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Text of the page (random words):
particularly cheerful in their implication s like toys one might put on a table for a child to play with their irreducibility seems a consequence of simplicity rather than conviction the big red apple has a cartoon like naivete in which the voice seems overwhelmed by the pretense of pedagogy teacher and responds with blunt humor the capital letters function thus as glowering symbolic emblems of fear intimidation or power characteristically seen from a subservient or infantile position a terrible giant baby almost like one of those block headed marisol babies that ice cream cone ll the concatenation of hard k sounds cream cone ll enjambed against the elided cone will suggesting the double l s surfeit will topple off like melting cream off the edge of the stanza landing on in the space occupied by the word drip the moral imprecation a warning of possible disaster s is resolved realized in the embarrassment of the word drip itself the sticky accident of guilt in william carlos williams such an ingenious little engine would describe a phenomena without implying any ironic separation discrete positioning and simple objectification but the authorial voice in creeley s poems explores the means and the implications of those means deconstructing the effects and laying bear their disguised emotional spins their terrors and fears this sensitivity to individual letters evokes kinetic qualities at the smallest possible level of our apprehension of words or speech sounds phonemes it may be that certain speakers more sensitive to the clues of language comprehend it at the level of decomposition or phonemal fragmentation certain combinations of words elicit senses of sound or meaning which are otherwise hidden inside the habitual orders of syntax or speech these loops as creeley sometimes referred to them which suggests both little parabolic spins and nooses are like kernals of insight or fascination we may not at first understand how or why they are so effecting and indeed they may remain invisible to the casual reader who only comprehends at the quotidian level of syntactical meaning but poetry at its best is very much concerned with the slants rings catches undulations and tics of common interchange embedded in the matrix of general discourse fields meadows more at home may function as a code fields meadows more at home sings as one half of a traditional nursery rhyme 1 2 3 4 5 6 which would be followed by 7 8 9 10 as in full fath om five or some similar echoing refrain with at home suggesting a domestication in nature as opposed to the misappropriation of land for cultivation so that at home attached to more domesticates meadows links the pastoral to the poetic if the speaker could be said to be advocating meadows over fields then fields as in the earlier poem teachers functions in a similarly oppressive way as if in opposition thus individual words are treated in opposition to each other tiny triads having attractions and resistances deliberately contained in the setting of the poem words as things or as waves of connotation that oscillate in different frequencies in different specific contexts this dialectical places the poet in an ambiguous relationship to subject matter where words are not simply tools for expression implying an alienation from language doubt and suspicion and skeptical regard are the hallmarks of such a practice both excusing the speaker from the persuasive associations of syntax and signification and freeing up our apprehension of the process of composition these senses are endlessly fascinating though creeley s need to say something appears to have expanded over time such that the syntactical burden needed to carry his message expanded with it it may be that he tended eventually to regard his minimalist works with a skeptical suspicion deeming them innocent explorations the effects of which were too difficult to adequately control the purposes to which he might put his ulterior summations about life and writing the social relational aspects of his accrued experience in later age if we re to regard this as an aberration of his development as a poet or as a predictable consequence of a long life s total commitment to an evolving view of the potentials of artistic endeavor we d best acknowledge the value of the work itself instead of what it may signify about the meaning of his biography inside my head inside my head a common room a common place a common tune a common wealth a common doom inside my head i close my eyes the horses run vast are the skies and blue my passing thoughts surprise inside my head what is this space here found to be what is this place if only me inside my head whose face from life and death new directions 1994 posted by curtis faville at 10 05 am 31 comments friday december 18 2009 the marquis of the aranjuez gardens joaquin rodrigo 1901 1999 is undoubtedly spain s most famous composer the author of the justly renowned concierto de aranjuez for guitar and orchestra as well as a full catalogue of works for guitar piano flute harp cello in addition to other orchestral works blinded by illness at the age of three rodrigo was musically precocious excelling in composition and composing works through the facility of braille transcriptions he studied for several years in paris under paul dukas and met his turkish wife there rodrigo s early compositions show the influence of medieval and early renaissance court musical themes and techniques though his orchestration and musical language also show very smart applications of modernist concision and daring the piece which made him famous and which is the basis of his world wide fame is the three movement aranjuez concerto for guitar and orchestra though ostensibly a celebration of the gardens at aranjuez the actual inspiration for the work according to the composer and his wife was the miscarriage of their first child the somber central movement a dramatic mournful elegy as an evocation of spanish culture and landscape the concerto is similar in feeling and approach to falla s nights in the gardens of spain as well as to later compositions such as ponce s c oncierto del sur also for guitar and orchestra and certain exotic pieces by villa lobos it s been enormously influential in his own country though its actual effect on musical culture outside the iberian peninsula has been naturally limited though undoubtedly contributing to the renaissance of interest in the spanish guitar as medium for composition and as a concert instrument the concierto was a regular favorite in the household in which i grew up my mother having discovered it i suppose by hearing it first on the radio in the early 1950 s our recording featured renata tarrago 1927 2005 an important guitarist of the post war period in spain later i appreciated versions by julian bream and pepe romero among others when i was an undergraduate at berkeley in the 1960 s i visited joaquin nin culmell in his office in the music department nin culmell was the brother of anais nin as children they lived for a time in new york city then moved to europe in their adolescence where joaquin studied classical music in paris nin culmell had known all of the spanish composers of his time including falla and rodrigo when he died his incredible collection of sheet music was broken up and sold and i was able to purchase some of it when i saw him he graciously gave me the addresses for several of my favorite