Program notes

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 attended Hofstra University, Boston University, and the City University of New York Graduate School. His teachers included David Del Tredici, Elie Siegmeister, Albert Tepper, Thea Musgrave (orchestration), and Graham Forbes, a highly regarded jazz pianist and the accompanist for Frank Sinatra during a period in the 1950s

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.