Program notes for recital at NATS National Conference
Sunday, July 6, 2014, 4:00PM
We have tailored this afternoon’s
program especially for our audience of voice teachers, coaches and other
seekers of great American repertoire. For the past ten years Donna and I have
had the privilege of singing this music and working face-to-face with the
composers.
I sang in the first complete “classical”
performance of Craigslistlieder with the
New York Festival of Song (NYFOS ) on May 4, 2010. A departure from traditional
settings of classic poetry, plays, letters or other literature, Craigslistlieder is just what it sounds
like: settings of Craigslist postings. Categories are missed connections, for
sale and in this case, for rent. It is a well-crafted composition in the
classical tradition. The theme of the
opening song “You Looked Sexy,” returns in this closing song “Opera Scene” thus
making it a true song cycle. Other titles include “Half a Box of Condoms,” and
“For Trade: Assless Chaps.” The Magdeburg music catalog lists the cycle as
being for “flexible voice and piano.”
Cantos
de Cifar y el Mar Dulce is an epic project by the dynamic Peruvian Chinese
Jewish American compser Gabriela Lena Frank. Donna and I performed this
selection “El Nacimiento de Cifar” and premiered another, (“Eufemia,”) at
Carngie Hall in 2007 at the Marilyn Horne’s The
Song Continues Gala. When completed the cycle will be an evening length
cycle of some 20 songs for baritone, soprano, chorus and orchestra. There are
also plans for an opera version.
Steven Blier in his notes for Ned is Ninety – a New York Festival of
Song concert celebrating Ned Rorem’s ninetieth birthday (a concert in which I
was honored to take part) wrote “I read an interview with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
in which she said that no American could possibly sing German Lieder
properly. After all, they wouldn’t know how to utter the world “Wald” unless
they had spent some serious time in the Black Forest. ‘The color of the vowel
would never be convincing.’ These were dispiriting words to read for a young
person interested in song recitals; I assumed that by the same token no
American pianist could play German
art song with any authority. According to this monstre sacré, I was
licked before I started…
Here
was an American making a passionate stand for the songs of this country … an
art song about the river that I could see from my window; I didn’t need to go
to the Schwarzwald for sixth months to understand it. Maybe after all there was
a repertoire of songs I could call my own.” Inexplicably Rorem reports that
this song was influenced by Poulenc’s “C.” From The Paris Diary: “I first wrote the vocal phrases “home, home” and “no, no” –
skipping a seventh and rising in the sequence, because Poulenc had skipped a
fifth and dropped. What I mean is that after the precipitating
inspiration of “home, home,” all the rest was devised, often in variation form”
Donna introduced me to Lee
Hoiby in the Summer of 2001. He came to CCM to coach a concert of his chamber
music and to perform I Was There with
me. Donna prepared me thoroughly to work
with the master. Then age 76, he said he was exhausted from traveling, would
lie down back stage between rehearsals, but spring to action when it was time
to play. And could he play. Hoiby’s music is often challenging, always
pianistic and he could play all of it himself. He practiced his Chopin études
every day. I performed the cycle many times with the maestro and with Donna in
the following years and it remains one of my favorite cycles.
I first met Paul Philips in
2008 again through our friend-in-common, Donna Loewy. She was staying at my house near Plymouth, MA to prepare and
perform a recital. We invited Paul and his family to come up from Providence to
have dinner at our house. Three years later I was teaching at Brown along side
Paul and his wife Kathryn and the maestro and I were preparing for the premiere
of Battle Pieces with the Pioneer
Valley Symphony. All five of these very engaging Melville settings are
beautifully orchestrated. Local audiences may have a chance to hear them with
orchestra again soon. I would like to point out two things: this cycle was a
finalist in the 2012 NATS Art Song Composition Award and the composition of Battle-Pieces was supported in part by a grant from
the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.
Donna met
Jeffrey Wood while she was in residence at Austin Peay University. She brought
back with her some very special songs, namely a cycle entitled Night. These are five settings, loosely
inspired by the Elie Weisel book of the same title. “Psalm” is the centerpiece
of the cycle and hais excellent vocal writing with vocal rests and waves of
ascending phrases, perfectly setting up the voice for the intense dramatic
climax at the highest note.
