Moon in the Bucket
Look!
Look out there
in the bucket
the rusty bucket
with water unclean
Look!
A luminous plate is floating –
the Moon, dancing to the gentle night wind
Look! all you who shout across the wall
with a million hates. Look at the dancing moon
It is peace unsoiled by the murk
and dirt of this bucket war.
Gabriel Okara
"This bucket war" – the bucket, like the wall and the hates shouted across it, is made by people; it is old, beat up, rusty so that the water is rendered useless, meaning the bucket itself is useless, though no one has thrown it out; it is a place of murk and dirt; it is constricted, yet it contains its own rebuke in the form of a reflection of the moon. That is what the bucket war is like. The moon is luminous, it is dancing, or rather its reflection is dancing as the gentle night wind ripples the water dirtied by the bucket. The water, the moon, and the night wind are from the natural world, interacting with yet so much larger than the rusty bucket and the war. Excluding the title, this brief poem has only 57 words, yet five of them are look, the artist's ultimate injunction: look at what is there, not what you think is there; look, observe, notice, pay attention.
Gabriel Okara is a twentieth-century Nigerian poet. I took this poem from The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry.
09 December 2013
04 December 2013
fun stuff I may or may not get to: December 2013
The year draws to a close. In the rather brief list below I have mostly omitted holiday events; I'm not making any sort of point there, I too love Messiah, Nutcracker, Christmas Carol, tinsel and shiny fragile things; it's just that I have had even less time than usual the past month, and the best holiday performances are the ones you go see every year in your own beloved personal traditions, and you already know about those. (I'm sorry this is not one of the years when Cal Performances presents Mark Morris's The Hard Nut; it's become part of Christmas for me.) And I have the impression that there is less non-holiday stuff going on this year than usual, and more of it seems to be happening very early in the month. So enjoy whatever holiday doings are precious to you, and let's let this year slip softly away.
Philharmonia Baroque has been concentrating on one city each concert, and on 6-8 and 10 December it follows up its terrific visits to Naples and St Petersburg with London; Nicholas McGegan is joined by soprano Yulia Van Doren and tenor Thomas Cooley in John Stanley's Concerto in B minor, Op. 2, No. 2, William Croft's The Burial Service, and William Boyce's Solomon. I'm really loving how much of their repertory this season has been rare and offbeat. OK, they're also performing Handel's Messiah, which is neither rare nor offbeat, but there are reasons it is so beloved, and you can discover or rediscover them 14-15 December (in association with Cal Performances). Speaking of Cal Performances, they also are presenting the Kronos Quartet's 40th Birthday concert, with a host of special guests and music by Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Bryce Dessner, and George Crumb. That's 7 December in Zellerbach Hall.
Shotgun Players continues its tradition of alternative holiday programming with Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness, written by Anthony Neilson and directed by Beth Wilmurt, which promises us "a sensual Edwardian world." I'm getting a steampunk vibe off this but I might be completely wrong; I myself won't find out until early January, but you can check it out between 5 December and 12 January 2014 at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley.
The Berkeley Symphony presents Brett Dean's Carlo for strings, sampler, and tape, inspired by the music of Carlo Gesualdo, along with cellist Peter Wyrick (a familiar face in the cello section of the San Francisco Symphony) playing Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 1 as well as the Brahms 2. Joana Carneiro conducts. That's 5 December at Zellerbach Hall on the Berkeley campus.
The Lacuna Arts Ensemble performs a cappella works by Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc, Hindemith, and Corigliano, along with Charpentier's Messe de minuit pour Noël accompanied by baroque instruments, on 15 December at 3:00 at St Luke's Episcopal Church (1755 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco; the cross street is Clay).
Magnificat, The Whole Noyse, and the San Francisco Early Music Society join forces to present a Venetian Christmas, featuring works by Gabrieli and Monteverdi, 20 - 22 December in Palo Alto, Berkeley, and San Francisco.
Philharmonia Baroque has been concentrating on one city each concert, and on 6-8 and 10 December it follows up its terrific visits to Naples and St Petersburg with London; Nicholas McGegan is joined by soprano Yulia Van Doren and tenor Thomas Cooley in John Stanley's Concerto in B minor, Op. 2, No. 2, William Croft's The Burial Service, and William Boyce's Solomon. I'm really loving how much of their repertory this season has been rare and offbeat. OK, they're also performing Handel's Messiah, which is neither rare nor offbeat, but there are reasons it is so beloved, and you can discover or rediscover them 14-15 December (in association with Cal Performances). Speaking of Cal Performances, they also are presenting the Kronos Quartet's 40th Birthday concert, with a host of special guests and music by Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Bryce Dessner, and George Crumb. That's 7 December in Zellerbach Hall.
Shotgun Players continues its tradition of alternative holiday programming with Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness, written by Anthony Neilson and directed by Beth Wilmurt, which promises us "a sensual Edwardian world." I'm getting a steampunk vibe off this but I might be completely wrong; I myself won't find out until early January, but you can check it out between 5 December and 12 January 2014 at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley.
The Berkeley Symphony presents Brett Dean's Carlo for strings, sampler, and tape, inspired by the music of Carlo Gesualdo, along with cellist Peter Wyrick (a familiar face in the cello section of the San Francisco Symphony) playing Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 1 as well as the Brahms 2. Joana Carneiro conducts. That's 5 December at Zellerbach Hall on the Berkeley campus.
The Lacuna Arts Ensemble performs a cappella works by Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc, Hindemith, and Corigliano, along with Charpentier's Messe de minuit pour Noël accompanied by baroque instruments, on 15 December at 3:00 at St Luke's Episcopal Church (1755 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco; the cross street is Clay).
Magnificat, The Whole Noyse, and the San Francisco Early Music Society join forces to present a Venetian Christmas, featuring works by Gabrieli and Monteverdi, 20 - 22 December in Palo Alto, Berkeley, and San Francisco.
02 December 2013
Poem of the Week 2013/49
Two poems by twentieth-century Polish poet Anna Swir:
The Greatest Love
She is sixty. She lives
the greatest love of her life.
She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,
her hair streams in the wind.
Her dear one says:
"You have hair like pearls."
Her children say:
"Old fool."
Anna Swir, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
*****************************************
I Am Running on the Beach
I am running on the beach.
People puzzled.
– A gray-haired hag and she runs.
I am running on the beach
with an insolent look.
People laugh.
– Grey-haired and insolent.
They like that.
