GG: a poem inspired by GG's 1955 Goldbergs

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

This morning I found the following poem "Variations" published in the
booklet of the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival (all week June 14-21,
Harrisonburg VA).  The author, Jean Janzen, is a professor of poetry
writing at Fresno Pacific University, California.  She is here this week
to be the homilist in Sunday morning's "Leipzig service" (including a Bach
cantata), and will do a reading of her work.  There will also be a
performance of the cantata "That Sturdy Vine" by Alice Parker, for which
Janzen contributed some of the texts (Parker is also here this week).

This afternoon I got to talk with Jean for a few minutes, and I asked her
about her poem.  She said it was inspired by her frequent habit of
listening to Glenn Gould's recording of the Goldberg Variations (the
1955).  I told her a bit about the Gould fans here on f_minor, and she
granted permission to reproduce the poem here.  Enjoy!  (And comments are
welcome; I can pass them along to her later this week.) 

-----

VARIATIONS

Bach in summer, quail running
	through the yard.  His thirty
		variations, his twenty children.

I listen as I work at the kitchen
	window, watch the chicks follow
		their parents, racing from cover

to cover.  Bach's wife sighs--
	the baby awakens crying,
		older ones scuffle in the doorway,

and he continues inking notes
	over the undergirding bassline,
		notes that meander, skittish, until

he hears the pattern around
	one simple melody.  One variation,
		then thirty, a moonful--

our daily labor and the body's
	demands.  Menses sticky again
		after breastfeeding, the brief

intervals of silence, and that
	one octave of tones, erudite,
		detached, calling us to replay it

a thousand ways, to enlarge it
	with translations from the inner ear.
		We choose to listen, or not.

Bach perspires over the keys,
	not getting it right, tries again.
		Outside, the summer dust rises

and settles on the ivy--
	a scramble in the cedar shrub
		where the parents whistle

for flight.  Forage and constant
	wariness moving up now into
		the safety of orange trees,

and Bach sitting still,
	listening to the beating
		of his heart.

- Jean Janzen, 1998

-----

Bradley Lehman ~ Harrisonburg VA, USA ~ 38.45716N+78.94565W
bpl@umich.edu ~ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/