Now, voice teachers all over country,
add American Folk Set to all of your
students’ repertoire. They are folk melodies easy to learn by a beginner,
delicate settings worthy of the best performers in the greatest concert halls.
All three books are published in different keys by Classical Vocal Reprints.
People often ask us, “where to you find
your repertoire?” Glendower Jones has introduced us to many great new works
including Men With Small Heads. Four settings of reportedly true stories from
the childhood of Thomas Lux, these are delicious comic settings that require a
very close ensemble and a rich imagination.
Jake Heggie is one of the kindest, most
generous artists I have had the pleasure to meet (and I’m not just saying that
because he is here.) I coached his delightful cycle The Moon is a Mirror with him twice while I was an apprentice at
San Francisco Opera. It was through these various settings, and Jake’s
encouragement that I made a breakthrough in my acting. The Moon is a Mirror is available from Bent Pen Music.
A
Heartland Portrait,
five settings of former poet laureate Ted Kooser reflect the poet’s finding of
hidden dark places and meanings in seemingly mundane settings. The four song
version was premiered by The Schubert Club in conjunction with the Library of
Congress, Thomas Hampson, baritone, Wolfram Reger, piano on January 17, 2006.
Donna and I sang the world premiere of the “Porch Swing in September” - which
was added to the cycle - at Carnegie Hall on November 21, 2008. Of the five
songs Mr. Hamspon and I agree: “An August Night” is our favorite.
When I first got my copy of “Monet’s
Waterlilies” in the mail, I ran to the piano, started playing it and said “this
is just the thing we are looking for.” Donna and I were planning a program for
Carnegie Hall. It was to be all New York premieres with all of the composers in
attendance. That program – like today’s –
ends with America 1968. Unlike most
of today’s program, I do not recommend this cycle for your beginning students.
Tom
Cipullo writes: “For some time, I have wanted to create a piece about 1968. To think back on that year today is to be
flooded with powerful images…The particular vision of our nation expressed in America 1968 may seem, to some, a bit
unusual. It is, at times, disturbing; at
times even violent. Still, it is a true,
if difficult, view of our country during a volatile time. Ultimately, the vision is positive and
encouraging, but the journey to that positive conclusion is harrowing – or at
least I hope it is. “
Composer
Bios
Gabriel Kahane was
born in Venice Beach, California, but spent his childhood in New England,
upstate New York, and Northern California. Now, with the release of The Ambassador (Sony Masterworks) Gabriel
turns his gaze toward his birthplace with his most focused album to date.
Dividing his time between the club and the concert hall, Kahane
has been commissioned by, among others, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie
Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, and Orpheus Chamber
Orchestra, with whom he toured last spring performing Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States, an hour-long cycle on texts
from the WPA American Guide Series. He has appeared in recital with string
quartet Brooklyn Rider at Carnegie Hall, at the Library of Congress with fellow
composer/performer Timo Andres, and on tour throughout North America with
cellist Alisa Weilerstein.
In a few years, Gabriel has accrued a diverse list of
collaborators, having performed or recorded with artists ranging from Sufjan
Stevens, Rufus Wainwright, Chris Thile, and Brad Mehldau to Jeremy Denk,
Jonathan Biss, and composer/conductor John Adams.
Equally at home in the world of theater as on the concert stage,
Kahane’s musical February House received
its world premiere production at New York’s Public Theater in May 2012; an
original cast album was recently released on StorySound Records.Symphonies on his dilapidated baby grand piano.
Identity has always been at the center of Gabriela Lena Frank's music. Born in
Berkeley, California, to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a
father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage
most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók
and Alberto Ginastera, Frank is something of a musical anthropologist. She has
travelled extensively throughout South America and her pieces reflect and
refract her studies of Latin-American folklore, incorporating poetry,
mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is
uniquely her own. She writes challenging idiomatic parts for solo
instrumentalists, vocalists, chamber ensembles, and orchestras.
Words and music are
inextricably linked for Ned Rorem.