Anna Swir, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
I should probably point out that juxtaposing these two poems is my idea, not the poet's and not the translators'. I liked that both deal with the same basic subject – an old woman finding pleasure in her current life – and end with such different reactions. The poet is clearly conscious of her audience and gives their reactions the last word in each poem. Yet you don't feel that the reaction in either case matters all that much to her; she is not abashed by her children who think she's an old fool, or encouraged to play up her insolence for the further amusement of the people on the beach. She is not only an active participant in her life, but a disinterested observer of it – was she always like this? or is this an effect of aging? (Most of her poems about flesh and eroticism were written when she was an old woman, according to Milosz's introduction to Talking to My Body, from which I took these poems.) In her short, concentrated poems, simple in language but not implication, she often writes of her body as if it were a long-time, much-loved pet: she is affectionately aware of all its moods and ways, yet there seems a gap, however slight, between her consciousness and it.
The Greatest Love
She is sixty. She lives
the greatest love of her life.
She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,
her hair streams in the wind.
Her dear one says:
"You have hair like pearls."
Her children say:
"Old fool."
Anna Swir, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
*****************************************
I Am Running on the Beach
I am running on the beach.
People puzzled.
– A gray-haired hag and she runs.
I am running on the beach
with an insolent look.
People laugh.
– Grey-haired and insolent.
They like that.
Anna Swir, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
I should probably point out that juxtaposing these two poems is my idea, not the poet's and not the translators'. I liked that both deal with the same basic subject – an old woman finding pleasure in her current life – and end with such different reactions. The poet is clearly conscious of her audience and gives their reactions the last word in each poem. Yet you don't feel that the reaction in either case matters all that much to her; she is not abashed by her children who think she's an old fool, or encouraged to play up her insolence for the further amusement of the people on the beach. She is not only an active participant in her life, but a disinterested observer of it – was she always like this? or is this an effect of aging? (Most of her poems about flesh and eroticism were written when she was an old woman, according to Milosz's introduction to Talking to My Body, from which I took these poems.) In her short, concentrated poems, simple in language but not implication, she often writes of her body as if it were a long-time, much-loved pet: she is affectionately aware of all its moods and ways, yet there seems a gap, however slight, between her consciousness and it.
25 November 2013
Poem of the Week 2013/48
I was casting around for a poem for Thanksgiving week and not really coming up with anything that satisfied me, until I realized I had a long-standing tradition of listening to The Rake's Progress on Thanksgiving while I prepared dinner and a long-standing thought of posting Tom Rakewell's Act 1, Scene 2 aria; so here it is. The music is by Stravinsky and the brilliant libretto by W H Auden with Chester Kallman.
Ambitious and restless young Tom Rakewell, informed by a mysterious messenger, Nick Shadow, of a generous bequest from a hitherto unknown uncle, has left his sweetheart, Anne Trulove, back in the country as he goes to seek adventure and further fortune in glamorous London. Nick has brought him to Mother Goose's brothel, where the custom is for each newcomer to "sing you a song / in earnest of his desire to be initiated." (Mother Goose is not the famous nursery rhyme character, though the name does bring with it an aura of the fairy-tale and the fantastical; "goose" is old slang for a prostitute, used as such by Shakespeare.)
Tom's Aria ("Love, too frequently betrayed")
Tom Rakewell:
Love, too frequently betrayed
For some plausible desire
Or the world's enchanted fire,
Still thy traitor in his sleep
Renews the vow he did not keep,
Weeping, weeping,
He kneels before thy wounded shade.
Love, my sorrow and my shame,
Though thou daily be forgot,
Goddess, O forget me not!
Lest I perish, O be nigh
In my darkest hour that I
Dying, dying,
May call upon thy sacred name.
Chorus of Whores:
How sad a song,
But sadness charms.
How handsomely he cries!
Come, drown your sorrows in these arms.
Forget it in these eyes,
Upon these lips.
W H Auden & Chester Kallman, from The Rake's Progress
Like other poems I've posted here (the occasional Broadway song, everything by Sappho), this was intended to be experienced with its accompanying music. And if you know the opera, you can't help hearing the melody; as you read you will, as the music does, repeat Tom's anguished "O be nigh," and mentally hear whichever performer's "weeping, weeping" and "dying, dying" break your heart. But the words makes sense even if you've never heard a note of the opera, though the music enriches the experience; it also makes sense even if you've never read Auden's poetry, though familiarity with his poems on loving steadfastly despite lacking true love in return (which he felt described his relationship with Kallman) also expand the experience.
Even at this early stage in his "progress," Tom is torn by regrets, though he takes no steps to return to the true love whose worth he already contrasts with the frivolity and cynicism of London society (the "world's enchanted fire," which warms, burns, and consumes). His song is an anguished cry from his heart – yet it is also a self-conscious performance in the theater of the world; Nick introduces him to the assembled prostitutes, he performs, and the appreciative ladies are seduced by his appealing melancholy – his song must have echoed in many of their hearts, or what hearts they had left after the commerce of love – as well as by his youthful good looks.
"Shade" at the end of the first stanza is an interesting word: "He kneels before thy wounded shade." The obvious, technical answer to "why shade?" is "to rhyme with betrayed." But Auden at least was too great a poet for that convenience to be sufficient. A shade can be light diminished by obstructions, or a device to cause such diminution, or shelter from heat, or a trace or gradation of something, or a disembodied spirit: all these things are possible interpretations or aspects of Love. But can a shade in any of its senses really be "wounded"? Perhaps there is an implication that part of Tom's egotism is thinking that his betrayal of Love can harm its unsubstantial substance. Shade also links Love with the shadow world (perhaps with overtones of Jung's idea of the shadow as the necessary but hidden and denied part of one's personality), in particular with Nick Shadow, the devil of the piece. ("Old Nick" is an antique folk-term for the Devil.) It's clear as the plot unfolds that Nick is trying to capture and destroy Tom's soul, though I once attended a performance during which it took the gentleman next to me two and a half acts to figure out that Nick Shadow is the devil – I know this because he announced in the middle of the third act, "Oh! – he's the Devil!"
