PROJECT PRODUCERS: MIMMI FULMER AND LEONE BUYSE
RECORDING ENGINEERS: STEVE GOTCHER AND BUZZ KEMPER
(AUDIO FOR THE ARTS, MADISON), AL SWANSON (SEATTLE),
ANDY BRADLEY (HOUSTON)
RECORDING PRODUCERS: MICHAEL WEBSTER (MADISON AND
HOUSTON), WILLIAM FARLOW AND RIC MERRITT (MADISON),
ZART DOMBOURIAN-EBY AND MARTIN AMLIN (SEATTLE)
DIGITAL EDITING AND MASTERING: ALLEN CORNEAU,
ESSENTIAL SOUND, HOUSTON; STEVE GOTCHER AND BUZZ KEMPER
BOOKLET NOTES: LEONE BUYSE AND MIMMI FULMER
american vistas
THE FOLLOWING WORKS WERE RECORDED AT
AUDIO FOR THE ARTS IN MADISON: CORIGLIANO AND COPLAND
(MAY 22, 2000), GENDEL AND SHAPEY (DECEMBER 19, 2003),
BOSCH AND COWELL (DECEMBER 17, 2005),
GABURO (JUNE 21, 2006).
AMLIN AND BLAKE WERE RECORDED IN ILLSLEY BALL NORDSTROM
RECITAL HALL AT BENAROYA HALL, SEATTLE, ON MAY 5, 2001.
STALLMAN WAS RECORDED IN STUDE CONCERT HALL,
RICE UNIVERSITY, HOUSTON, ON FEBRUARY 14, 2006.
Mimmi Fulmer, soprano Leone Buyse, flute & alto flute
Martin Amlin, piano Scott Gendel, piano Michael Webster, clarinet
PHOTO OF MIMMI FULMER BY JAMES GILL
PHOTO OF LEONE BUYSE BY TOMMY LAVERGNE
TROY1097
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DDD
wo r k s by
John Corigliano
Martin Amlin
Kenneth Gaburo
Braxton Blake
Henry Cowell
Ralph Shapey
Scott Gendel
Kurt Stallmann
Maura Bosch
Aaron Copland
THE MUSIC
The 11 works on this compact disc represent four generations of American composers and a compositional time span of eight decades. Interestingly, the texts of these pieces span five centuries, from
poems by Richard Barnefield (1574-1627) and Thomas Dekker (c.1570-c.1644) to a text by the
Minnesota-based poet Jim Moore (b. 1943). In the ensemble repertoire for voice and flute, only
Corigliano’s Three Irish Folksong Settings and Copland’s As It Fell Upon a Day enjoy wide recognition
and frequent performances; the remaining works, all composed between 1992 and 2005, are relatively
unknown and deserving of a broader audience.
In selecting music for this disc we sought works that define skillful text setting and showcase
contrasting compositional styles. Just as the American “character” defies definition because of its rich
cultural blend, the American musical “style” comprises myriad voices—each distinct in its conviction.
John Corigliano: Three Irish Folksong Settings
John Corigliano is one of the most prominent American composers of his generation. Awarded a Pulitzer
Prize in 2001 for his Symphony No. 2, he also received the Grawemeyer Award in 1991 for his Symphony
No. 1 and an Academy Award for Original Film Score (The Red Violin) in 1999. He has composed primarily
for the symphonic medium, and includes several concertos in his catalogue. Flutists are familiar with
his colorful Pied Piper Fantasy, written in 1982 for flutist James Galway. His music is known for its
accessibility, and the Three Irish Folksong Settings are an excellent example of Corigliano’s ability to
compose in a contemporary idiom while conveying the timeless character of folk music.
Written in 1988, Three Irish Folksong Settings have quickly become a staple in the repertoire for
voice and flute. Each of the songs deals with the universal issue of love in a different way, from the
self-pitying mood of “The Salley Gardens” to the boisterous, youthful exuberance of “The Foggy Dew”
and the wistful longing of never-to-be-fulfilled love in “She Moved Through the Fair.” The last of these
is particularly haunting in its modal language, and the three as a set are memorable for their engaging
dialogue between voice and flute.
