Life With Horace

poetry & essays

Category Archives: creativity


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The piano duo

The photo shows my godmother, Anne Hull (left) and my grandmother, Mary Howe, circa 1920. They were both pianists and composers, and performed together as a piano duo from 1912 until 1935. They met at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore in 1905, when my grandmother was studying piano with Ernest Hutchinson. She later returned to the Peabody (with the unequivocal support of her husband, my grandfather) to study composition with Gustav Strube, gaining her diploma with high marks in 1922. She was active musically until the early 1960s, an internationally recognized composer, and a founder of the National Symphony.

Anne was studying for an Artist’s Diploma and Teaching Certificate. She had a rich musical life, never married, teaching first at The Institute of Musical Art in New York, and later The Juilliard Graduate School. Retiring in 1968 at the age of 80 she left New York to live in the Algarve, and shared a house with the conductor William Strickland.

Friends for the rest of their lives, they did extraordinary things in a world that sometimes considered them dilettantes, and not to be taken seriously.

My grandmother’s unequivocal take on being a woman composer, circa 1950:

“Women composers should be played more than they are. I don’t think conductors have a prejudice against women composers now. But no one puts women writers or women painters in a class any more and they still do with women composers. I know I considered it a handicap to be a woman when I started composing. I’m not a feminist. But I think I would have gotten along faster if I’d been a man.”

I generally admire her pieces, and think her art songs were her strongest. She knew many poets, and read poetry voraciously. Her friendship with the poet Elinor Wylie, whom she met during an early stay at the MacDowell Colony, is a story in itself (a particular favorite of mine is her setting of Wylie’s poem “When I Died in Berners Street”).


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catching the light

however it comes
we want it all, that light,
bright understanding
to open eyes,
illuminate and warm
our world, and free us,
so we think.

on light filled, sunny days
our spirits lift and soar
on updrafts,
hawklike, hunting
promise in those beams,
the source of what
is possible.

but with no sun and open sky
do we still sense
the light there for us
brought in different form?
that it still shines,
its power now diffuse
but no less ours,
and can we grasp
with raptor talons
all the glimmers due us?

much harder then
to have to work
for something often
free of effort, easy
to absorb, enjoy,
yet if we persevere
there is reward,
brilliance, no less a gift
for being indirect.

_____________________________
this ornament was a gift brought by my sister from New Zealand. it always catches light.


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but it is

not my loss I thought
a friend’s friend gone
under snow
sent down the mountain
by pleasure seekers
without thought
of lives below
or dreadful consequence

this sudden gap
where once a friend
stood in the heart
is feathered now
with small things
precious bits
of cloth or lace
dug from the snow
song and image
remnants of a
rich creative spirit
its light now dimmed
but not to be
forgotten, no

all sensed and felt
by strangers like myself
who at a distance
mourn her leaving.

______________________________
the loss of a creative soul is universally felt, whether we realize it or not


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Everyday pleasures

At the piano I watch small fingers make their music so determined so well done the joy in her eyes is in my heart joking laughter with her brother so much taller than the last time more movies made and volumes read a classroom visit sticky hands and icing gingerbread embellished a dog asleep in sunlight the rhythm of lives cherished and held close in memory to be enriched once more

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This prose poem was written as I read about the events in the lives of two very dear members of an online creative group I belong to. it is posted in recognition of profound love and loss, and my abiding gratitude for the love of my family, as we gather together this week.


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The growing point

Upright still sentry
outlier for the world beneath
a winter effigy belying spring’s next promise
it stands in ice and snow

A window sill
bright warmth and light
protects a tender shoot
fresh green against
the gray and silver backdrop
green lava moving upward

My own such point
is not so clearly seen or felt
a junction of my spirit
trust and will reagents for the heady mix
that grows joy in my soul

______________________________________
A poem for a winter afternoon, as the days draw down to the solstice.


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finding joy

in a redwood grove
the sun’s arm lights the ferny floor

in the company of beloved children
there is nonsense and wonder

in the winter marshland
there is texture more than color

in the midst of singing
the voices tell me stories

in the simple potent thing
there is splendor waiting for me

it feasts my eyes
and I am full of joy


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The new path

While colors fade and drop
as browns and grays emerge
upright leafless spare
The sun finds a new path
closed off before the change
This new light is a gift
an opening of space and beam
delights forgotten while
the world was green
There the gold of larches in the marsh
a roof line now exposed
a barn or field with open sightline to the hills
All these a balm to ease our journey
into winter and the snow

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My cousin, the writer Jack Skow, gave me invaluable advice when I showed him this, still not sure if I got it right since then.


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First quiet

The morning’s first quiet
this time to myself
is precious and needed,
reflection and energy
both brew with my coffee.
Music a backdrop,
dogs fed and peaceful,
warming my feet.
This moment’s soft hug
the day’s work ahead.

 

______________________________
an early morning shortling.


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thoughts about writing, and a surfeit of color

The urge to write comes in fits and starts, but lately haiku has drawn me in and I respond to its economies of length, of expression. Wonder if it is about not pressuring myself to do more. Probably.