So why would the "sacred name" of the goddess of Love be linked to Nick Shadow? Perhaps Tom's trust in both has been misplaced. Like Goethe's Faust, Tom will be saved from damnation by selfless love (not his own). But in the opera's acerbic twist, Love's redemptive power is not all-mighty: though Tom does in fact call upon Love in his darkest hour, his reliance on this notoriously disruptive, irrational emotion leaves him vulnerable to Nick's parting curse: "Your sins, my foe, before I go / Give me some power to pain: / To reason blind shall be your mind, / Henceforth be you insane!" Tom's progress ends in Bedlam. He believes he is Adonis, the beloved of Venus. When the faithful Anne is brought to visit him by her steadfast father, he thinks she is Venus. She sings him a lullaby, as you would to a fretful child. He falls asleep, then he awakes, calling upon not Anne but Venus. But she has left – there is nothing more she can do for Tom. He dies, or falls back into a living death.
My tears for Mimi and Violetta dried up years ago, but I still weep for Tom Rakewell, and for Anne Trulove. There are many recordings of the piece; for sentimental reasons (it was the first recording of the opera I had, and for years the only one) I'll mention the Riccardo Chailly; if you prefer to see as well as hear your opera, there's a good DVD with the celebrated David Hockney sets.
Ambitious and restless young Tom Rakewell, informed by a mysterious messenger, Nick Shadow, of a generous bequest from a hitherto unknown uncle, has left his sweetheart, Anne Trulove, back in the country as he goes to seek adventure and further fortune in glamorous London. Nick has brought him to Mother Goose's brothel, where the custom is for each newcomer to "sing you a song / in earnest of his desire to be initiated." (Mother Goose is not the famous nursery rhyme character, though the name does bring with it an aura of the fairy-tale and the fantastical; "goose" is old slang for a prostitute, used as such by Shakespeare.)
Tom's Aria ("Love, too frequently betrayed")
Tom Rakewell:
Love, too frequently betrayed
For some plausible desire
Or the world's enchanted fire,
Still thy traitor in his sleep
Renews the vow he did not keep,
Weeping, weeping,
He kneels before thy wounded shade.
Love, my sorrow and my shame,
Though thou daily be forgot,
Goddess, O forget me not!
Lest I perish, O be nigh
In my darkest hour that I
Dying, dying,
May call upon thy sacred name.
Chorus of Whores:
How sad a song,
But sadness charms.
How handsomely he cries!
Come, drown your sorrows in these arms.
Forget it in these eyes,
Upon these lips.
W H Auden & Chester Kallman, from The Rake's Progress
Like other poems I've posted here (the occasional Broadway song, everything by Sappho), this was intended to be experienced with its accompanying music. And if you know the opera, you can't help hearing the melody; as you read you will, as the music does, repeat Tom's anguished "O be nigh," and mentally hear whichever performer's "weeping, weeping" and "dying, dying" break your heart. But the words makes sense even if you've never heard a note of the opera, though the music enriches the experience; it also makes sense even if you've never read Auden's poetry, though familiarity with his poems on loving steadfastly despite lacking true love in return (which he felt described his relationship with Kallman) also expand the experience.
Even at this early stage in his "progress," Tom is torn by regrets, though he takes no steps to return to the true love whose worth he already contrasts with the frivolity and cynicism of London society (the "world's enchanted fire," which warms, burns, and consumes). His song is an anguished cry from his heart – yet it is also a self-conscious performance in the theater of the world; Nick introduces him to the assembled prostitutes, he performs, and the appreciative ladies are seduced by his appealing melancholy – his song must have echoed in many of their hearts, or what hearts they had left after the commerce of love – as well as by his youthful good looks.
"Shade" at the end of the first stanza is an interesting word: "He kneels before thy wounded shade." The obvious, technical answer to "why shade?" is "to rhyme with betrayed." But Auden at least was too great a poet for that convenience to be sufficient. A shade can be light diminished by obstructions, or a device to cause such diminution, or shelter from heat, or a trace or gradation of something, or a disembodied spirit: all these things are possible interpretations or aspects of Love. But can a shade in any of its senses really be "wounded"? Perhaps there is an implication that part of Tom's egotism is thinking that his betrayal of Love can harm its unsubstantial substance. Shade also links Love with the shadow world (perhaps with overtones of Jung's idea of the shadow as the necessary but hidden and denied part of one's personality), in particular with Nick Shadow, the devil of the piece. ("Old Nick" is an antique folk-term for the Devil.) It's clear as the plot unfolds that Nick is trying to capture and destroy Tom's soul, though I once attended a performance during which it took the gentleman next to me two and a half acts to figure out that Nick Shadow is the devil – I know this because he announced in the middle of the third act, "Oh! – he's the Devil!"
So why would the "sacred name" of the goddess of Love be linked to Nick Shadow? Perhaps Tom's trust in both has been misplaced. Like Goethe's Faust, Tom will be saved from damnation by selfless love (not his own). But in the opera's acerbic twist, Love's redemptive power is not all-mighty: though Tom does in fact call upon Love in his darkest hour, his reliance on this notoriously disruptive, irrational emotion leaves him vulnerable to Nick's parting curse: "Your sins, my foe, before I go / Give me some power to pain: / To reason blind shall be your mind, / Henceforth be you insane!" Tom's progress ends in Bedlam. He believes he is Adonis, the beloved of Venus. When the faithful Anne is brought to visit him by her steadfast father, he thinks she is Venus. She sings him a lullaby, as you would to a fretful child. He falls asleep, then he awakes, calling upon not Anne but Venus. But she has left – there is nothing more she can do for Tom. He dies, or falls back into a living death.
My tears for Mimi and Violetta dried up years ago, but I still weep for Tom Rakewell, and for Anne Trulove. There are many recordings of the piece; for sentimental reasons (it was the first recording of the opera I had, and for years the only one) I'll mention the Riccardo Chailly; if you prefer to see as well as hear your opera, there's a good DVD with the celebrated David Hockney sets.
18 November 2013
Poem of the Week 2013/47
I now have a slick and spiffy new computer, but I had no time this week and I'm still getting used to the new computer interface, so here's another brief bit of life wisdom from Sappho. Once again, this is from the Mary Barnard translation.
If you are squeamish
Don't prod the
beach rubble
Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard
If you are squeamish
Don't prod the
beach rubble
Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard
11 November 2013
Poem of the Week 2013/46
My computer is still down, so here's a brief one for Veterans Day:
Leaving for the Front
Before I die I must just find this rhyme.
Be quiet, my friends, and do not waste my time.
We're marching off in company with death.
I only wish my girl would hold her breath.
There's nothing wrong with me. I'm glad to leave.
Now mother's crying too. There's no reprieve.
And now look how the sun's begun to set.
A nice mass-grave is all that I shall get.
Once more the good old sunset's glowing red.
In thirteen days I'll probably be dead.
