Rapture and romance, featuring work by Leon Arden, Nora Percival, Susanna Rich and Allen C. West.
7 minutes
TRANSCRIPT
Frederic Chopin is best known as a composer of piano music. But apparently, he was a great dancer, too! He was a frequent guest at balls and salons in Warsaw, Vienna, and Paris. And his compositions captured the character of the popular dance culture that he was immersed in. Besides writing preludes and etudes and nocturnes, he also wrote mazurkas, waltzes, and polonaises that were inspired by the folk and ballroom dances of the time. He was only 39 when he died on October 17, 1849; it was probably consumption or tuberculosis or something in that family. To commemorate the anniversary of his death, some pieces about music and dance.
First, a short excerpt from Leon Arden’s story “If Music Be the Food of Love.”
High school was mostly something to endure until the last bell set us free. Yet there was one class I couldn’t wait to attend. On the top floor, in room 305, Mr. Itzkowitz taught the structure of the string quartet and his lucky students, I was told, listened to Toscanini conducting Beethoven and Beecham interpreting Mozart. Itzkowitz also compared different renditions by various pianists as they played Schubert, Chopin and Brahms.
To me, an only child, classical music was like an assortment of dear friends. Tchaikovsky, for example, was such an old friend I couldn’t remember when we first met. Chopin quickly became an intimate while Dvorak never failed to cheer me up. Bach withheld his great secret until I went to college. But Beethoven was the very model of manhood while Brahms held forth on autumnal wisdom. The Amazing Mozart, who at first seemed slightly lightweight, a bit quaint, slowly won me over until we became absolutely inseparable.
An excerpt from Leon Arden’s story “If Music Be the Food of Love” from the book Burning Bright, an anthology of pieces from Passager’s first 21 years.
Passager published Nora Percival’s poem “May I Have This Dance?” almost 20 years ago, back in 2005.
Tonight we met, tomorrow we shall part.
This faint black night, shadowed with stars, is all
That we shall know together. Between start
And finish lies a single music, tall
And fluent as our bodies in the dance;
An iced drink on a table, and a kiss.
The trade wind brings a thin scent of romance;
Has-been and is-to-be are lost in this.
We move within a ring of swift delight,
Wrapt in a lovely dream that has no name.
The red flare of a match contains the night
As our two distant lives glow in this flame.
The beat of the Bolero is a sign
That once one music held your heart and mine.
“May I Have This Dance?” Nora Percival.
Next, from Passager’s 2012 Poetry Contest Issue, “Dirty Dancing, Howard, With You,” by Susanna Rich.
If we were continents – I nearer fifty,
you, one hundred – an Atlantic of time
would slosh between us: your tsunamis of wars,
depressions; my billows of New Age,
strip malls, Facebooking. So who knows what
started this in our fruit-smelling church hall,
Wednesday night social – for all to see:
some line dance – “New York, New York,”
maybe: some sock hop flashback.
You bop a hip at me. I flick one at you.
And you’re the dapper grandfather I never met,
a heel-clicking Austro-Hungarian morphed
into a soft waltz. I am my own grandmother –
a girl again, with a Danube of star-swept nights
before me. You catch my hand in yours –
my father leaps a brook, sees me as he never has:
a young woman testing herself on first love.
You spin me around and you are Tom Kulick –
my unrequited high school crush. You’re Elvis-
pelvising at me – and I, Isadora-ing you –
the brook between us become our moist mingling
breath. We’re swiveling our belly-dancing bums,
the muck of age and gender spun away –
animated, mirroring twins whirling
in our private Istanbul harem – our days,
like coins, jangling – we two gyrating because . . .
just because. Others circle around us,
holding hands, bumping shoulders and chests;
whooping, whistling, yee-hah-ing us on;
stamping and thundering out the dance
master, who stands on the shore
pounding his staff by the parting sea.
Susanna Rich’s poem “Dirty Dancing, Howard, With You.”
And finally, from Passager’s 2010 Poetry Contest Issue, Allen C. West’s “Dancing While Sweeping.”
Surreal comes tonight
in the eyes of a cat
and the broom’s used beauty
Without white tie
or tails I am
Fred Astaire naked
star-stuff
as lonely
as Polaris immobile
sing La Paloma
drape on the broom
her lavender robe
one sleeve lifted high
one over my shoulders
Arpege-scented silk
clings never missing
a beat holds me
my need to be
held Our dipping
and turning shape
circles and gyres
embracing my heaven
of table lamps
floor lamps
enchanting our tango
The wide-open back door
welcomes our dust
“Dancing While Sweeping,” Allen C. West.
You can buy Passager’s 21st Anniversary anthology Burning Bright, subscribe to, and learn more about Passager and its commitment to writers over 50 at passagerbooks.com. Passager offers a 25% discount on the books and journal issues featured here on Burning Bright. Visit our website to see what’s on sale this week.
For Kendra, Mary, Christine, Rosanne, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.
Due to the limitations of online publishing, poems may not appear in their original formatting.