I’ve also been working on a blog piece about cleaning my family’s place out, which was a mammoth undertaking. The importance of that piece to me lies in the loss of place and identity, the clearing out of things that don’t matter and the taking in of things that do, like relationships.

A writer I greatly respect posted recently that writing is hard work. Yes, I agree with that, having been through that process with my drawings over the years. Simply having the creative urge is all well and good ~we’d be nowhere without it~ but taking that urge and channeling it through one’s own prism is quite a process, and not done lightly.

Photography is an area where I’ve discovered that emotion cannot carry me all the way. Many times I’ll want to shoot something because I have a visceral reaction to its beauty, a color, a circumstance. It took quite a while for me to stop and think about composition, for instance. The surprise has been that the emotion remains after I stop to consider how to capture what I’m seeing.

Right now it is High Fall up here in New Hampshire. The colors are intense and still haven’t peaked, an amazing year for color. I’ve been making the rounds of favorite places to shoot, many on a daily basis. The dogs don’t quite know what to make of these last few days. We get out at Rockwood Pond, they swim, I shoot, back in the car and off to the wetland. Repeat. The other day they were ready to go home before I was!

That’s pretty much where I am too, sated, filled up with all of the color and glow and glory around me. Not that I won’t take some pictures, or feel the colors in my gut. Just going to walk, look, and enjoy. The dogs will be happy.


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No goodbyes, really

This weekend almost didn’t happen for me because my Newfie was barfing. Fearful of leaving her with some malady that might not turn out well, I stuck around, even unpacked a bit, convinced that she was in a bad way. My very practical husband called once back in cell phone range (up here that’s an iffy thing) and basically booted me out the door. “Go”, he said. “I’m coming home and will keep an eye on Aggie”, he said. “No news is good news”, he said. I threw everything together again and bolted, muttering thankful prayers for common sense.

The drive to the other side of the Green Mountains from here is always beautiful, even with end of summer tourists milling about in the rain. Coming down into Manchester, Mount Equinox loomed in the mist. I love the immediacy of those mountains. Boom, there they are, looming up right away in your face. I live at the foot of a mountain, a big rocky much climbed hulk, but the outward slope of its arms give it visual distance.

Once through Dorset, with its Inn and history and everything painted white, the road comes out in a valley that I love because it’s “not”. It’s not fancy, it feels like Columbia County, NY. There are working farms, ramshackle barns, unpruned trees, beautiful old houses.

Of course I’m looking at all this wonderful stuff whizzing by as I’m trying not to go 80 miles an hour, to get to meet friends and kindred spirits I’ve mostly never met. The word lemming comes to mind and I dismiss it. This will be a gathering of a clan. A clan of creatives, a gifted group of wannabe pirates with a wacky sense of humor who have come together because of the opportunity given us by a man with a vision.

Jon Katz is an author with a large following, both in print and in the cyber world. He had the idea to form a creative group using the framework of Facebook three months ago.

The result (after some necessary growing pains and identity consolidation) has been a miracle. That’s how I think of it, a worm hole into a safe place to create and express and fall flat on your face, and get wonderful feedback from the rest of the tribe.

So I got to the weekend’s “opener”, at the home of one of the Group, a beautiful place on a hill with sloping fields and horses, a couple of hours late but not too late. Getting out of the car I felt like jumping up and down with excitement and at the same time quite bashful. I skipped my 50th high school reunion this summer because, hell, I hadn’t managed to lose the 50 pounds of f*-you weight I was convinced was necessary to show up. But not this time. This was about who we are, everything that makes us the talented, caring members of something unique. I had brought Me there. That’s what mattered,

The rest of the time on the other side of the mountains was all I hoped it would be, from the cookout on Saturday night, to staying with a group member and her wonderful family, to the Open House at Jon and Maria’s farm yesterday. We all gradually met each other (are you an Open Grouper?) and passed each new acquaintance along to the rest. Names turned into people who were as interesting and open in person they were in the ether. Conversation flowed, more stories told, hugs exchanged, delight in one another’s company was evident. As we shared the day’s experiences, I was aware of a strong spiritual current flowing. The Farm is a special place, created by the love and energy of two remarkable people.

By the time we gathered in front of the barn for group shots, the connection was pretty palpable. Standing there I had the strongest feeling of linkage. While I joked about this feeling like the group shot at the end of A League of Their Own, and “there’s no crying in baseball” was bandied about, I felt replete, peaceful, my soul satisfied. What Jon had started was the real deal.

On the way home I felt tired and jubilant and exhilarated. Taking a more southerly route back over the mountains, following some powerful rain storms as I went, it did not surprise me to see multiple rainbows over the valley mists and green of the mountain tops. Only fitting I thought, to mark the day. Sitting here this morning letting the words flow, I felt no great sense of parting, of regretful goodbyes yesterday. I’m pretty certain that’s because I know everyone is right here, in the group, flowing on. And Aggie is just fine.