my musical soul began firing on all cylinders.
Anyway...here's what happened.
In 1980 (or thereabouts), I began to be “bothered” by classical music. Something was there in that stuff. It whispered seductions to me, but I was too rough and dull-brained to decipher the murmuring. I was also too stubborn to let it go. Something was there, and by god, I would keep listening, keep trying to hear...to understand, to become one with it.
(It would take another dozen years or so before that night, when Beethoven escorted me into a complete affective grasping of what great music is and what it communicates.)
Hard day at work. Then driving home. Car radio on the NPR station. To that regular afternoon program of classical music. Another Mozart piano sonata! And played again by Robert Casadesus, that light-fingered Frenchman.
It was all about the cascade. The pianist offered up the score with a delicate touch and tone. With verve -- ripples of notes, almost hypnotizing me as I drove through the Little Rock traffic. An inexpressible mood would wrap around me. I was getting close to real music but was still at arm's length from its deeper significance. I had not crossed over.
This ignorance is hard to describe. An attraction was there, but I didn't understand what I was hearing and experiencing. Those of profounder sensibility would say, “You're not supposed to understand.” But after my later Beethoven epiphany, I think they would be wrong. Later, I did understand, though that word is problematic. It's more like this: later, the music bonded with fibers in me that before had been merely burgeoning threads of significance.
The intervening years passed, and a few other pieces goosed the carbeurator of my curiosity, of my accruing response: Schumann's Symphony No. 1, Schubert's Symphony No. 8, Debussy's La Mer, Chopin's Preludes.
Mozart primed me with his liquid, dancing piano sonatas. And later, with Beethoven, my musical soul began firing on all cylinders.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
We are serious!
You don't have to giggle a gaggle of words.
But almost-smiles do happen in the turning world.
Where is it frickin' written
that even blithe or blissy souls
must head for hell and black abysses
when sitting down to write a poem?
Egads!...I have no free will!
I was sipping wine pleasantly --
a bouquet of tremulous flowers
and vague indifferent visions
just hanging there in my head...
pushed me somehow into a poem.
And light instantly began a-moaning!
So serious. So serious. So serious.
Where is it frickin' written
that words must wear robes
like muttering morbid monks
with broken hearts or heads
filled with profound darkness?
Now of course one can go too far
and write a happy thing of horror --
no one wants to read vapid gushing,
a folksy wink makes a body shudder,
and a grinning poem is way grotesque.
But at least one poem in a thousand
might eschew a suicidal wallowing,
might almost smile at simple hours,
might give the fitful muse a night off,
might move in lines without a whimper.
God!......
At least one poem in a thousand
could be a Zen-like observation
of how luminosity touches objects
with its own moods and compulsion.
Damn...poetry is so miserably serious!
I think I'll jump and chort and snortle.
But almost-smiles do happen in the turning world.
Where is it frickin' written
that even blithe or blissy souls
must head for hell and black abysses
when sitting down to write a poem?
Egads!...I have no free will!
I was sipping wine pleasantly --
a bouquet of tremulous flowers
and vague indifferent visions
just hanging there in my head...
pushed me somehow into a poem.
And light instantly began a-moaning!
So serious. So serious. So serious.
Where is it frickin' written
that words must wear robes
like muttering morbid monks
with broken hearts or heads
filled with profound darkness?
Now of course one can go too far
and write a happy thing of horror --
no one wants to read vapid gushing,
a folksy wink makes a body shudder,
and a grinning poem is way grotesque.
But at least one poem in a thousand
might eschew a suicidal wallowing,
might almost smile at simple hours,
might give the fitful muse a night off,
might move in lines without a whimper.
God!......
At least one poem in a thousand
could be a Zen-like observation
of how luminosity touches objects
with its own moods and compulsion.
Damn...poetry is so miserably serious!
I think I'll jump and chort and snortle.
Friday, July 22, 2011
The Lake (a ghost-story song)
Words and music copyright -- Tim Buck
All parts -- also me
The Lake
I float in my boat about one hundred yards from the shore.
I drift on the lake, drinkin' ten beers or more.
Summer sun cooks me up a serving of dreams,
and I drowse like that lazy faun by Claude Debussy.