Martin Amlin: Two Songs on Poems of Anne Fessenden
Martin Amlin is Associate Professor of Music and chairman of the Composition and Theory Department at
Boston University, as well as director of the Young Artists Composition Program at the Boston University
Tanglewood Institute. His compositions have been performed throughout the world and are published by
the Theodore Presser Company. Both his Sonata for Piccolo and Piano and Sonata No. 2 for Flute and Piano
have won the National Flute Association’s newly published music competition. A versatile performer,
Mr. Amlin has appeared as piano soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra and has been featured on the
Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Prelude concerts at both Symphony Hall and Tanglewood. He studied in
Fontainebleau and Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and received his master’s and doctoral degrees and the
Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. Recipient of grants from such organizations as
the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and ASCAP, he may be heard as
both pianist and composer on the Albany, Hyperion, Koch International, Centaur, Crystal, Titanic, Opus One,
Ashmont Music, Folkways, and Wergo labels.
Amlin writes: “Two Songs on Poems by Anne Fessenden was premiered on a recital for the New York
Flute Club in January, 1998, by Mimmi Fulmer, soprano and Leone Buyse, alto flute. Anne Fessenden is a
poet whom I met at Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. I was struck by the wonderful
imagery in her poetry and thought that the alto flute was the perfect instrument for the evocative nature
of these two texts. I used several different types of rhythmic devices (such as changing meters and
polyrhythms) in an attempt to give the music a floating quality in ‘Lookout.’ In ‘The Song Wheel’ there is
a continual shifting between symmetrical and asymmetrical measures in order to create the image of a
wheel that has been spinning for centuries and continues to spin unhindered.”
Kenneth Gaburo: Cantilena One
Through his work in American experimentalism, Kenneth Gaburo (1926-1993) had a major impact on a
generation of musical minds. Gifted as a teacher and jazz pianist, he composed and published extensively and was a pioneer in the field of electronic music. Among his teachers were Bernard Rogers at
the Eastman School of Music and Goffredo Petrassi. During the course of his career he taught at the
University of Illinois, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Iowa. As early as
1955 he began to combine taped concrete sounds with live performers, a genre that was to interest him
for the rest of his life. Attracted to music as language and language as music, Gaburo began formal
studies in linguistics in 1959 and devised the term “compositional linguistics.” In 1965 he founded the
New Music Choral Ensemble (NMCE), one of the first American choirs to perform avant-garde vocal
music, combining improvisation with electronics, linguistics, computers, dance, mime, film, slides, and
tape. Gaburo received awards from the Guggenheim, UNESCO, Thorne, Fromm, and Koussevitsky
Foundations and in 1974 founded Lingua Press Publishers, a publishing house committed to showcasing
artist-generated works in all media relating to language and music. Cantilena One: Solo soprano is set
to a luminous text by Rabindranath Tagore.
Braxton Blake: Three Songs on Poems by Marianne Moore
Braxton Blake studied at the Eastman School of Music (MM and PhD), the Aspen Music Festival, the
Bayreuth Festival, the Dartington Festival, the Staatliche Musikhochschule, Stuttgart, and the
University of Houston. He has received commissions from the Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester, Denmark;
the Philharmonic Brass, Stuttgart; the West German Radio, Cologne; the Vail Valley Foundation, the City
of Mannheim, Ensemble GelberKlang, the Stuttgart Philharmonic, the City of Stuttgart, and the Stuttgart
Ballet. His music is published by Theodore Presser and Columbia University Music Press, has been
recorded and broadcast by the Südwest Rundfunk, Baden-Baden, and can be heard on the Ars-Musici
and Albany labels. Mr. Blake is a recipient of the Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. As conductor, he served as music director for the Erick Hawkins Dance
Company, and appeared with such ensembles as the Stuttgart Philharmonic, the San Francisco
Contemporary Music Players, the South German Radio Choir, and the Stuttgart Ballet. He has recorded
extensively for the South German Radio and has also recorded for Muza and Col Legno.
