poetry

"Summer is coming, summer is coming.
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,"
Yes, my wild little Poet.

Sing the new year in under the blue.
Last year you sang it as gladly.
"New, new, new, new!" Is it then so new
That you should carol so madly?

"Love again, song again, nest again, young again,"
Never a prophet so crazy!
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,
See, there is hardly a daisy.

"Here again, here, here, here, happy year!"
O warble unchidden, unbidden!
Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,
And all the winters are hidden. 

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My melody to Tennyson's words
Studio Aug6 X6
Written and recorded in studio. When I got in, my book - A Poem for Every Day of the Year, edited by Allie Esirii - fell open on this page and I began singing.
—————-
Tennyson's poem is a dialogue between poet and 'wild little poet', the Throstle, though that name is never mentioned - and I never heard it before. The bird's words are in quotation marks and use repetition. The words really run together in an exhilarating way. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_thrush
The song thrush (Turdus philomelos) has brown upper-parts and black-spotted cream or buff underparts... Its distinctive song, which has repeated musical phrases, has frequently been referred to in poetry...

The song thrush breeds in forests, gardens and parks, and is partially migratory with many birds wintering in southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East;…

Turdus philomelos. The generic name, Turdus, is the Latin for thrush, and the specific epithet refers to a character in Greek mythology, Philomela, who had her tongue cut out, but was changed into a singing bird. Her name is derived from the Ancient Greek Φιλο philo- (loving), and μέλος melos (song). The dialect names throstle and mavis both mean thrush, being related to the German drossel and French mauvis respectively. Throstle dates back to at least the fourteenth century and was used by Chaucer in the Parliament of Fowls.

The song thrush has a short, sharp tsip call, replaced on migration by a thin high seep, similar to the redwing's call but shorter. The alarm call is a chook-chook becoming shorter and more strident with increasing danger. The male's song, given from trees, rooftops or other elevated perches, is a loud clear run of musical phrases, repeated two to four times, filip filip filip codidio codidio quitquiquit tittit tittit tereret tereret tereret, and interspersed with grating notes and mimicry. … An individual male may have a repertoire of more than 100 phrases, many copied from its parents and neighbouring birds...

The song thrush's characteristic song, with melodic phrases repeated twice or more, is described by the nineteenth-century British poet Robert Browning in his poem Home Thoughts, from Abroad:

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, 
Lest you should think he never could recapture  
The first fine careless rapture!

https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/home-thoughts-from-abroad-in-song-robert-browning?in=user-734457954/sets/the-great-poems-in-song

https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/home-thoughts-from-abroad-2-robert-browning-in-song

The Throstle - Alfred Lord Tennyson (in song)

A cover of this great song, played by Cavendish - Peter Rechsteiner and Rob Noordeloos.

James Taylor - You've Got A Friend

We buried him high on a windy hill,  
But his soul went out to sea. 
 I know, for I heard, when all was still, 
His sea-soul say to me:

Put no tombstone at my head, 
 For here I do not make my bed. 
Strew no flowers on my grave,
 I’ve gone back to the wind and wave.  
Do not, do not weep for me, 
For I am happy with my sea.

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My melody to Hughes' words
stuapr6 4-14sc
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https://sites.williams.edu/searchablesealit/h/hughes-langston/
HUGHES, [JAMES MERCER] LANGSTON (1902-1967). Langston Hughes, the prolific African American writer whose work in multiple genres endeared him early in his career to the black American community and later to a broad, international readership, first prepared to set sail in 1922, when he signed on as a messboy aboard the freighter West Hassayampa. Hughes’ romantic vision of exploring the world as a sailor was shattered, however, when he discovered that the rusty ship he had climbed aboard was bound for nowhere. Towed up the Hudson River to Jones Point, where it was moored among a large group of decommissioned World War I freighters, the West Hassayampa merely served as a mother ship and quarters for a crew charged with maintaining the other idle freighters. 

Although Hughes found his first “experience at sea” somewhat embarrassing, life at Jones Point was nevertheless beneficial to his creative processes; he completed numerous poems, and the experience is humorously recaptured in the first volume of his autobiography, The Big Sea (1940). 

Armed with letters of recommendation from his superiors that testified to his abilities on shipboard, Hughes left Jones Point in 1923 and signed on to the West Hesseltine, bound for Africa. Hughes viewed this departure to sea symbolically: upon leaving the shore, he was also casting off painful memories of his past, such as his experiences with segregation at Columbia University, his many arguments with his father, the poverty of his childhood, and the day-to-day angers generated by racial prejudice. 

He was also leaving behind the romantic world of books, which had sustained him as a youth in lieu of actual experiences at sea. Fittingly, as the West Hesseltine moved past Sandy Hook on the New Jersey shore, Hughes cast overboard the books he had brought on the ship, saving, according to his biographer, only one: Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855).

Death of an Old Seaman - Langston Hughes (in song)

We lived north of the future, days opened
letters with a child’s signature, a raspberry, a page of sky. 