Alfred Lichtenstein, translated from the German by Patrick Bridgewater.
7 August 1914: seven weeks later Lichtenstein was dead
This poem, including the note on when it was written and when the poet was killed, comes from The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, edited by Jon Silkin. Veterans Day of course began as Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I, the cataclysm that created the modern world.
Leaving for the Front
Before I die I must just find this rhyme.
Be quiet, my friends, and do not waste my time.
We're marching off in company with death.
I only wish my girl would hold her breath.
There's nothing wrong with me. I'm glad to leave.
Now mother's crying too. There's no reprieve.
And now look how the sun's begun to set.
A nice mass-grave is all that I shall get.
Once more the good old sunset's glowing red.
In thirteen days I'll probably be dead.
Alfred Lichtenstein, translated from the German by Patrick Bridgewater.
7 August 1914: seven weeks later Lichtenstein was dead
This poem, including the note on when it was written and when the poet was killed, comes from The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, edited by Jon Silkin. Veterans Day of course began as Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I, the cataclysm that created the modern world.
04 November 2013
Poem of the Week 2013/45
I'm still trying to deal with my computer situation, so here is a fragment by Sappho to tide us over.
Must I remind you, Cleis,
That sounds of grief
are unbecoming in
a poet's household?
and that they are not
suitable in ours?
Wise words, which I will try to take to heart. The translation is by Mary Barnard. Cleis is Sappho's daughter (mentioned by name in Fragment 132).
Must I remind you, Cleis,
That sounds of grief
are unbecoming in
a poet's household?
and that they are not
suitable in ours?
Wise words, which I will try to take to heart. The translation is by Mary Barnard. Cleis is Sappho's daughter (mentioned by name in Fragment 132).
02 November 2013
fun stuff I may or may not get to: November 2013
This entry was not quite ready to go when my computer gave out. I was going to put in an update on the BART situation, organize things a bit more, add in a few more entries and some pictures. . . Since these preview entries are my attempt to stay somewhat current (thoughts on actual performances can come whenever; it's all memory anyway once the curtain descends) I figure I should just go ahead and hit publish, since I am not sure when I'll be back to what passes for normal.
As usual there is a bewildering variety of performances of all types over at Cal Performances, from the Brandenburg Concertos to ballet to mariachi to things that sound kind of indescribable . . . other highlights for me are puppeteer Basil Twist's Dogugaeshi (6 - 10 November, with two performances on most of those days), the Joshua Redman Quartet (16 November), pianist Paul Lewis playing Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner, and Mussorgsky (3 November), pianist Shai Wosner playing Widman and Schubert (24 November), and the Danish String Quartet playing Abrahamsen, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven (17 November). Check out the whole month here.
The big news at the San Francisco Symphony in November is Semyon Bychkov conducting Britten's War Requiem, with soloists Christine Brewer, James Gilchrist, and Roderick Williams. There are only two performances, 27 (that's the day before Thanksgiving, which is going to rule it out for some of us) and 30 November. I'd give the runner-up prize to Michael Tilson Thomas conducting Beethoven, Mozart, Copland, and Steven Mackey with soloist Jeremy Denk, 7 - 10 November. You can check out the particulars of that concert as well as the month's other offerings here.
For more Britten, Volti is offering one of his late choral works, Sacred and Profane, along with new works by Mark Winges, Forrest Pierce, and Sarah Kirkland Snider. That's 22 - 24 November, in a different location each day; check here for details. and if you attend the concert on the 22nd, you will be there on Britten's 100th birthday.
Philharmonia Baroque offers a program of early Russian rarities, conducted by Steven Fox, featuring Tanya Tomkins on cello and soprano Anna Dennis singing arias by Glinka arranged by Rimsky-Korsakov – and those are the most familiar composers on the program; the others are Berezovksy, Bortniansky, Facius, and Fomin. Sounds like a fun adventure! That's 15 - 17 and 19 November, in their usual various locations; check here for specifics.
At the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Blue Print new music series continues on 16 November with Lembit Beecher's And Then I Remember and Poulenc's Le Bal Masqué. Check here for their other offerings this month.
There's more new music at Old First Concerts: on Saturday, 9 November, the San Francisco Compoers Chamber Orchestra presents new works by Davide Verotta, Philip Freihofner, David Sprung, Scola Prosek, and Mark Alburger; check here for their description of the concert, written as a parody of the Communist Manifesto, which I have to say not only amused me but may compel me to go to this concert in solidarity with fellow new-music comrades. Another offering that looks interesting is the 17 November portrait-concert of Hyo-shin Na, featuring Shoko Hikage on koto, Thomas Schultz on piano, and Narae Kwon on kayageum.
San Francisco Performances has Peter Wispelwey playing the complete Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello in two concerts on one marathon day, 9 November; they also have the Pacifica Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin playing Shostakovich, Ornstein, and Dvorak, 11 November; and jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, 16 November. Check out those offerings and others here.
November at San Francisco Opera sees the final performance of its much-praised Falstaff, the continuation through 15 November of its less highly praised Flying Dutchman, and the opening of its final production of the fall season, The Barber of Seville, which opens 13 November and closes 1 December. There are two separate casts for the Rossini; Isabel Leonard is in one, and Alek Shrader in the other, and if they were both in one cast I would probably go see it, and possibly if I had more time and money I'd see each cast, but as it is . . . . that's just not my current reality. You can check its performance dates and casts here.
42nd Street Moon presents the Rodgers and Hart musical I Married an Angel, 30 October - 17 November.
Cutting Ball Theater continues its run of Sidewinders by Basil Kreimendahl, directed by M. Graham Smith, through 17 November. I have not seen it yet. They also have two interesting shows in their Sunday afternoon Hidden Classics Reading Series: The Natural Relations and Other Plays by nineteenth-century Brazilian playwright Qorpo Santo, translated by resident playwright Andrew Saito, on 3 November; and Antigone by Sophocles, directed by Paige Rogers, on 10 November.
Shotgun Players continue their run of Strangers, Babies, written by Linda McLean and directed by Jon Tracy, through 17 November. I haven't seen it yet. They have also announced their 2014 season (unlike most performing arts groups, they kind of follow the calendar year instead of the traditional September to June performance cycle). Check it out here – I've already subscribed. I have to say, I have seen the movie version of Our Town, with music by Aaron Copland, and I've seen Ned Rorem's operatic version, but I have never seen the original play on stage. Even after a lifetime of theater-going, there are still basics I've never come across. I often think about things like that when people complain about over-reliance on the warhorses of the repertory, even when I'm the one complaining.