Blake writes: “These songs were composed for my wife, Freda Herseth. While some find a coolness
in Marianne Moore’s work, I am attracted to her craft, precise language, imagery, and grace; within her
structured and virtuosic poems exists a world of powerful but elusive feelings and images. I often shift
my musical language and palette according to the texts I set; in these songs I have tried to reflect not
only my perception of the content of Moore’s work, but also the veiled and structured language of the
poems. This is done not only through the vocal line but also with the flute, whose illuminating material
shifts between commenting upon and flowing with the poetic imagery.”
Henry Cowell: I Heard in the Night
Henry Cowell (1897-1965) was a highly influential seeker who explored music of all cultures and whose
compositional innovations revolutionized American music. A native of Menlo Park, California, he was
exposed from an early age to Irish folk music, Asian and Indian classical music traditions, and his
mother’s Midwestern folk tunes. Cowell studied composition with Charles Seeger at the University of
California and pursued further studies in world music. He became a celebrity in both the United States
and Europe as a performer of his own piano works, which included such sensational new compositional
techniques as clusters, playing harmonics on the piano strings, and producing percussive sounds
inside the piano. He taught at the New School for Social Research in New York, the Peabody
Conservatory, and Columbia University, and counted among his students John Cage, Lou Harrison, and
(more briefly) George Gershwin and Burt Bacharach. His circle of friends included Charles Ives, Carl
Ruggles, and Dane Rudhyar. Among his many awards and honors was his election in 1951 to the
American Institute of Arts and Letters.
Cowell wrote more than 180 songs. I Heard in the Night was composed at a time when Cowell had
returned to a more conservative language. It uses a text originally entitled “No Child” by the Irish poet
Padraic Colum, also a playwright and novelist with a keen interest in folklore. The folk-like character
of its simple melody touchingly expresses the melancholy of the childless woman speaking.
Ralph Shapey: Lullaby
A composition student of Stefan Wolpe, Ralph Shapey (1921-2002) venerated masters of previous generations and was particularly influenced by Edgard Varèse. Well known as both composer and conductor,
Shapey taught composition at the University of Chicago, mentored such distinguished composers as
Shulamit Ran and Ursula Mamlok, and received numerous awards, including a MacArthur fellowship
in 1982. His complex, texturally organized style has been termed “abstract expressionism.” He
described himself as a “radical traditionalist” and further explained: “My music combines two fundamentally contradictory impulses–-radical language and romantic sensibility. The melodies are disjunct
and dissonant; they contain “atonal” harmonies and extremes in register, dynamics, and textural
contrast. Yet the musical structures are grandly formed and run the gamut of dramatic gestures. Like
the Romantics, I conceive of art in a deeply spiritual way. A great work of art transcends the immediate
moment into a world of infinity. My credo is: 1) The music must speak for itself. 2) Great art is a
miracle. 3) What the mind can conceive will be done.”
Deceptively simple in appearance, Lullaby for soprano and flute is a tightly-woven, highly concentrated 12-tone miniature that includes simple, inverted, and retrograde canons. Marked “dolce,
cantabile,” it uses every interval—from grounding unisons, fourths, fifths, and octaves to tritones
and pungently dissonant seconds—to illuminate the gentle text. Lullaby was written for the composer’s
grandchildren, Milo and Zettie Shapey.
Scott Gendel: Patterns
Scott Gendel is professor of music at Albion College and also works as a freelance composer, arranger, and
vocal coach. In 2005 he won first prize in the ASCAP/Lotte Lehmann Foundation Song Cycle Competition, a
juried national award in its inaugural year. He received his DMA in composition from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison in 2005 and while working on that degree held the position of Associate Lecturer in
composition, designing and teaching an undergraduate composition curriculum. He has received commissions from New Music New York, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, the UW-Madison choral department,
and other performers. His composition teachers include Stephen Dembski, Daron Hagen, and Joan Tower.
In setting Patterns Gendel omitted one stanza and several other lines of the original poem. He
notes: “Amy Lowell’s “Patterns” is seemingly a poetic paradox. It cries out fiercely against the
senseless patterns of war and modern life, but does so in a lovely, lilting, intricately patterned poetic
language. Of course, this disparity is not a paradox, but a very intentional poetic choice. Lowell’s
narrator loves the same world that she resents, and the poem is an almost magical articulation of
that crisis. ‘Patterns’ expresses despair through the eyes of beauty.