still living spanish composers to whom i wrote to inquire about obtaining their sheet music spain is a very poor country nin culmell explained and it s difficult to get spanish sheet music if you re not there nevertheless i wrote to several names and received sweet replies all in spanish nin culmell translated them for me i was not a music major but often used the practice rooms in the music department since i had no piano of my own at that time nin culmell also recommended several keyboard pieces that i didn t yet know about including six sonata de castilla con toccata a modo de pregon though rodrigo was the most famous spanish composer of the 20th century his music is really quite retro in its basic inspiration musically spain had been a provincial outland of serious european classical music unable to support large musical ensembles it had no ongoing traditions of symphonic operatic or chamber music as had france germany italy and england until the 20th century when nationalist and nativist movements on the peninsula led to a search for a musical identity leading inevitably to an interest in peasant liturgy and dance elements which had defined its national character court flamenco and regional folk elements are more important to classical spanish composers in a way that is quite apart from other european traditions rodrigo following in the footsteps of albeniz granados and falla attempted to raise the standard of quality and seriousness in spanish expression prior to the late 19th century keyboard music in spain had been on the decline since the days of antonio soler 1729 1783 compared to the guitar clearly spain s national instrument if it could be said to have one and it had to wait for albeniz and granados to revive it nonetheless the guitar both as a medium and a stylistic inspiration has continued to be an inspiration not just in spain but throughout the world the notion of pairing a single guitar against a full orchestra had been tried on a small scale during the late renaissance in italy but its fullest expression didn t occur until rodrigo re invented it in 1939 concierto de aranjuez later adding fantasia para un gentilhombre fantasia for a gentleman for guitar and orchestra 1955 and concierto andaluz for four guitars and orchestra 1967 and concierto madrigal for two guitars and orchestra 1969 it remains to be seen whether or not the spanish guitar as a concert instrument can continue to inspire innovative compositions in the classical mode there are a number of branch descendants of the spanish guitar in the 20th century both in construction and type of musical application but the classical mode of composition may present too many historical associations which tend to overwhelm our sense of what kinds of music the instrument can handle rodrigo showed how classical orchestral elements could be arranged along a clear axis against the folk guitar tradition evoking an at times stern dignified quality against the romantic nostalgic deep song of andalusia a combination that proved irresistible my instrument as a child growing up was the piano it was clear from an early age that i did not possess much skill as a performer but in my late adolescence i became interested in playing classical pieces and many years later in 1985 when i spent a year in japan i acquired a beautiful kawai red lacquered upiano and began for the first time to compose something i had always thought an impossibility given that i had never studied counterpoint or musical notation the fact is though that anyone who can read and play from written music can compose with the simplest of means like many devotees of guitar music i dreamed of playing my favorite pieces on the guitar to this end i acquired an elegant new spanish guitar and tried working my way through some instruction but i quickly discovered that what manual skills i d acquired in my piano work were of little help with the guitar and soon abandoned this fantasy nonetheless i ve continued to compose for the instrument perhaps someday i will arrange to have some of them played i try to compose a few bars of music every day jazz classical blues or occasionally for spanish guitar i ve found it much easier to knock out a few fragments of music than to write poetry which seems to get more and more difficult as i grow older as a youth in my twenties i could write pages and pages it just flowed out of me but now every time i start a piece i think i can see exactly where it s going and get frustrated quickly and abandon most attempts perhaps it has something to do with the freedom i feel when composing since i have no reasonable expectation that it will ever be heard by anyone but myself and i have no pretensions in that direction perhaps it liberates me nowadays i seem to write my best lines in the sort of half sleep consciousness before i m fully awake there s an access to the subconscious that quickly dissipates when i m fully alert rodrigo composed a number of pieces for both solo piano and solo guitar and in my opinion he succeeded admirably with both inasmuch as he was blind it s interesting to me how pianistic and guitaristic his pieces for each instrument are this quality the ease of the hand to certain combinations and fingerings seems to come almost instinctively to some composers while others don t have it brahms for instance is notoriously difficult to play not only because of the stretches but the leaps and coordinated combinations he makes i can t speak with equal authority about the guitar but i assume the same phenomena apply to it as well there s a new guitar duo rodrigo y gabriela mexicans who for some odd reason relocated to dublin ireland they re breaking new ground in the use of acoustic guitars playing fast and furiously in a manner that derives from traditional spanish dance forms sometimes a composer or a performer will become too much associated with a single piece to a degree that it becomes burdensome this is certainly true of rodrigo and his aranjuez concerto for which king juan carlos raised him to the nobility under the title marques de los jardines de aranjuez he died in 1999 at the age of 97 i ve heard nearly all his works with the exception of a handful of songs which have not been recorded so far as i know i once dreamed of traveling to spain and tracking down all my favorite spanish composers such nonsense posted by curtis faville at 12 59 pm 1 comment wednesday december 16 2009 two on the aisle the narrative split in two historical dramas the evolution of the cinematic medium has parallels to the development of narrative as a dramatic form the novel grew out of the non fiction account defoe evolved further through the epistolary trope pamela clarissa and eventually morphed from complex actions of animated companies of characters dickens and trollope into the variations we see today romance historical fiction meta fiction genres including mystery horror fantasy science fiction etc and the various manifestations of straight narrative as well as a few sports which don t fit any of the usual categories american cinema began by attempting to adapt classic historical narratives into abbreviated bowdlerized mise en scenes in the silent era and quickly graduated to cinematic specific narrative actions which have tended to dominate the medium since the inception of sound in the late 1920 s the increasing sophistication of technical means to make more convincing visualizations etc have really done little to alter our sense of the frame of context in ...