Aurora Theater presents A Bright New Boise, written by Samuel D. Hunter and directed by Tom Ross, 8 November to 8 December.
Berkeley Rep presents Tristan & Yseult, adapted and directed by Emma Rice of Britain's Kneehigh Theater. The last show I saw at Berkeley Rep was actually a Kneehigh show, The Wild Bride, which I found disappointing, for reasons I explain here (short version: inventive staging, weak script), but I'm willing to give them another chance, which is pretty magnanimous of me. That's 22 November to 6 January 2014.
As usual there is a bewildering variety of performances of all types over at Cal Performances, from the Brandenburg Concertos to ballet to mariachi to things that sound kind of indescribable . . . other highlights for me are puppeteer Basil Twist's Dogugaeshi (6 - 10 November, with two performances on most of those days), the Joshua Redman Quartet (16 November), pianist Paul Lewis playing Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner, and Mussorgsky (3 November), pianist Shai Wosner playing Widman and Schubert (24 November), and the Danish String Quartet playing Abrahamsen, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven (17 November). Check out the whole month here.
The big news at the San Francisco Symphony in November is Semyon Bychkov conducting Britten's War Requiem, with soloists Christine Brewer, James Gilchrist, and Roderick Williams. There are only two performances, 27 (that's the day before Thanksgiving, which is going to rule it out for some of us) and 30 November. I'd give the runner-up prize to Michael Tilson Thomas conducting Beethoven, Mozart, Copland, and Steven Mackey with soloist Jeremy Denk, 7 - 10 November. You can check out the particulars of that concert as well as the month's other offerings here.
For more Britten, Volti is offering one of his late choral works, Sacred and Profane, along with new works by Mark Winges, Forrest Pierce, and Sarah Kirkland Snider. That's 22 - 24 November, in a different location each day; check here for details. and if you attend the concert on the 22nd, you will be there on Britten's 100th birthday.
Philharmonia Baroque offers a program of early Russian rarities, conducted by Steven Fox, featuring Tanya Tomkins on cello and soprano Anna Dennis singing arias by Glinka arranged by Rimsky-Korsakov – and those are the most familiar composers on the program; the others are Berezovksy, Bortniansky, Facius, and Fomin. Sounds like a fun adventure! That's 15 - 17 and 19 November, in their usual various locations; check here for specifics.
At the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Blue Print new music series continues on 16 November with Lembit Beecher's And Then I Remember and Poulenc's Le Bal Masqué. Check here for their other offerings this month.
There's more new music at Old First Concerts: on Saturday, 9 November, the San Francisco Compoers Chamber Orchestra presents new works by Davide Verotta, Philip Freihofner, David Sprung, Scola Prosek, and Mark Alburger; check here for their description of the concert, written as a parody of the Communist Manifesto, which I have to say not only amused me but may compel me to go to this concert in solidarity with fellow new-music comrades. Another offering that looks interesting is the 17 November portrait-concert of Hyo-shin Na, featuring Shoko Hikage on koto, Thomas Schultz on piano, and Narae Kwon on kayageum.
San Francisco Performances has Peter Wispelwey playing the complete Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello in two concerts on one marathon day, 9 November; they also have the Pacifica Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin playing Shostakovich, Ornstein, and Dvorak, 11 November; and jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, 16 November. Check out those offerings and others here.
November at San Francisco Opera sees the final performance of its much-praised Falstaff, the continuation through 15 November of its less highly praised Flying Dutchman, and the opening of its final production of the fall season, The Barber of Seville, which opens 13 November and closes 1 December. There are two separate casts for the Rossini; Isabel Leonard is in one, and Alek Shrader in the other, and if they were both in one cast I would probably go see it, and possibly if I had more time and money I'd see each cast, but as it is . . . . that's just not my current reality. You can check its performance dates and casts here.
42nd Street Moon presents the Rodgers and Hart musical I Married an Angel, 30 October - 17 November.
Cutting Ball Theater continues its run of Sidewinders by Basil Kreimendahl, directed by M. Graham Smith, through 17 November. I have not seen it yet. They also have two interesting shows in their Sunday afternoon Hidden Classics Reading Series: The Natural Relations and Other Plays by nineteenth-century Brazilian playwright Qorpo Santo, translated by resident playwright Andrew Saito, on 3 November; and Antigone by Sophocles, directed by Paige Rogers, on 10 November.
Shotgun Players continue their run of Strangers, Babies, written by Linda McLean and directed by Jon Tracy, through 17 November. I haven't seen it yet. They have also announced their 2014 season (unlike most performing arts groups, they kind of follow the calendar year instead of the traditional September to June performance cycle). Check it out here – I've already subscribed. I have to say, I have seen the movie version of Our Town, with music by Aaron Copland, and I've seen Ned Rorem's operatic version, but I have never seen the original play on stage. Even after a lifetime of theater-going, there are still basics I've never come across. I often think about things like that when people complain about over-reliance on the warhorses of the repertory, even when I'm the one complaining.
Aurora Theater presents A Bright New Boise, written by Samuel D. Hunter and directed by Tom Ross, 8 November to 8 December.
Berkeley Rep presents Tristan & Yseult, adapted and directed by Emma Rice of Britain's Kneehigh Theater. The last show I saw at Berkeley Rep was actually a Kneehigh show, The Wild Bride, which I found disappointing, for reasons I explain here (short version: inventive staging, weak script), but I'm willing to give them another chance, which is pretty magnanimous of me. That's 22 November to 6 January 2014.
28 October 2013
Poem of the Week 2013/44
Here's one for Halloween week: Joan la Pucelle Invokes Her Devils
Alarum. Excursions. Enter Joan la Pucelle.
Pucelle:
The Regent conquers, and the Frenchmen fly.
Now help, ye charming spells and periapts,
And ye choice spirits that admonish me
And give me signs of future accidents.
Thunder.
You speedy helpers, that are substitutes
Under the lordly monarch of the north,
Appear and aid me in this enterprise.
Enter Fiends.
This speedy and quick appearance argues proof
Of your accustomed diligence to me.
Now, ye familiar spirits, that are culled
Out of the powerful regions under earth,
Help me this once, that France may get the field.
They walk, and speak not.
O, hold me not with silence over-long!
Where I was wont to feed you with my blood,
I'll lop a member off and give it you
In earnest of a further benefit,
So you do condescend to help me now.
They hang their heads.