My grandmother threw tomatoes
from her balcony, she pulled imagination like a blanket            
over my head. I painted
my mother’s face. She understood
loneliness, hid the dead in the earth like partisans.
 
The night undressed us (I counted
its pulse) my mother danced, she filled the past
with peaches, casseroles. At this, my doctor laughed,
    his granddaughter
touched my eyelid – I kissed  
                                                            
the back of her knee. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail.
And my classmate invented twenty names for Jew.
He was an angel, he had no name,
we wrestled, yes. My grandfathers fought

the German tanks on tractors, I kept a suitcase full
of Brodsky’s poems. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail. 
At night, I woke to whisper: yes, we lived. 
We lived, yes, don’t say it was a dream. 

At the local factory, my father
took a handful of snow, put it in my mouth.
The sun began a routine narration,
whitening their bodies: mother, father dancing, moving
as the darkness spoke behind them.
It was April. The sun washed the balconies, April. 

I retell the story the light etches
into my hand: Little book, go to the city without me.
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My melody to Kaminsky's words: 2-3
https://www.ilyakaminsky.com
Pic by Henn Kim
------------
This sung-poem had an unusual start, perhaps synchronistic, wu wei, ‘in tune’. 

I wandered into the book shop with no clear aim, except to stop by the poetry corner. Felt tired. One book, longer than the others, its black spine standing out, insisted on being read. I objected to wasting time and energy; it wasn't for me, but it insisted: ‘Starry Night, Blurry Dreams’ by HENN KIM (in capitals). As I opened it, a new song started over the shop speakers: ‘Starry Starry Night’. I was…gobsmacked. What could it mean? A line of poetry on one page accompanied a drawing on the other. Good - but still, not for me. I looked either side of the book. One had Milk and Honey by poet Rupi Kaur I'd been recommended just a few days before. The other had a slim book I didn't know: Dancing in Odessa. It might work with song. I had to do something with this synch. 

On the way to the cashier, another song began over the shop speakers: Do you want to know a secret? Of course I do. An early Beatles song, but with an ethereal quality moving it to another zone. The cashier shazammed and said it was Fairground Attraction. Following her brought me to the music section, where three books called and were answered.

With all this magic in the air, I looked forward to the poems. Oh but where was there anything to put into song? The critics all raved about its musicality, but I saw only musical phrases, not verses. So I just spoke a poem in the train. Then as certain rhythms of words and phrases arose so did the idea of song without verses. It was evening; the platform was empty, and I recorded.

Dancing In Odessa - Ilya Kaminsky (in song)

Angelia D. Angel - Millions Of Years Still Love You

Lara St. John (Violine), Anna Prohaska (Sopran), Ludwig Quandt (Cello) and Marie-Pierre Langlamet (Harfe) present new CD with chamber music by Schubert. CD release is on March 13th. Also live on April 29th at the Berlin Philharmonic.

Schubert "Gretchen Am Spinnrade"

A Farewell A.Tennyson

Warm - (Piano Only Instrumental)

Novo Começo

Poem as friend to Monika Kolovos

'I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils'

“I love this poem. When I was a student my English Lit Professor recited this poem – he was rather severe but when he read this poem out he was transformed. I love the movement in it, the motion and the thought that these incidental moments can become treasures.”

This poem is read by Michael Shaeffer. 

*****

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
 

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
 

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
 

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Hear more

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud by William Wordsworth

"Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more."-  William Wordsworth

The Solitary Reaper By William Wordsworth

"The Tyger" by William Blake

Old John with white hair
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk,
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say.
Such such were the joys.
When we all --girls and boys--
In our youth-time were seen,
On the Echoing Green.

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My melody to Blake's poem (middle verse)

The Ecchoing Green - William Blake (in song)

Produced by Bertrand Belin and Fiodor Dream Dog 
Music : Fiodor Dream Dog / Lyrics : Poem by Henry James Leigh Hunt 
Record by Nicolas Delbart (except personal music recorded by Ludovic Palabaud) at Le Snark
Mixed by Eric Spring at Le Snark 
Master by Chab at Translab

Art direction by Fiodor Dream Dog
Publishing by Fabrice Absil 

© La Gosse Productions / Fiodor Dream Dog 

Fiodor Dream Dog — Jenny Kissed Me

Ode to a Nightingale Read By Ben Whishaw

Background and poem text <a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/09/02/f-scott-fitzgerald-keats-ode-to-a-nightingale/">here</a>. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald reads "Ode To A Nightingale"

For the best experience, 
-  Click on the song's picture for words and notes.
-  in Album/Playlist/Spotlight, first click on the big picture to the left, then on the new page click the track title. Really, it's worth the effort :) 

With Blake you will see his painting too. Each picture is in dialogue with the words (not just illustrating them).

Bards have combined music & poetry from earliest times. Many poets continue the connection, not least William Blake. But often their melodies are lost or neglected.

The Ecchoing Green - William Blake (in song)

Ian

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