“In my setting of “Patterns”, I aim to create a shimmering veil of musical texture, reflecting the
patterned surface of the poem’s language. Toward that aim, all of the musical material is derived from
a single, pungent harmony. That harmony is transposed, mirrored, morphed into a pretty accompaniment pattern, transformed into a 12-note chromatic sequence, split into 2 complementary major and
minor chords, divided into pitch-class sets, and generally played with over the course of the piece. As
“Patterns” evolves dramatically, it unfolds as a sort of mini-opera, and the varied musical materials
are used to delineate the emotional journey of the story. The effect is much like Lowell’s poem: on the
surface, things seem quite pretty and lively, but behind it is the never-ceasing knowledge that we are
powerless to break the patterns.”
Kurt Stallmann: Lumina II
Recipient of a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship, Kurt Stallmann has devoted his creative energy to the
synthesis and connection of the many mediums available to composers today. He has composed works
for acoustic groupings, acoustic/electronic groupings with interactive elements, environmental
sounds, and purely synthetic sounds; has worked with improvisation; and frequently collaborates with
artists from other disciplines. He is currently on the faculty at Rice University’s Shepherd School of
Music, where he directs REMLABS, the electronic and computer music facility. Previously he taught in
the Department of Music at Harvard University and served there as Associate Director of HUSEAC
(Harvard University Studios for Electro-Acoustic Composition). Stallmann’s compositions have been
performed throughout the United States and Europe and are published by BMG Ricordi, RM Williams
Publishing, and Trigon Music Press (www.trigonmusic.com). Recent grants and commissions include
Meet the Composer, the Fromm Music Foundation, the Cultural Arts Council of Houston and Harris
County, and the ASCAP Annual Awards.
About Lumina II Stallmann says: “The brief duration of this work probably reflects a deliberate
attempt to create an organic continuity from cellular materials. The first four notes of Lumina II form the
primary musical cell, a reference shape that develops, multiplies, and transforms as it moves through
various registers and colors of the flute. Sequences of similar cells are distorted in time and register
and C# forms a constant reference throughout the work’s structure, both in terms of tonal references
and as a background element which subdivides the instrument’s range. Throughout the piece clarity
and concision, inspired by qualities of pure light, serve as guiding principles.”
Maura Bosch: In the Meantime
Maura Bosch studied music at the Hartt School of Music, the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood,
and Princeton University, where her teachers included Milton Babbitt, Paul Lansky, and Gunther
Schuller. Afterwards, she moved to New York and then Europe before settling in Minneapolis in 1991.
She has collaborated with many poets, including James Merrill, with whom she wrote the libretto for
her opera, Mirabell’s Book of Numbers. She has received commissions and grants from the St. Paul
Chamber Orchestra, the Dale Warland Singers, Cantus, the Jerome Foundation, the McKnight
Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Walker Art Center. In addition to composing,
Bosch is developing a method for teaching music composition to children in general music classes in
the public schools.
Bosch notes: “The concise poetic texts for In the Meantime were written by Minnesota poet Jim
Moore. They come from a group of poems called Tagore: Homages and Variations, which represent the
poet’s reflections on reading the Gitanjali, the 1911 collection of spiritual poetry by the Bengali poet
Rabindranath Tagore. These three songs were composed at the request of Mimmi Fulmer.”
Aaron Copland: As It Fell Upon a Day
From 1921 to 1924 Aaron Copland studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, the formidable pedagogue
who mentored generations of American composers. Those years were pivotal in Copland’s development
as he encountered influences of Stravinsky, Ravel, and many other composers living and writing in Paris
during the 1920s. As It Fell upon a Day was Copland’s response to a student assignment involving flute
and clarinet. Composed during the summer of 1923 after ear-opening visits to Vienna and Salzburg, it
was premiered in February of 1924 at the Salle Pleyel with soprano Ada MacLeish (wife of the poet
Archibald MacLeish) as soloist. The work evidenced maturity and became a part of Copland’s catalogue.