No hope to have redress? My body shall
Pay recompense, if you will grant my suit.
They shake their heads.
Cannot my body nor blood-sacrifice
Entreat you to your wonted furtherance?
Then take my soul; my body, soul, and all,
Before that England give the French the foil.
They depart.
See, they forsake me! Now the time is come
That France must vail her lofty plumèd crest
And let her head fall into England's lap.
My ancient incantations are too weak,
And hell too strong for me to buckle with.
Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust.
William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part One, Act V, scene iii, ll 1-29
Pucelle is French for virgin (there are many sly, flirty jokes by Joan and members of the French court indicating this title is just for show). Periapts in the second line means charms or amulets. The lordly monarch of the North is Satan; as noted last week, evil spirits were traditionally associated with the frozen wastelands of the globe's north. Buckle in the second-to-last line means struggle. Like most early Shakespeare, this is fairly direct, clear verse; he grew more complex, knotted, and vast as he grew older – not just in his poetry, but with his characters. Part of his enormous vitality as a playwright comes from his giving us more than the character really needs for his or her part in the story: there are odd lines that act as strange little flashes, illuminating a character's whole psyche. A famous example is Shylock's lament when he hears that his runaway daughter Jessica has traded a valuable ring for a pet monkey: "I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys." Leah is otherwise unmentioned, but presumably she is his now dead wife and the mother of the heedless runaway daughter; there's bizarre comedy in the "wilderness of monkeys" – comedy which endears the speaker to us – but also a depth of emotional attachment to his late wife that goes far beyond the stage stereotype of a miserly money-lending Jew – contrast this complexity with Marlowe's Barabas in The Jew of Malta, who is much more straightforward, though he does also have an energetic determination and a gleeful delight in his own villainy that are strangely appealing, much as Shakespeare's Richard III does.
Richard III, defeated in battle by Elizabeth I's grandfather, brings us to the political aspect of this play for its contemporary audience. Yes, what we have here is the English Renaissance/Tudor dynasty view of Joan of Arc, who had done so much to boot the English out of France about a hundred years earlier – in their minds, to accomplish that she obviously would have to be in league with Satan. Joan was basically their equivalent of a fanatical suicide bomber: driven by an alien faith to defend her homeland against what she saw as interlopers, who considered themselves not only well-intentioned but more capable and more honorable than the natives. I wouldn't really call Shakespeare's history plays propaganda – they're too complex and independent for that – but, not unreasonably, they do generally reflect the standard interpretation of his time, however subtly he undercuts some of the narratives (for example, I've always felt that Henry V, usually considered a celebratory pageant, has a questioning, satirical vein running through it). As a cultural and political antagonist, standing against their enlightened rule, Joan is linked in the eyes of a Tudor audience with the Satanic – quite directly linked, since she shows all the classic signifiers of witchdom: easy communion and bodily intimacy with evil spirits, a willingness to surrender her immortal soul for earthly aims, an ultimate defeat by the devils, who always win in the end against those who think they can bargain with them.
Shakespeare's portrayal of Joan is not exactly rich in those generous extra lines that flesh out a character's whole world, but it is clear that she is motivated by a patriotic love of France; so this devotion to her native land must have made at least some in the audience wonder why she should be condemned for what is considered virtuous in the English. It's useful to remember that the borders between countries were much more fluid then than they are now, depending as they did on marriage alliances and dynastic succession as well as fighting; England's rule over parts of France isn't quite straightforward imperialism, and there really wasn't a single political/cultural entity called "France" that coincides with what we think of as "France" (Germany and Italy were also more a collection of occasionally quarrelsome states). In his own play on Joan, Shaw makes the point that she represents something new in the concept of nationhood. Anyway, Joan in Shakespeare's play is pretty clearly a whore and a witch, and once we get past the shock of seeing the beloved and fascinating Saint Joan portrayed that way (remember that she was not canonized until 1920, almost 500 years after her death, and this is a play written in the country she had fairly recently helped defeat), her character here is actually another of those strangely appealing Elizabethan villains, much more lively and clever than the stolid English with their dull concern with their honor. But my sympathies may say more about my own lack of honor and patriotic sentiment.
I felt slightly guilty posting this, since I've always been fascinated by Saint Joan. On my one trip to France, many years ago, I made a point of going up to Rouen, not just to see the Cathedral Monet painted over and over under different weather and lighting conditions for each canvas, but to see the remaining sites associated with Joan's imprisonment and death. There is only one squat stone tower remaining from the fortress where she was held prisoner. I spent a beautiful rainy afternoon wandering around in it, with the whole place to myself. So I had some hesitation here, but I wanted to post something seasonal other than the usual Weird Sisters from Macbeth, and Halloween, like Carnival, is a time of licensed transgression, so here she is, our saint consorting with their demons. I took this passage from the Signet Classic edition of Henry VI, Part One, but I'm going to expiate this post by mentioning some other works on Joan worth looking into: Shaw's great play Saint Joan, mentioned above; Dreyer's great film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and Marina Warner's Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, which I liked a lot when I read it many years ago.
Alarum. Excursions. Enter Joan la Pucelle.
Pucelle:
The Regent conquers, and the Frenchmen fly.
Now help, ye charming spells and periapts,
And ye choice spirits that admonish me
And give me signs of future accidents.
Thunder.
You speedy helpers, that are substitutes
Under the lordly monarch of the north,
Appear and aid me in this enterprise.
Enter Fiends.
This speedy and quick appearance argues proof
Of your accustomed diligence to me.
Now, ye familiar spirits, that are culled
Out of the powerful regions under earth,
Help me this once, that France may get the field.
They walk, and speak not.
O, hold me not with silence over-long!
Where I was wont to feed you with my blood,
I'll lop a member off and give it you
In earnest of a further benefit,
So you do condescend to help me now.
They hang their heads.
No hope to have redress? My body shall
Pay recompense, if you will grant my suit.
They shake their heads.
Cannot my body nor blood-sacrifice
Entreat you to your wonted furtherance?
Then take my soul; my body, soul, and all,
Before that England give the French the foil.
They depart.
See, they forsake me! Now the time is come
That France must vail her lofty plumèd crest
And let her head fall into England's lap.
My ancient incantations are too weak,
And hell too strong for me to buckle with.
Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust.
