"Fugue, Harpsichord" by Rosanna Warren

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 11, 2018   Fugue, Harpsichord   Rosanna Warren

For Sylvia Marlowe   Out of her left hand fled the stream, from her right the rain puckered the surface, drop by drop, the current   splayed in a downward daze until it hit the waterfall, churned twigs and leaves, smashed foam over stone:   from her fingers slid eddies, bubbles rose, the fugue heaved up against itself, against its own   falling: digressed in curlicues under shadowed banks, around root tangles and beaver-gnawed sticks. She had the face   of a pike, the thrusting lower jaw and silvered eye, pure drive. The form fulfilled itself   through widowhood, her skin mottled with shingles, hands crooked, a pain I fled. Now   that tempered tumult moves my time into her timing. Far beyond her dying, my   tinnitus, I am still through the thrum of voices trying to hear.                Copyright © 2018 Rosanna Warren. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "Sylvia Marlowe was one of the great harpsichordists of the twentieth century, a student of Nadia Boulanger and Wanda Landowska, and herself a famous teacher for many years at the Mannes School of Music in New York City. She was a close friend of my family, and I grew up listening to her recordings of Bach and Couperin and often visiting her in New York City. I have tried to translate into words my impression of her playing Bach's preludes and fugues. Of course, the poem plays on multiple senses of fugue." —Rosanna Warren   Rosanna Warren's most recent book of poems is Ghost in a Red Hat (W. W. Norton, 2011). She teaches comparative literature at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. She lives in Chicago, Illinois. Poetry by Warren   Ghost in a Red Hat (W. W. Norton, 2011) "Transit" by Rita Dove "Elegy" by D. H. Lawrence "Lost Fugue for Chet" by Lynda Hull June Guest Editor: D. A. Powell   Thanks to D. A. Powell, author of Repast: Tea, Lunch, Cocktails (Graywolf Press, 2014), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Powell and our guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

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