Copland discussed As It Fell Upon a Day in his autobiography with Vivian Perlis (Copland, 1900
Through 1942, St. Martins/Marek, New York): “I had been playing around with some ideas for the flute
and clarinet assignment when I came upon a poem by the seventeenth-century English poet Richard
Barnefield. [It] had the simplicity and tenderness that moved me to attempt that poignant expression
musically. I got the idea to add a voice part to Boulanger’s assignment. The imitative counterpoint
between the two instruments in the introduction would satisfy my teacher’s request. The harmonies
that seem to evoke an early English flavor were suggested by the nature of the text. I am often asked
about ‘modal’ writing in connections with As It Fell…. I can only say that I never learned all about the
modes—major and minor were the only modes my generation were taught! If the music sounds modal
it is because I wanted to come close to the expression of the poetry.”
THE PERFORMERS
Soprano Mimmi Fulmer performs repertoire ranging from early music
to premieres of works written for her. She has been a featured soloist at
festivals around the nation, including Aspen and Bang on a Can, and in
concerts at the Kennedy Center, Walker Art Center, and CAMI Hall. In
2005, she premiered a one-woman multi-media opera written for her at
the University of Michigan. Other engagements have taken her across the
United States, from Miami to Pittsburgh, Chicago, and San Diego, as well
as to Costa Rica. A member of the Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble and a
featured soloist with the Madison Bach Musicians, she has also performed extensively with
fortepiano. Her opera repertoire includes standard works as well as the premieres of nine roles in eight
operas. About Time, her first solo CD (Centaur) was called “a gratifying testimony to...composers in
America” by Opera News online and “a spectacular show” by American Record Guide. Her latest
disc, released by Centaur in 2005, features music of New York composer Joseph Dubiel. She can
also be heard on the CRI label in works of Edward Cone and on the Innova label in music of Hans
Sturm. She has presented numerous master classes and lecture-demonstrations at American universities and also in schools in rural Virginia, with the Currents Ensemble. A graduate of Princeton
University and New England Conservatory, she is Professor of Voice and Associate Director of Opera
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where her work has been recognized with both the Vilas
Associates and Chancellor’s Awards. Her students have held fellowships at Tanglewood and Merola,
and are enjoying internationally successful teaching and performing careers, singing on Broadway
and with such companies as the New York City Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin,
Washington National Opera, El Paso Opera, Opera Tampa, and Opera Australia.
Flutist Leone Buyse relinquished her principal positions with the Boston
Symphony and Boston Pops in 1993 to pursue a more active solo and teaching career after 22 years as an orchestral musician. A former member of the
San Francisco Symphony and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, she
has appeared as soloist on numerous occasions with those orchestras and
also with the Boston Symphony, the Boston Pops, the Utah Symphony, and
l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. She has performed with the Boston
Symphony Chamber Players throughout Europe and Japan, with the Tokyo,
Juilliard, and Muir string quartets, in recital with Jessye Norman and Yo-Yo Ma, and at many festivals,
including Aspen, Sarasota, Norfolk, and Orcas Island. The only American prizewinner in the 1969 Geneva
International Flute Competition, Ms. Buyse has presented recitals and master classes across the
United States and in Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. Her solo recordings
appear on the Crystal, Boston Records, and C.R.I. labels, and she may be heard as solo flutist of the
Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, and San Francisco Symphony on the Philips, Deutsche Grammophon,
RCA Victor, and Sony Classical labels. Ms. Buyse is the Joseph and Ida Kirkland Mullen Professor of
Flute at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Her students hold positions at major universities and in
many major orchestras, including the symphony orchestras of Cleveland, San Francisco, St. Louis,
Houston, Kansas City and San Diego, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic, the
Colorado Symphony, the New Zealand Symphony, the Adelaide Symphony, and the Singapore Symphony.