William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part One, Act V, scene iii, ll 1-29
Pucelle is French for virgin (there are many sly, flirty jokes by Joan and members of the French court indicating this title is just for show). Periapts in the second line means charms or amulets. The lordly monarch of the North is Satan; as noted last week, evil spirits were traditionally associated with the frozen wastelands of the globe's north. Buckle in the second-to-last line means struggle. Like most early Shakespeare, this is fairly direct, clear verse; he grew more complex, knotted, and vast as he grew older – not just in his poetry, but with his characters. Part of his enormous vitality as a playwright comes from his giving us more than the character really needs for his or her part in the story: there are odd lines that act as strange little flashes, illuminating a character's whole psyche. A famous example is Shylock's lament when he hears that his runaway daughter Jessica has traded a valuable ring for a pet monkey: "I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys." Leah is otherwise unmentioned, but presumably she is his now dead wife and the mother of the heedless runaway daughter; there's bizarre comedy in the "wilderness of monkeys" – comedy which endears the speaker to us – but also a depth of emotional attachment to his late wife that goes far beyond the stage stereotype of a miserly money-lending Jew – contrast this complexity with Marlowe's Barabas in The Jew of Malta, who is much more straightforward, though he does also have an energetic determination and a gleeful delight in his own villainy that are strangely appealing, much as Shakespeare's Richard III does.
Richard III, defeated in battle by Elizabeth I's grandfather, brings us to the political aspect of this play for its contemporary audience. Yes, what we have here is the English Renaissance/Tudor dynasty view of Joan of Arc, who had done so much to boot the English out of France about a hundred years earlier – in their minds, to accomplish that she obviously would have to be in league with Satan. Joan was basically their equivalent of a fanatical suicide bomber: driven by an alien faith to defend her homeland against what she saw as interlopers, who considered themselves not only well-intentioned but more capable and more honorable than the natives. I wouldn't really call Shakespeare's history plays propaganda – they're too complex and independent for that – but, not unreasonably, they do generally reflect the standard interpretation of his time, however subtly he undercuts some of the narratives (for example, I've always felt that Henry V, usually considered a celebratory pageant, has a questioning, satirical vein running through it). As a cultural and political antagonist, standing against their enlightened rule, Joan is linked in the eyes of a Tudor audience with the Satanic – quite directly linked, since she shows all the classic signifiers of witchdom: easy communion and bodily intimacy with evil spirits, a willingness to surrender her immortal soul for earthly aims, an ultimate defeat by the devils, who always win in the end against those who think they can bargain with them.
Shakespeare's portrayal of Joan is not exactly rich in those generous extra lines that flesh out a character's whole world, but it is clear that she is motivated by a patriotic love of France; so this devotion to her native land must have made at least some in the audience wonder why she should be condemned for what is considered virtuous in the English. It's useful to remember that the borders between countries were much more fluid then than they are now, depending as they did on marriage alliances and dynastic succession as well as fighting; England's rule over parts of France isn't quite straightforward imperialism, and there really wasn't a single political/cultural entity called "France" that coincides with what we think of as "France" (Germany and Italy were also more a collection of occasionally quarrelsome states). In his own play on Joan, Shaw makes the point that she represents something new in the concept of nationhood. Anyway, Joan in Shakespeare's play is pretty clearly a whore and a witch, and once we get past the shock of seeing the beloved and fascinating Saint Joan portrayed that way (remember that she was not canonized until 1920, almost 500 years after her death, and this is a play written in the country she had fairly recently helped defeat), her character here is actually another of those strangely appealing Elizabethan villains, much more lively and clever than the stolid English with their dull concern with their honor. But my sympathies may say more about my own lack of honor and patriotic sentiment.
I felt slightly guilty posting this, since I've always been fascinated by Saint Joan. On my one trip to France, many years ago, I made a point of going up to Rouen, not just to see the Cathedral Monet painted over and over under different weather and lighting conditions for each canvas, but to see the remaining sites associated with Joan's imprisonment and death. There is only one squat stone tower remaining from the fortress where she was held prisoner. I spent a beautiful rainy afternoon wandering around in it, with the whole place to myself. So I had some hesitation here, but I wanted to post something seasonal other than the usual Weird Sisters from Macbeth, and Halloween, like Carnival, is a time of licensed transgression, so here she is, our saint consorting with their demons. I took this passage from the Signet Classic edition of Henry VI, Part One, but I'm going to expiate this post by mentioning some other works on Joan worth looking into: Shaw's great play Saint Joan, mentioned above; Dreyer's great film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and Marina Warner's Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, which I liked a lot when I read it many years ago.
21 October 2013
Poem of the Week 2013/43
The Patient Witch
A lady called the Patient Witch
Lived near us long ago.
Our servants gave her off and on
A bit of coin or so,
To tell them what their dreams could mean,
And if their loves were true;
To study out their palms and say –
"A palace waits for you."
And then she always was polite,
And said, "How do you fare?
I hope your little girl is well,"
With a most pleasant air.
She mumbled much, we knew not what –
Each afternoon would wait
Beside the guide-post to the west
For some exalted fate.
She looked down every road as though
A stately coach was due,
To bear her home to somewhere else,
To folks she really knew.
"One evening," said a little boy,
The only one anigh,
"She told me pretty stories, and
She kissed my curls goodbye,
And turned into a swan and spread
Her white wings big and wide.
And flew and flew into the sky!
And I came home and cried."
Vachel Lindsay
I thought I'd head into the haunted weeks of late October with this strange and lovely poem by early twentieth-century American poet Vachel Lindsay. In some ways the title character is a traditional witch: a strange, mumbling, isolated old woman (this view is based on historical reality; see John Putnam Demos's Entertaining Satan). In other ways, she seems as much an oddity among witches as she is among her neighbors: for one thing, she's patient, rather than bad-tempered. She's polite, and has a pleasant air. Lindsay deftly sketches in the social setting: it's the (presumably less educated) servants who like to have their fortunes told; clearly there is no real palace waiting for them, but who knows what "a palace waits for you" might mean to a young servant? And they must be young, since they're asking about their loves and their futures. It's all harmless carnival fun. There's the air of a fairy tale about the whole thing; it happened "long ago" in a house with servants (the contemporary equivalent of the castles which she promises the servants after reading their palms). We hear about the "witch" only indirectly: from the servants, and later from a little boy. The somewhat archaic, childhood air is strengthened by Lindsay's use of traditional ballad meter (the steady 4-3-4-3 beat of the quatrains, with their regularly recurring rhymes).