Time Magazine has called him "the world's best composer of art
songs," yet his musical and literary ventures extend far beyond this
specialized field. Rorem has composed three symphonies, four piano concertos
and an array of other orchestral works, music for numerous combinations of chamber
forces, ten operas, choral works of every description, ballets and other music
for the theater, and literally hundreds of songs and cycles. He is the author
of sixteen books, including five volumes of diaries and collections of lectures
and criticism.
Rorem’s catalog of songs includes more than 500. Evidence of Things Not Seen, his evening-length song cycle for four
singers and piano, represents his magnum opus in the genre. The New York
Festival of Song premiered the cycle at Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall in
January 1998. New York magazine called Evidence of Things Not Seen "one of
the musically richest, most exquisitely fashioned, most voice-friendly
collections of songs I have ever heard by any American composer;" Chamber
Music magazine deemed it "a masterpiece."
Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana on October 23, 1923. As a child he moved to
Chicago with his family; by the age of ten his piano teacher had introduced him
to Debussy and Ravel, an experience which "changed my life forever,"
according to the composer. At seventeen he entered the Music School of
Northwestern University, two years later receiving a scholarship to the Curtis
Institute in Philadelphia. He studied composition under Bernard Wagenaar at
Juilliard, taking his B.A. in 1946 and his M.A. degree (along with the $1,000
George Gershwin Memorial Prize in composition) in 1948. In New York he worked
as Virgil Thomson's copyist in return for $20 a week and orchestration lessons.
He studied on fellowship at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood in the
summers of 1946 and 1947; in 1948 his song “The Lordly Hudson” was voted the
best published song of that year by the Music Library Association.
Lee Hoiby
was born in Wisconsin in 1926. He studied piano with Gunnar Johansen and Egon
Petri but gave up his intentions to be a concert pianist when he received an
invitation to study composition with Gian Carlo Menotti at the Curtis Institute
in Philadelphia. Menotti led Hoiby to opera, presenting Hoiby's
one-act The Scarf at the first Spoleto (Italy) Festival in 1957. The
New York City Opera presented Hoiby's A Month in the
Country (libretto by William Ball) in 1964, and his Summer and
Smoke (with a libretto by Lanford Wilson based on the Tennessee Williams
play) in 1972. Hoiby's opera, The Tempest, based on Shakespeare's last
play (libretto adapted by Mark Shulgasser) was premiered at the Des Moines
Metro Opera in 1986, and produced by the Dallas Opera in November 1996. A new
production is scheduled at Canada’s Pacific Opera Victoria in British Columbia
in February 2004.
Mr. Hoiby has been a recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, and the
National Institute of Arts and Letters Award. Numerous concerts devoted
exclusively to his music have taken place, most notably on the American
Composer's Series at the Kennedy Center in 1990. G. Schirmer, Inc and Schott
publish many of Mr. Hoiby's works.
Paul
Schuyler Phillips, Senior Lecturer in Music, is a conductor/composer/pianist,
scholar, and author who has conducted more than sixty orchestras, choirs, opera
and ballet companies worldwide, including the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas
Symphony, and Iceland Symphony, with which he has recorded two compact disks.
He received a BA cum laude in
music in 1978 and an MA in composition in 1980, both from Columbia, and an MM
in orchestral conducting in 1982 from the University of Cincinnati
College-Conservatory of Music. He began his professional career as a
coach/conductor in Germany at the Frankfurt Opera and Stadttheater Lüneburg,
returning to the US in 1984 upon his selection for the Exxon/Arts Endowment
Conductors Program. Following posts with the Greensboro Symphony (1984-86) and
Savannah Symphony (1986-89), he accepted an appointment at Brown in 1989 as
Director of Orchestras and Chamber Music. He is also Music Director of the
Pioneer Valley Symphony and Chorus.
JEFFREY
WOOD did his undergraduate work in composition and piano at
Oberlin College and graduate work at the State University of New
York at Stony Brook, where he earned Master's degrees in piano and composition
and a
Ph.D. in composition, working under Gilbert Kalish and David
Lewin.
Wood's compositions have been performed and recorded throughout
the
Country and have received many awards including those from BMI,
ASCAP, as well as the Bates Memorial Prize. He was the highest prizewinner in
the 1984
Stroud Festival International Competition in Great Britain and in
1985 was
named Distinguished Composer of the Year by the Music Teacher's
National
Association. Wood was one of eight composers awarded in the 1995
Young
American's Art Song Competition sponsored by G.
