Discovery: Paul Muldoon

I very much admire Seamus Heaney, whose translations of Beowulf and the Aeneid excel the others that I’ve read. He led me to another Irish poet, Paul Muldoon, who’s perhaps equally attracted to using traditional (especially Gaelic) forms in non-traditional ways. Muldoon’s acute sense of place and history naturally play into his “Irish poems,” but… Continue reading Discovery: Paul Muldoon

Vox populi

As someone who has taken decades to find his voice, I think a lot about the word. Though its etymological origin lies in human utterance, we musicians speak of the voicing of an instrument, which means its tone color as well as the way a given chord is “spelled” (e.g., in its first, second, and… Continue reading Vox populi

Warren Zevon as poet

I recently sounded out a wise man of letters (and my friend) Jake Burnett about poetry as musical lyric, preoccupied as I have been in forecasting the headaches my poems would occasion a composer. Happily he did not send me to Sidney Lanier. At Jake’s suggestion I dived into Warren Zevon’s “My Ride’s Here,” the… Continue reading Warren Zevon as poet

W.S. Merwin’s “Rain Travel”

Here’s a clever and beautiful poem from 1993. I’ve added line numbers for convenience. Setting: a dark bedroom in the speaker’s home. Visual gloom—dark, black, night, sightless—characterizes the first 11 lines, and after a transformation we return to darkness at the end, but now with a tremendous shout. From the outset the diction suggests passivity… Continue reading W.S. Merwin’s “Rain Travel”

How I Came to Cross the Jabbok

By midafternoon we’d come to the river beyond which Esau’s henchmen lay, The banks bright with chittering poplars and a vista of wild olives and tulips, pines and reeds. Gazelles nibbled the grass while larks and finches fiddled with their fledglings. I stayed behind my entourage, sent them all across in groups by different routes… Continue reading How I Came to Cross the Jabbok