Cacophony & Candlelight

Composer Sir Arnold Bax, photographed with trumpeters of

the Royal Military School of Music, outside Kneller Hall, 1947.
(from Sir Arnold Bax website, collection of Graham Parlett)
—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

BAX’S TRUMPETS

All great composers stand accused of noise,
Bach, Beethoven, even Mozart the polite,
writes Nicolas Slonimsky. We hear poise,
charm, euphony; their audiences took fright,
hands clamped to ears. Trumpets in Bax’s work,
British brass-band-trained, make the loudest cadre;
they squawk with English lung the ram’s-horn Turk.
Yet, delicate as placid squads of padre,
with lyrical plasticity shape phrases.
In Bax Three, alpine middle-movement glow
prompts a lone trumpet’s crown-of-the-mountain dazes;
these reveries volley down-valley echo (echo),
hypnotic until a resuming discord razes
fresh Jerichos. Bax’s trumpets elsewhere glare,
at contrapuntal strife with violins;
induce compact motivic cells to declare;
burnish with silver varnish what begins
one primal melodic strand, then sprouts three branches
of intertwine. Here one or two break echelon,
in crossover ménage (the purist blanches)
with “broken consorts” mingling them, percussion,
flute, viola. Now in mute, now mute out,
they’re couriers handing themes over to trombone, horn;
dovetailing as demands a composer born,
submerging then resurfacing, bells out;
regaining embouchurial aplomb.
And here stands elderly Bax in overcoat,
unflinching before the blown harmonic bomb
just triggered by His Majesty’s remote
control: some thirteen milit’ry trumpet masters:
the brazen fanfare surely Bax’s own,
straight as a rockstar’s amplifier blasters
at him across walkway gravel on wintry ground.
Bax, Master of the King’s Musick, weathers the blare,
brassmongery belled out heraldic as in times yore.
The mismatch appears so audibly unfair,
a ruckus to ring for hours in uproar-
deadened sore ears. Yet wind may scatter harsh winds,
for nothing like outdoor air to dilute the dins.
The photograph may even have been posed
quite silent. Or was the composer crassly hosed?   

 —Anonymous Photo

AFTER THE MARATHON BOOK SIGNING, THE MARTINIS

Millay had just come from autographing three hundred and thirty-five sets of the limited edition and thirty-six sets on Japan vellum of the ultra-limited edition of Wine [from These Grapes]. She was cross-eyed with fatigue. They had a round of martinis.
    —Nancy Milford in Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna
       St. Vincent Millay


This Christmas, Nora’s ensured that, thanks to eBay,
the next-to-last one of three hundred twenty-five
limited-edition for-sale sets* of Millay’s
Wine from These Grapes rests as if newly alive
—that year, ’34, that month, that fall day’s the day
this two-volume poetry set my spouse has contrived
to give me rests in my hands—slipcovered array
of hardback blue-gray cloth, the recessed spine
in pale beige as are the cover’s corners, sharper
than are this year’s inferior books: this, fine
as befits the first-rate firm of the brothers Harper.
Now swathed in preserving cellophane, the pages
artfully stressed rag-paper-edged Worthy Charta,
stock nobled, refined and stout for future ages,
unto me, yea, delivered the veriest Magna Carta.

***

This Magna Carta for poets, paid for in strain.
Strain of the eyes that cross, the hand that cramps.
The torrent of signature, signature tortures the brain;
your words shrink to the size of inscriptions on postage stamps.
The marvel, that fine-grained Edna St. Vincent Millay
in dark-blue ink on the frontispiece page shows
where this my copy in ordinal sequence goes.
For you it marked the near-ending of the affray;
or did you have that still finer edition in vellum
to stain with your fountain pen? I think that came first.
You wanted to be done with them, expel them.
No getting around what this intensest burst
was for: for Eugen, for the Thoroughbred horses you loved,
the right to keep writing professional poetry: shoved
at you one more book, one more book you had to ink
for money, martinis. I bend elbow with you, one drink.

My next-to-the-last proud copy by which you earned.
Let me not be the one last to have read, and learned.


*The remaining ten copies were reserved for the poet,
presumably keepsakes or gifts.

 Cover of St. Millay's Book

Today’s LittleNip:

My candle burns at both ends;
it will not last the night;
but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
it gives a lovely light!

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

___________________

Our thanks to Tom Goff for today’s fine poetry! Tonight, Speak Up: The Art of Storytelling and Poetry presents poet and storytellers on the theme of “Renewal” at The Avid Reader on Broadway in Sacramento, 7pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

 Study by Candlelight

—Celebrate poetry!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.