Daydreams get stirred up with a relish of recall,
and I think about that time before the dam was installed.
All the homesteads were abandoned, the coffins disinterred.
Rites were performed so no curses would stir
stir the big water,
stir the big water,
stir the big water of Greer's Ferry Lake.
But sometimes the schemes of sincere mere men
get waylaid by unforeseen consequence.
I do believe that all of those cautions did fail.
I've seen things in the depths make a sober man quail.
Some of us folk got minds that are slightly free.
We don't mock our spirits, we don't chop down willow trees.
So what of those apparitions reported back then?
Has a liquid mausoleum sealed obsessions in
beneath big water,
beneath big water,
beneath the big water of Greer's Ferry Lake?
Sometimes when I peer down in the watery vast,
I see her mad spirit amid the crappie and the bass.
Not a-swimmin', she's a-swirlin', she's a-searchin' for God.
Gonna confront him for killin' her with diphtheria's blood rot.
Well, I ain't like those who have lost their inner eye.
My peripheral sight sees through what shadows glide.
Once as a boy jumpin' headstones, a spectre gave a fright.
Momma said that was a goat with long hair silken white.
So I am primed to see what lies beyond the pale.
Yes, I have a hoard of uncanny tales I could tell.
And I'll float upon this reservoir from end to blue end
until I can speak solace to my little restless friend.
Sometimes when I peer down in the watery vast,
I see her mad spirit amid the crappie and the bass.
Not a-swimmin', she's a-swirlin', she's a-searchin' for God.
Gonna confront him for killin' her with diphtheria's blood rot.
The waves of this lake lap incessantly.
Once into a lonesome cove at dusk I did drift.
The water transmogrified to mist eerily,
in the shape of a child, up through the pines she did lift.
Greer's Ferry Lake is in north-central Arkansas
All parts -- also me
The Lake
I float in my boat about one hundred yards from the shore.
I drift on the lake, drinkin' ten beers or more.
Summer sun cooks me up a serving of dreams,
and I drowse like that lazy faun by Claude Debussy.
Daydreams get stirred up with a relish of recall,
and I think about that time before the dam was installed.
All the homesteads were abandoned, the coffins disinterred.
Rites were performed so no curses would stir
stir the big water,
stir the big water,
stir the big water of Greer's Ferry Lake.
But sometimes the schemes of sincere mere men
get waylaid by unforeseen consequence.
I do believe that all of those cautions did fail.
I've seen things in the depths make a sober man quail.
Some of us folk got minds that are slightly free.
We don't mock our spirits, we don't chop down willow trees.
So what of those apparitions reported back then?
Has a liquid mausoleum sealed obsessions in
beneath big water,
beneath big water,
beneath the big water of Greer's Ferry Lake?
Sometimes when I peer down in the watery vast,
I see her mad spirit amid the crappie and the bass.
Not a-swimmin', she's a-swirlin', she's a-searchin' for God.
Gonna confront him for killin' her with diphtheria's blood rot.
Well, I ain't like those who have lost their inner eye.
My peripheral sight sees through what shadows glide.
Once as a boy jumpin' headstones, a spectre gave a fright.
Momma said that was a goat with long hair silken white.
So I am primed to see what lies beyond the pale.
Yes, I have a hoard of uncanny tales I could tell.
And I'll float upon this reservoir from end to blue end
until I can speak solace to my little restless friend.
Sometimes when I peer down in the watery vast,
I see her mad spirit amid the crappie and the bass.
Not a-swimmin', she's a-swirlin', she's a-searchin' for God.
Gonna confront him for killin' her with diphtheria's blood rot.
The waves of this lake lap incessantly.
Once into a lonesome cove at dusk I did drift.
The water transmogrified to mist eerily,
in the shape of a child, up through the pines she did lift.
Greer's Ferry Lake is in north-central Arkansas
Sunday, July 17, 2011
bewildering
Every town grows slowly from the strange,
from a seed of harsh cells and owling nights.
In south Arkansas a town was peddler born --
a little trading post amid pines and Quapaws.
Sweating days and untongued bargaining
coiled into early years, into eyes like flint.
Every town has many years of frost and rain.