Michael Webster is Professor of Clarinet at Rice University and Artistic Director of the Houston Youth
Symphony. Former principal clarinetist of the Rochester Philharmonic and acting principal clarinetist
of the San Francisco Symphony, he has performed with the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center; Context
and Da Camera of Houston; the Tokyo, Cleveland, Ying, Muir, Chester, Leontóvych, and Enso string
quartets; and at numerous festivals, including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Norfolk, Chamber Music Northwest,
Angel Fire, Sitka, Maui, Park City, Steamboat Springs, Orcas Island, Skaneateles, Stratford, Victoria,
and Domaine Forget. With his wife, Leone Buyse, he co-founded the Webster Trio, which has recorded
for Crystal Records and the Japanese label, Nami.
THE TEXTS
THE SALLEY GARDENS by William Butler Yeats
Down by the Salley Gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the Salley Gardens with
little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves
grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid
her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass
grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish and now am full of tears.
Permission for use of the text of “The Salley Gardens” from The
Poetical Works of William B. Yeats, Volume I (New York: Macmillan,
1906) granted by A P Watt Ltd on behalf of Gráinne Yeats.
THE FOGGY DEW (anonymous)
A-down the hill I went at morn a lovely maid I spied.
Her hair was bright as the dew that wets
sweet Anners verdant side.
“Now where go ye sweet maid” said I.
She raised her eyes of blue.
And smiled and said, “The boy I’ll wed I’m to
meet in the foggy dew!”
Go hide your bloom, ye roses red and
droop ye lilies rare,
For you must pale for very shame before
a maid so fair!
Says I, “Dear maid, will ye be my bride?”
Beneath her eyes of blue
She smiled and said, “The boy I’ll wed I’m to
meet in the foggy dew!”
A-down the hill I went at morn a-singing I did go.
A-down the hill I went at morn she answered
soft and low,
“Yes, I will be your own dear bride and I know
that you’ll be true.”
Then sighed in my arms and all her charms they were
hidden in the foggy dew.
SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR (Anonymous; first
collected in Donegal by Padraic Colum, from Wild Earth
and Other Poems, H. Holt, 1916)
My young love said to me, “My mother won’t mind
And my father won’t slight you for your lack of kine.”
And she stepped away from me and this she did say,
It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.”
As she stepped away from me and she
moved through the fair,
And fondly I watched her move here and move there,
And then she turned homeward with one star awake
Like the swan in the evening moves over the lake.
Last night she came to me, she came softly in,
So softly she came that her feet made no din
As she laid her hand on me and this she did say,
“It will not be long, love, ‘til our wedding day.”
LOOKOUT by Anne Fessenden
To the high point, sparse, bent, weatherworn
Beside the trees, I have risen.
I stop to gaze backward
Across the contoured earth where I have walked
That is the shape of my life.
Sloping peaks that follow one another
Contain valleys that are invisible.
Above clear-weather clouds repeat the peaks
And spot the sky as flocks of sheep.
The awkwardness of life
Dissolves into the larger atmosphere
As far as I can see.
This view of life sustains me as I move.
Placed on that spot
Higher than my life has been
Lost in the view of where I’ve been
Poised on a foothold beyond.
THE SONG WHEEL by Anne Fessenden
You can still hear the surf in the pines
And it comes from far out and seems not to cease.
The sea floor is shallow for many leagues
And the waves roll slowly in.
On the broad mown hill in the grove of pines
There is little obstruction.
The wind blows for miles
And the pines sing of it.
The invisible flight across the low hills
Casts calms between each surge
That spins a phrase on a song wheel.
The wind turns it around and it sings.
Whoever walks up in early September
When the sun is warm and the pine needles smell
And looks over the swaying goldenrod
To the rolling foothills from where the wind comes
Can close his eyes and hear the surf that comes in
From distant places far out
And with each surge lets out the sigh of a song
On singing hill where the song wheel spins.
It’s spinning still.
WHENCE DO YOU BRING THIS DISQUIET, MY LOVE?
by Rabindranath Tagore, from Vaishnava Songs (from
The Fugitive and Other Poems, New York: Macmillan, 1921)
Whence do you bring this disquiet, my love?
The night has thrown up from its depth this little hour,
that love may
build a new world within these shut doors, to be lighted
by this solitary lamp.