Schirmer/Associated
Music Publishers, which resulted in his inclusion in "The Art
Song
Collection" published in 1996. Wood's oratorio Lamentationes
Ieremiæ Prophetæ
(Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet) for chorus, soloists and
Orchestra was premièred at the War Memorial Auditorium in
Nashville in May 1999 with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra under the direction
of George Mabry. This work was subsequently nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
During 1987-1988 Wood held the Individual Artist Fellowship in
Composition from the Tennessee Arts Commission. In 1988 he was
awarded the Richard M.Hawkins Award for scholarship and creativity by Austin
Peay State
University. As a pianist Wood has worked with composers such as
Roger
Sessions, Thea Musgrave, Mario Davidovsky, Frederic Goossen and
Ernst
Krenek in performances of their keyboard music. He is presently
Professor of
Music at Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tennessee.
Steven Mark Kohn has worn many different
creative hats. As a composer, he has written music for a number of
award-winning children’s films, including Frog and Toad Together, Uncle
Elephant, Cousin Kevin, Morris Goes to School, Commander Toad in Space, Ralph
S. Mouse and the Emmy-nominated Runaway Ralph. He has composed
commercial and industrial tracks for Wheaties, Arby’s, Volvo, Hickory Farms,
TRW, Stanley Steemer, Matrix, RAX restaurants and many others. His music can be
heard nationally on NPR for the Sylvia Rimm show and on the Time-Warner audio
book series Health Journeys, which has sold over one million copies
worldwide. His Hymn for String Orchestra (published by Carl Fischer)
has been recorded by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra and his “27 Haiku” and
“American Folk Set” for voice and piano are published by Classical Vocal
Repertoire. His opera Rite of Passage was produced at The Banff Centre
and Opera Ora-Now in Toronto. An independent filmmaker with his brother Justin,
he has co-written and directed the short films Bugfeast, Lord J’s Wild West
Daredevil Show and How’s My Driving?, which have been screened at
festivals around the world. He created lyrics for the stage musicals The
Quiltmaker’s Gift (published by Dramatic Publishing) and The Tale of
the Nutcracker, both with music by Craig Bohmler. His short story “The
Professor’s Diary” appeared in National Lampoon magazine. He currently
serves on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music as director of the
electronic music studio
Lori Laitman is an
award-winning and critically acclaimed composer of art songs, whose works are
performed widely in the United States and abroad. Ms. Laitman has worked with
many of today’s important poets — among them Mary Oliver, Thomas Lux, Paul
Muldoon, Dana Gioia, Joyce Sutphen, Toi Derricotte, Annie Finch, Anne
Ranasinghe, and Jerzy Ficowski — in addition to setting such classic poets as
Emily Dickinson and William Carlos Williams. Recent U.S. performances of Ms.
Laitman’s music have taken place at Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall and Alice
Tully Hall (New York); Shriver Hall (Maryland); Benaroya Hall (Washington); The
Cleveland Institute of Art (Ohio); The Skylight Opera Theatre (Wisconsin); and
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Corcoran Gallery and The Kennedy Center
(D.C.). In June 2004, The Cleveland Opera premiered Ms. Laitman’s opera, “Come
to Me in Dreams.”
The
Journal of Singing calls Laitman “an exceptionally gifted genius... [o]ne of
the finest art song composers on the scene today...who deservedly stands
shoulder to shoulder with Ned Rorem for her uncommon sensitivity to text, her
loving attention to the human voice and its capabilities, and her extraordinary
palette of musical colors and gestures.”
Lori
Laitman graduated magna cum laude with honors in music from Yale College and
received her M.M. from the Yale School of Music. She has composed music for
film, theatre and various chamber ensembles, but since 1991 she has
concentrated on composing for the voice.
