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 xiii
... universal of the arts , and , like the instinctive drives which underlie our actions , it is a part of all human experience every- where . The arts are often defined almost as though they were truly interchangeable - we hear that ...
... universal of the arts , and , like the instinctive drives which underlie our actions , it is a part of all human experience every- where . The arts are often defined almost as though they were truly interchangeable - we hear that ...
Page 125
... universal themes . Music calls forth a re- sponse in all of us ; poets distill their emotions into words so that reader and poet share an experience . Yet poets , paradoxically , are keenly aware of the limitations of words ; they know ...
... universal themes . Music calls forth a re- sponse in all of us ; poets distill their emotions into words so that reader and poet share an experience . Yet poets , paradoxically , are keenly aware of the limitations of words ; they know ...
Page 152
... universal frame began : When nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay , And could not heave her head , The tuneful voice was heard from high , ' Arise , ye more than dead ! ' Then cold , and hot , and moist , and dry , In order to ...
... universal frame began : When nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay , And could not heave her head , The tuneful voice was heard from high , ' Arise , ye more than dead ! ' Then cold , and hot , and moist , and dry , In order to ...
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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