Untune the Sky: Poems of Music and the DanceHelen Plotz Here is a magnificent collection of verse, compiled with discrimination, for the pleasure not only of the poetry lover but the music lover, too. From Euripides and Pindar, through Herrick and Shakespeare, to Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens, these poems celebrate the power of music and bring to the reader "the full-figured song of the universe unending." The poems fall naturally into five sections: All instruments, Singing over the Earth, One God is God of Both, Poet to Dancer, Music Shall Untune the Sky. Within these groups are poems that speak to us with their rhythms, mirror the simplicity and beauty of loved songs, and stretch our minds with their profundity. To the poet, the country fiddler is as interesting as the virtuoso, the little girl at the piano as serious as Paderewski. So there are poems here about street musicians as well as great artists, and about teachers as well as performers and composers. Just as men have written of music, they have written of the dance. The dance has kindled the imagination of many poets, who see in it a way to unite the arts of seeing and the arts of hearing. Their poems here have the grace and serious and joy that are the essence of the dance. |
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Page 19
... perfect time When every leaf distinctly brushed with gold Listened to Primavera speaking flowers . Those scherzos stumble now ; our journeys run To harsher hillsides , rockier declensions . Obligatory climates call us home . And so ...
... perfect time When every leaf distinctly brushed with gold Listened to Primavera speaking flowers . Those scherzos stumble now ; our journeys run To harsher hillsides , rockier declensions . Obligatory climates call us home . And so ...
Page 49
... beauty purely loving Knows no discord ; But still moves delight , Like clear springs renewed by flowing , Ever perfect , ever in them- Selves eternal . Thomas Campion THE SOLITARY REAPER Behold her , single in the field 49.
... beauty purely loving Knows no discord ; But still moves delight , Like clear springs renewed by flowing , Ever perfect , ever in them- Selves eternal . Thomas Campion THE SOLITARY REAPER Behold her , single in the field 49.
Page 138
... perfect after years : From grove to grove the singing base , Then on to where two rivers cry ; Or so we say of three clear tones That in eternal quiet lie . Mark Van Doren CHURCH - MUSICK Sweetest of sweets , I thank you 138.
... perfect after years : From grove to grove the singing base , Then on to where two rivers cry ; Or so we say of three clear tones That in eternal quiet lie . Mark Van Doren CHURCH - MUSICK Sweetest of sweets , I thank you 138.
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American permission Bach's Ballet beauty bird BLACK AND UNKNOWN Blow blue guitar Canadian permission Collected Poems COMPANY composers dance David McCord divine doth dying earth echoes Emily Dickinson Eutychides fiddle FIDDLER OF DOONEY fife and drum flute Gerard Manley Hopkins Giddily harmony harp hear the fife heard heart Heaven Henry Purcell instruments John Hall Wheelock LEAD A HOMELY let the measure listened Louise Townsend Nicholl lute lyre Mark Van Doren melody notes ORIOLE SING PERSON OF BRADLEY piano pipe play POET TO DANCER poetry power of music praise Reprinted by permission Robert Frost Rolfe Humphries sang Siegfried Sassoon silence singers song SONNETS TO ORPHEUS sound spheres stars strings sung sweet SYMPHONY Thomas Campion Thomas Hardy thou Translated tree trumpet UNKNOWN BARDS UNTUNE THE SKY voice W. B. Yeats W. H. Auden Wallace Stevens Weary Blues William Shakespeare wind words