Jake Heggie
is the American composer of the operas Moby-Dick,
Dead Man Walking, Three Decembers, To Hell and Back, and Out of Darkness: a triptych of
Holocaust stories (Another Sunrise – Farewell, Auschwitz – For a Look or a
Touch). He has also composed more than 250 songs, as well as chamber, choral
and orchestral works. The operas – most created with the distinguished writers
Terrence McNally and Gene Scheer – have been produced extensively on five
continents. Dead Man Walking (McNally)
has received 40 productions since its premiere, as well as two live
recordings.Moby-Dick (Scheer) was telecast in 2013 as part of Great
Performances’ 40th Season and was recently released on DVD (EuroArts). It is
also the subject of the book Heggie & Scheer’s Moby-Dick: A Grand Opera for the 21st Century (UNT Press).
Heggie, a Guggenheim Fellow, has served as a mentor to Washington National
Opera’s American Opera Initiative for young composers and librettists for the
past two seasons. Upcoming commissions include Great Scott (McNally)
for The Dallas Opera, starring Joyce DiDonato; The Radio Hour(Scheer) for
the John Alexander Singers; a new project for Houston Grand Opera; songs for
Kiri Te Kanawa at Ravinia; and The Work at Hand, Symphonic Songs for mezzo
Jamie Barton and cellist Anne Martindale-Williams, co-commissioned by the
Pittsburgh Symphony and Carnegie Hall.
Stephen Paulus’ prolific output of more than two hundred works is
represented in many
genres, including music for orchestra, chorus, chamber
ensembles, solo voice, keyboard and
opera. Commissions have been received from the New York
Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra,
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Dallas
Symphony Orchestra, The Houston
Symphony and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, with subsequent
performances coming from the
orchestras of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Louis, the
National Symphony Orchestra, and the
BBC Radio Orchestra. He has served as Composer in Residence
for the orchestras of Atlanta,
Minnesota, Tucson and Annapolis, and his works have been
championed by such eminent
conductors as Sir Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Christoph von
Dohanyi, Leonard Slatkin, Yoel
Levi, the late Robert Shaw, and numerous others.
Paulus has been commissioned to write works for some of the
world’s great solo artists,
including Thomas Hampson, Håkan Hagegård, Doc Severinsen,
William Preucil, Cynthia Phelps,
Evelyn Lear, Leo Kottke and Robert McDuffie. Chamber music
commissions have resulted in
works for The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Friends
of Music at the Supreme
Court, the Cleveland Quartet and Arizona Friends of Chamber
Music. He has been a featured
guest composer at the festivals of Aspen, Santa Fe,
Tanglewood, and, in the U.K., the Aldeburgh
and Edinburgh Festivals.
Paulus has written nine works for the dramatic stage. The Postman Always Rings Twice was the
first American production to be presented at the Edinburgh Festival, and has
received nine productions to date. Commissions and
performances have come from such companies as the Opera
Theatre of St. Louis, Washington Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Florida Grand
Opera, Berkshire Opera Company, Minnesota Opera, and Fort Worth Opera, among
others, as well as many universities and colleges.
His choral works have been performed and recorded by some of
the most distinguished choruses
in the United States, including the New York Concert Singers,
Dale Warland Singers, Los Angeles
Master Chorale, Robert Shaw Festival Singers, New Music Group
of Philadelphia, Master Chorale
of Washington DC, Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati, Mormon
Tabernacle Choir, and dozens of
other professional, community, church and college choirs. He
is one of the most frequently
recorded contemporary composers with his music being
represented on over fifty recordings.
From Mr. Paulus’ website : “Stephen suffered a severe stroke on the 4th of July, 2013 and is
currently recovering in Minnesota. The long-term prognosis is still uncertain,
but he is currently receiving wonderfully attentive care. The family is
thankful for the outpouring of support that we've received since his stroke and
we continue to relay all the positive thoughts and prayers that are directed
his way. Thank you, The Paulus Family”
Tom Cipullo was born into a
musical family on Long
Island, New
York.[1] His father, a jazz bassist playing under the name
Ray Carle, performed throughout the New York area and hosted a successful radio
show in the late 1950s and early 1960s, broadcasting with a quartet from the
Café Rouge of the Statler Hilton Hotel. Cipullo’s brother, Chris, was a drummer
in Los Angeles. Cipullo’s father named him after the bandleader Tommy
Dorsey.
Dorsey, who appeared frequently at the Café Rouge, died just a few days after
Cipullo’s birth.
