Étude in C Minor, Opus 25 no. 12 with Porphyry Shouts

Étude in C Minor, Opus 25 no. 12 with Porphyry Shouts

Étude in C Minor, Opus 25 no. 12 with Porphyry Shouts Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem  The Chopin étude rams the room with power, Arpeggios that swamp and swamp, then swamp The purple, pulsing chords,...

The name that can be named is not an eternal name.

The name that can be named is not an eternal name. ~ Laotse Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem  A flower exists in some place far from men, Or far from where its colors and its smell Can be rejoiced in.  Far...

Ex Nihilo is a Joke

           Ex Nihilo is a Joke Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem “. . .it starts with an empty universe” ~ Stephen Fry, Cosmos, vii An empty universe is paradox. In such a boundless space there’d be no...

“Something Evermore to Be”

  “Something Evermore to Be” Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Yes, something evermore to be awaits, Or we await it. It is promise or Recurring prophecy.  Sublimest gates Are opening.  This truth is at the...

A Kite Flies in the Morning, the Afternoon, and the Evening

A Kite Flies in the Morning, the Afternoon, and the Evening Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem The haiku poet seems to think that time Becomes eternity in yesterday. What happened then is part of the...

Wind and Water Cleave and Cleave

Wind and Water Cleave and Cleave Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem .. We know that wind is spirit life.  The wind Is God in symbol, and the angels, too, And demons, angels with God’s demons twinned....

Stretching the Eternal

     Stretching the Eternal Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “the soul’s survival and residual divinity” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 23 The followers of Orpheus, if not The man himself, desired...

Etymology of Orpheus

  Etymology of Orpheus If “of the river bank” is what the name Of Orpheus might mean,* then that might flow From jet slick River Hades and the shame Of failing to recover, to the glow Of life and sunlight, his lost love.  Again It might refer to two of his five deaths...

Esthetic Wistfulness as Obscenity

Esthetic Wistfulness as Obscenity “The two greatest poems of western man are still, in many eyes, the two oldest.  And the grace and sanity of Greece are not so common in the modern world that we can afford to forget them.” ~ F. L. Lucas in Greek Poetry Does ancient...

Coldblooded Aegean

     Coldblooded Aegean “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”  Jeremiah 17:9 “ ‘Why did the whole Greek world exult over the combat scenes in the Iliad?’ asks Friedrich Nietzsche.  We modern readers do not even...

Ancient Art

               Ancient Art Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse “the ancients had  not that conception of beauty separated from goodness which forms the basis and aim of aesthetics in our time” ~ Leo Tolstoy A moral pillar rises from...

Coldblooded Aegean

     Coldblooded Aegean “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”  Jeremiah 17:9 “ ‘Why did the whole Greek world exult over the combat scenes in the Iliad?’ asks Friedrich Nietzsche.  We modern readers do not even...

Pifferari at Eton

          Pifferari at Eton “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.” The young mind loves to wander.  Even though It lives at Eton, it will fly to Rome, The Rome of Christmastime. His fancies flow: The boy would wonder at this spire, that dome, And...

Revising Early Compositions at the Age of Seventeen, Eton

Revising Early Compositions at the Age of Seventeen, Eton In 1865 at seventeen The Eton schoolboy cast his eyes back through His early compositions.  With their sheen Of amateurishness he held the view That they should be revised or put away. Imagine being so advanced...

Forced Freedom

          Forced Freedom Emily Daymond surveys the Eton schoolboy’s self-assessment of his music while a teenager reacting partly to his composition teacher giving him only fugue and canon assignments. At Eton Hubert’s music was addressed By him in daily entries in...

Heart Trouble

           Heart Trouble Where does music come from?  Does it come from Heart wounds?  No.  Music is at first derived From minds.  It offers mathematics’ thrum For ears.  At Eton teenage Parry thrived On music and on sport in spite of heart Disease becoming palpable. ...

The Pergola of Composition

  The Pergola of Composition “There is also a setting of Horace’s Ode ‘Persicos odi puer apparatus,’ for A.T.B.B. ‘written in school [Eton College] , February 22, 1865’ ”. ~ Emily Daymond, 77 As strange as ancient Persia might have seemed To sixteen-year-old Parry...

Streength through Dedication

Strength through Dedication At Eton Parry moved to start the task Of bettering his pieces written there, An early sign which shows that he would ask Himself to work perfection through his care And dent of work, a tough composer from The start—and strained to win at...

First Magnificat, 1864

    First Magnificat, 1864 His first Magnificat is likely to Have been the one he heard performed while He was still at Eton as a boy.  True To truth he hated it—thought it was vile— When he looked back on it.  He called it bad. He called it “bad.”  In 1865 He looked...

The Best Kind of Friend

The Best Kind of Friend Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “ ‘Happy is the man who has dear children and sound horses and hunting hounds and a friend abroad…’ Solon, F23 (West)” ~ Robin Lane Fox,...

Nietzsche Negation

       Nietzsche Negation Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Steel repetition trumps. Unnerved before Men’s ecstasy, rosaries cannot deny The urge for semen, chanting still the whore. Adultery invades the...

Entropy

                Entropy When all my poetry is mixed with death And washed away in that encroaching tide, The memory of the man who breathed my breath Will be forgotten even more.  The glide To blankness is implacable . . .  and so No person will recall the lines or...

More Like Lightning

    More Like Lightning He argued that her face was full of faults But perfect beauty was their startling end. Those imperfections listed were the vaults To her immaculate and lovely blend Contending with a theoretical Ideal.  My lover, though, was more than that. His...

Etymology of Orpheus

     Etymology of Orpheus If “of the river bank” is what the name Of Orpheus might mean,* then that might flow From jet slick River Hades and the shame Of failing to recover, to the glow Of life and sunlight, his lost love.  Again It might refer to two of his five...

Perpetual Quietude

          Perpetual Quietude   Why would immortal gods or angels pause In thankfulness for moments, hours — for time? Why would such beings think it needs applause Since after all each day is just a chime To tell them they have years forever.  Souls Eternal in their...

In English a Double Positive is a Negative: Yeah, Right

In English a Double Positive  is a Negative:  Yeah, Right In Nietzsche’s thinking, joy dies and lives Again, again, again, and yet because It comes around eternally, he gives It an eternal life, and then a pause Of death, then life again, upraising in Its dying and...

Nietzsche’s Law of the Eternal Recurrence

Nietzsche’s Law of the Eternal Recurrence                                 http://norsemathology.org Repetition is powerless before Ecstasy.  Rosaries cannot deny The urge for semen, chanting still the whore. Adultery invades the manly eye A hundred trillion...