We have for music but a single reed which our two pairs
of lips must play
on by turns—for crown, only one garland to bind my hair
after I have put
it on your forehead.
Tearing the veil from my breast I shall make our
bed on the floor; and one
kiss and one sleep of delight shall fill our
small boundless world.
NO SWAN SO FINE by Marianne Moore
“No water so still as the
dead fountains of Versailles.” No swan,
with swart blind look askance
and gondoliering legs, so fine
as the chintz china one with fawnbrown eyes and toothed gold
collar on to show whose bird it was.
Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth
candelabrum-tree of cockscombtinted buttons, dahlias,
sea urchins, and everlastings,
it perches on the branching foam
of polished sculptured
flowers—at ease and tall. The king is dead.
WHAT ARE YEARS? by Marianne Moore
What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt—
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourages others
and in its defeat, stirs
the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.
So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.
TO A PRIZE BIRD by Marianne Moore
You suit me well, for you can make me laugh,
Nor are you blinded by the chaff
that every wind sends spinning from the rick.
You know to think, and what you think you speak
With much of Samson’s pride and bleak
finality; and none dare bid you stop.
Pride sits you well, so strut, colossal bird,
No barnyard makes you look absurd;
your brazen claws are staunch against defeat
Permission for use of the text of “To a Prize Bird”, “No Swan So Fine” and
“What Are Years?” from The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (©
Viking/Macmillan, 1981) granted by Marianne Craig Moore, Literary
Executor for the Estate of Marianne Moore. All rights reserved.
NO CHILD by Padraic Colum, from Poems
(New York: Macmillan, 1932)
I heard in the night the pigeons
Stirring within their nest:
The pigeons’ stir was tender,
Like a child’s hand at the breast.
I cried: “O stir no more!”
(My breast was touch’d with tears).
“O pigeons, make no stir.
A childless woman hears!”
LULLABY (Adapted from “Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes”
by Thomas Dekker (c. 1570–c. 1644)
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise;
Sleep, pretty baby, do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby.
Rock them, rock them, lullaby.
PATTERNS by Amy Lowell (from Men, Women and Ghosts,
NewYork: Macmillan, 1916)
I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.
Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.
“No, no answer.”
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.
In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
Now he is dead.
In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters,
and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be
guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?
IN THE MEANTIME by Jim Moore
From early morning to late at night,
I sit in this little park
where shadows and light play with each other,
hoping that one day the time will come
when I can truly see.
But in the meantime,
I sit here
singing under my breath.
In the meantime, the air is heavy
with the promise of rain,
and the sweetness that follows rain.
INSIDE by Jim Moore
Inside the light,
the sky opens and the wind runs wild.
YOUR JOY by Jim Moore
It was your choice, not mine.
It was you who made me this way,
so that I can never come to the end of myself.
Such is your wish. Your joy
is that I am forever unfinished.
You love how I empty, then fill again
with you. You pocket me
like a flute. Sometimes, at the top of a hill,
you take me out and put me to your lips.
When you breathe into me like that,
I am eternal and new.
At such times, my heart forgets
what a small thing it is. Ages pass
and still you pour me out of your lips.
I have come to love
my own emptiness: without it,
how could I be filled with you?
Text taken from The Long Experience of Love
(Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1995). Copyright ©1995
by Jim Moore. Used with permission from Milkweed Editions.
PHILOMEL by Richard Barnefield (1574-1627)
As it fell upon a day
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made,
Beasts did leap and birds did sing,
Trees did grow and plants did spring;
Everything did banish moan
Save the Nightingale alone:
She, poor bird, as all forlorn
Lean’d her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull’st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie, fie, fie! now would she cry;
Tereu, Tereu! by and by;
That to hear her so complain
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs so lively shown
Made me think upon mine own.
Ah! thought I, thou mourn’st in vain,
None takes pity on thy pain:
Senseless trees they cannot hear thee,
Ruthless beasts they will not cheer thee:
King Pandion he is dead,
All thy friends are lapp’d in lead;
All thy fellow birds do sing
Careless of thy sorrowing:
Even so, poor bird, like thee,
None alive will pity me.