The congealing of a populace seems algorithmic.
How bewildering and good when wild visions come!
When they graze the surface of a coming town.
When a renegade imagination glances sideways
to dwell on faces long dead and stern women!
Urgent sex must have found convenient moments
to bring balm for lives poised on the fringe of fevers.
Brutal hours of labor -- felling trees and giving birth.
A town also born and human beings becoming neighbors.
Until the complex rhythms of gestures and superstitions
and weathers and deaths and dancing led to community.
Decades roll through fist fights, gambling, and a war.
Until oil is struck and the sky trembles over new people.
A square surrounds the merciless court house of judges.
Banks and shops rise on progress like opium-walled mirages.
And dark greenbacks of 1925 are magical with engraving.
The smells inside buildings are so fragrant with commerce.
Human beings move surely in hats and fashionable certanties
of what a day means and of what an unseen god expects.
A mile and time away a refinery blasts fumes and nightmares
for the boy who has seen it there and whose belly is filled by it.
Wraiths come at night from derrick woods tocking and conspiring,
making the days dubious and all the rooted people seem too solid.
And when the boy has become a twisting mass of years,
he almost smiles because he will never escape the strange.
from a seed of harsh cells and owling nights.
In south Arkansas a town was peddler born --
a little trading post amid pines and Quapaws.
Sweating days and untongued bargaining
coiled into early years, into eyes like flint.
Every town has many years of frost and rain.
The congealing of a populace seems algorithmic.
How bewildering and good when wild visions come!
When they graze the surface of a coming town.
When a renegade imagination glances sideways
to dwell on faces long dead and stern women!
Urgent sex must have found convenient moments
to bring balm for lives poised on the fringe of fevers.
Brutal hours of labor -- felling trees and giving birth.
A town also born and human beings becoming neighbors.
Until the complex rhythms of gestures and superstitions
and weathers and deaths and dancing led to community.
Decades roll through fist fights, gambling, and a war.
Until oil is struck and the sky trembles over new people.
A square surrounds the merciless court house of judges.
Banks and shops rise on progress like opium-walled mirages.
And dark greenbacks of 1925 are magical with engraving.
The smells inside buildings are so fragrant with commerce.
Human beings move surely in hats and fashionable certanties
of what a day means and of what an unseen god expects.
A mile and time away a refinery blasts fumes and nightmares
for the boy who has seen it there and whose belly is filled by it.
Wraiths come at night from derrick woods tocking and conspiring,
making the days dubious and all the rooted people seem too solid.
And when the boy has become a twisting mass of years,
he almost smiles because he will never escape the strange.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
ole factory
Every night, the similar dull story:
dreaming down into vast buildings,
where experts of curious laws and logic
work amid configurations of substance
and glistening machines of entropy.
Every night, into the dense foundries
of malleable significance and rumors
that stream from sarcastic eyes removing
all knowledge and skill from my labors.
Then the day comes because the sun is surreal.
And the same day lurches through stricken hours.
Against the gods of time and predicament,
I pour red wine into this afternoon glass.
A pause to linger over the pungency,
and then I drink what tastes like lips.
And from that tasting comes aromas
gliding like silks dipped in frankincense.
Or from distant earthy villages heavy
with unknown smells from golden skin,
smells dusky and rich and deeply feminine.
I have breathed you in on a gasping desire,
imagined you on tilted planes of smiling lips
that blast the eyes of all my nights' accusers.
dreaming down into vast buildings,
where experts of curious laws and logic
work amid configurations of substance
and glistening machines of entropy.
Every night, into the dense foundries
of malleable significance and rumors
that stream from sarcastic eyes removing
all knowledge and skill from my labors.
Then the day comes because the sun is surreal.
And the same day lurches through stricken hours.
Against the gods of time and predicament,
I pour red wine into this afternoon glass.
A pause to linger over the pungency,
and then I drink what tastes like lips.
And from that tasting comes aromas
gliding like silks dipped in frankincense.
Or from distant earthy villages heavy
with unknown smells from golden skin,
smells dusky and rich and deeply feminine.
I have breathed you in on a gasping desire,
imagined you on tilted planes of smiling lips
that blast the eyes of all my nights' accusers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