Halfway through we switch from this scene of local color to something stranger. Right after hearing of the old woman's pleasant air, we hear she constantly mumbled, but no one really knows what she's saying – is it incoherent? unintelligible? are they just not listening closely enough? During actual witch-hunts, many real-life old women must have been done to death for their mysterious mumbling. Here it serves more to emphasize something solitary, isolated, not-understood about the old woman. The traditional region of witches is the cold North, for reasons that would probably take a Golden-Bough-sized volume to explain, but here she's waiting by a "guide-post to the west": a guide-post, as if she's seeking direction, and the west, associated with the forward movement of the sun, and so by implication with the future, but also with the setting of the sun, and so with night, darkness, silence, and death. A coach, stately or otherwise, would already have been an anachronism when this poem was written, so her awaiting one helps emphasize the old woman's dislocation from her surroundings. Then we have the poignant statement that her home is "somewhere else" – wherever that is, clearly it isn't where she is now, and no matter how much she is patronized by the servants, she is nowhere near "folks she really knew."
The only witness to her end is a little boy: is he the child of one of the servants? or the son of the people in the big house who speak of "our servants"? Is he the narrator, long ago, when he was a child? Is he just a boy who happened by? Is he old enough to distinguish fact from fairy tale? The narration of the witch's end by this uncertain story-teller takes on a dreamy distance because of our uncertainty about who this boy is and how accurate he is. Again, she is unlike traditional witches; she is affectionate rather than threatening to the child, entertaining him with pretty stories, and though she is linked to uncanny forces, they are less supernatural than Natural: there is no whiff of the sulfurous Satanic about her, or the black robes of the usual witch; instead, she turns into a white swan and flies away. Is this what she has been patiently awaiting? White is often associated with purity and innocence (not always in good ways; it can also imply cowardice, and inappropriate naivete). Swans are famously beautiful and graceful (I wonder if the shadow of Andersen's Ugly Duckling, who turned into a beautiful swan, went into this particular choice of bird?); they are also associated with death: according to legend, they sing only once in their lives, right before they die. Is her flight the child's version of her death? Or his vision of her rebirth? The odd misfit old woman, this strange resident stranger, redeems herself into something beautiful, magnificent, legendary. She flies away, free, and a lone little boy cries. How can those tears not alter the man he will become?
I took this poem from Poems Bewitched and Haunted, edited by the late John Hollander, in the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series.
A lady called the Patient Witch
Lived near us long ago.
Our servants gave her off and on
A bit of coin or so,
To tell them what their dreams could mean,
And if their loves were true;
To study out their palms and say –
"A palace waits for you."
And then she always was polite,
And said, "How do you fare?
I hope your little girl is well,"
With a most pleasant air.
She mumbled much, we knew not what –
Each afternoon would wait
Beside the guide-post to the west
For some exalted fate.
She looked down every road as though
A stately coach was due,
To bear her home to somewhere else,
To folks she really knew.
"One evening," said a little boy,
The only one anigh,
"She told me pretty stories, and
She kissed my curls goodbye,
And turned into a swan and spread
Her white wings big and wide.
And flew and flew into the sky!
And I came home and cried."
Vachel Lindsay
I thought I'd head into the haunted weeks of late October with this strange and lovely poem by early twentieth-century American poet Vachel Lindsay. In some ways the title character is a traditional witch: a strange, mumbling, isolated old woman (this view is based on historical reality; see John Putnam Demos's Entertaining Satan). In other ways, she seems as much an oddity among witches as she is among her neighbors: for one thing, she's patient, rather than bad-tempered. She's polite, and has a pleasant air. Lindsay deftly sketches in the social setting: it's the (presumably less educated) servants who like to have their fortunes told; clearly there is no real palace waiting for them, but who knows what "a palace waits for you" might mean to a young servant? And they must be young, since they're asking about their loves and their futures. It's all harmless carnival fun. There's the air of a fairy tale about the whole thing; it happened "long ago" in a house with servants (the contemporary equivalent of the castles which she promises the servants after reading their palms). We hear about the "witch" only indirectly: from the servants, and later from a little boy. The somewhat archaic, childhood air is strengthened by Lindsay's use of traditional ballad meter (the steady 4-3-4-3 beat of the quatrains, with their regularly recurring rhymes).
Halfway through we switch from this scene of local color to something stranger. Right after hearing of the old woman's pleasant air, we hear she constantly mumbled, but no one really knows what she's saying – is it incoherent? unintelligible? are they just not listening closely enough? During actual witch-hunts, many real-life old women must have been done to death for their mysterious mumbling. Here it serves more to emphasize something solitary, isolated, not-understood about the old woman. The traditional region of witches is the cold North, for reasons that would probably take a Golden-Bough-sized volume to explain, but here she's waiting by a "guide-post to the west": a guide-post, as if she's seeking direction, and the west, associated with the forward movement of the sun, and so by implication with the future, but also with the setting of the sun, and so with night, darkness, silence, and death. A coach, stately or otherwise, would already have been an anachronism when this poem was written, so her awaiting one helps emphasize the old woman's dislocation from her surroundings. Then we have the poignant statement that her home is "somewhere else" – wherever that is, clearly it isn't where she is now, and no matter how much she is patronized by the servants, she is nowhere near "folks she really knew."
The only witness to her end is a little boy: is he the child of one of the servants? or the son of the people in the big house who speak of "our servants"? Is he the narrator, long ago, when he was a child? Is he just a boy who happened by? Is he old enough to distinguish fact from fairy tale? The narration of the witch's end by this uncertain story-teller takes on a dreamy distance because of our uncertainty about who this boy is and how accurate he is. Again, she is unlike traditional witches; she is affectionate rather than threatening to the child, entertaining him with pretty stories, and though she is linked to uncanny forces, they are less supernatural than Natural: there is no whiff of the sulfurous Satanic about her, or the black robes of the usual witch; instead, she turns into a white swan and flies away. Is this what she has been patiently awaiting? White is often associated with purity and innocence (not always in good ways; it can also imply cowardice, and inappropriate naivete). Swans are famously beautiful and graceful (I wonder if the shadow of Andersen's Ugly Duckling, who turned into a beautiful swan, went into this particular choice of bird?); they are also associated with death: according to legend, they sing only once in their lives, right before they die. Is her flight the child's version of her death? Or his vision of her rebirth? The odd misfit old woman, this strange resident stranger, redeems herself into something beautiful, magnificent, legendary. She flies away, free, and a lone little boy cries. How can those tears not alter the man he will become?
I took this poem from Poems Bewitched and Haunted, edited by the late John Hollander, in the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series.
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