Cipullo’s song cycles may be said to have entered the
standard repertoire. He has composed over 225 songs, one evening-length chamber opera, six works for voices
and chamber ensemble, solo piano pieces, and works for chorus and orchestra.[1] Several of his song cycles are
published by Oxford University Press,
and others are distributed by Classical Vocal Repertoire. His music appears on
over a dozen commercially-released compact discs on the Albany, CRI, PGM, MSR
Classics, GPR, Centaur, and Capstone labels.
Selected texts
The Birth of Cifar - Pablo Antonio Cuadra
There is an island in the shallows
small
as the hand of an indigenous god.
It offers red fruit
to the birds
and, to the shipwrecked,
the sweet shade of a tree.
There, Cifar the sailor was born
as his mother's time came
while she was rowing, alone, to Zapatera.
She steered the boat into a pool
while there circled in the waters
sharks and shad
attracted to the blood.
Fingers in the harp,
and at once begins
a longing, sickness, for the faraway.
Cifar
quiet your song.
Cifar
do not cover
your ears with music:
That infinite
Blue
calls you.
A Reverie - Herman Melville
One noonday, at my window in the town,
I saw a sight -- saddest that eyes can see --
Young soldiers marching lustily
Unto the wars,
With fifes, and flags in mottoed pageantry;
While all the porches, walks, and doors
Were rich with ladies cheering royally.
They moved like Juny morning on the wave,
Their hearts were fresh as clover in its prime
(It was the breezy summer time),
Life throbbed so strong,
How should they dream that Death in a rosy
clime
Would come to thin their shining throng?
Youth feels immortal, like the gods sublime.
Weeks passed; and at my window, leaving
bed,
By night I mused, of easeful sleep bereft,
On those brave boys (Ah War! thy theft);
Some marching feet
Found pause at last by cliffs Potomac cleft;
Wakeful I mused, while in the street
Far footfalls died away till none were left.
Psalm – Paul Celan
No one kneads us again out of earth and clay,
no one incants our dust.
No one.
Blessed art thou, No One.
In thy sight would
we bloom.
In thy
spite.
A Nothing
we were, are now, and ever
shall be, blooming:
the Nothing-, the
No-One's-Rose.
With
our pistil soul-bright,
our stamen heaven-waste,
our corona red
from the purple word we sang
over, O over
the thorn.
America 1968 poems by Robert Hayden
Monet’s Water Lilies
Today as the news from Selma and Saigon
poisons the air like fallout,
I come again to see
the serene, great picture that I love.
Here space and time exist in light
the eye like the eye of faith believes.
The seen, the known
dissolve in iridescence, become
illusive flesh of light
that was not, was, forever is.
O light beheld as through refracting tears.
Here is the aura of that world
each of us has lost.
Here is the shadow of its joy
Hey Nonny No
Lord Riot
naked
in flaming clothes
cannibal ruler
of anger’s
carousals
sing hey nonny no
terror
his tribute
shriek of bloody glass
his praise
sing wrathful sing vengeful
sing hey nonny no
gigantic
and laughing sniper on tower
I hate
I destroy
I am I am
sing hey nonny no
sing burn baby burn
The Point (Stonington, Connecticut)
Land’s end. And sound and river come
together, flowing to the sea.
Wild swans, the first I’ve ever seen,
cross the Point in translucent flight.
On lowtide rocks terns gather;
sunbathers gather on the lambent shore.
All for a moment seems inscribed
on brightness, as on sunlit
bronze and stone, here at land’s end,
praise for dead patriots of Stonington;
we are for an instant held in shining
like memories in the mind of God.
The Whipping
The old woman across the way
is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
her goodness and his wrongs.
Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
pleads in dusty zinnias,
while she in spite of crippling fat
pursues and corners him.
She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to woundlike memories:
My head gripped in bony vise
of knees, the writhing struggle
to wrench free, the blows, the fear
worse than blows that hateful
Words could bring, the face that I
no longer knew or loved . . .
Well, it is over now, it is over,
and the boy sobs in his room,
And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged--
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear.
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering,
breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
Frederick Douglass
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this
liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole,
systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is
more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this
Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues'
rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of
bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the
lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful
thing.
