Sorry, weird request. I'm a piano freak--anyone know of any poems about pianos? Just curious...

Piano virtuoso
from People of note
by Laurence McKinney
( with drawings by Gluyas Williams )
.
From Western Coast to Eastern Seaboard
Rages the battle of the keyboard,
For storming the piano-forte
Is famous as an Indoor Sport.
Surrounded by a hundred men
Like Daniel in the Lion's Den,
The vurtuoso takes his seat
Preparing to resist defeat.
A few stray shots, with unconcern
He ducks, and coolly waits his turn,
It comes, and shooting flats and sharps
He knocks them for a row of harps.
Courageous as a stag at bay,
He's up, he's down, he's got away -
The fighting stops, the music ends.
They usually part as friends.

Piano by D H Lawrence

SOFTLY, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song 5
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour 10
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

The Weary Blues
Langston Hughes

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man's soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--
"Ain't got nobody in all this world,
Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
And put ma troubles on the shelf."

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more--
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied--
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

Early In The Morning I Hear On Your Piano
by Robert Louis Stevenson

EARLY in the morning I hear on your piano
You (at least, I guess it's you) proceed to learn to play.
Mostly little minds should take and tackle their piano
While the birds are singing in the morning of the day.


Concert Party

(EGYPTIAN BASE CAMP)


THEY are gathering round....
Out of the twilight; over the grey-blue sand,
Shoals of low-jargoning men drift inward to the sound—
The jangle and throb of a piano ... tum-ti-tum...
Drawn by a lamp, they come
Out of the glimmering lines of their tents, over the shuffling sand.

O sing us the songs, the songs of our own land,
You warbling ladies in white.
Dimness conceals the hunger in our faces,
This wall of faces risen out of the night,
These eyes that keep their memories of the places
So long beyond their sight.

Jaded and gay, the ladies sing; and the chap in brown
Tilts his grey hat; jaunty and lean and pale,
He rattles the keys ... some actor-bloke from town...
God send you home; and then A long, long trail;
I hear you calling me; and Dixieland....
Sing slowly ... now the chorus ... one by one
We hear them, drink them; till the concert’s done.
Silent, I watch the shadowy mass of soldiers stand.
Silent, they drift away, over the glimmering sand.
--Siegfried Sassoon

I know there's a poem by Ogden Nash entititled, "Piano Tuner Untune Me That Tune." I remember reading it many years ago. I can't seem to locate the words on any website I've visited to date, Nash-related or not. Can someone help?

joet

Is this it? It was on a cello player discussion thread. [www.celloheaven.com]

pam

PIANO TUNER, UNTUNE ME THAT TUNE

I regret that before people can be reformed they have to be sinners,
And that before you have pianists in the family you have to have
beginners.
When it comes to beginners' music
I am not enthusic.
When listening to something called "An Evening in My Doll House," or "Buzz,
Buzz, Said the Bee to the Clover,"
Why I'd like just once to hear it played all the way through, instead of that
hard part near the end over and over.
Have you noticed about little fingers?
When they hit a sour note, they lingers.
And another thing about little fingers, they are always strawberry-jammed or cranberry-jellied-y,
And "Chopsticks" is their favorite melody,
And if there is one man who I hope his dentist was a sadist and all his teeth
were brittle ones,
It is he who invented "Chopsticks" for the little ones.
My good wishes are less than frugal
For him who started the little ones going boggie-woogal,
But for him who started the little ones picking out "Chopsticks" on the ivories,
Well I wish him a thousand harems of a thousand wives apiece, and a
thousand little ones by each wife, and each little one playing "Chopsticks" twenty-four hours a day in all the nurseries of all his harems, or wiveries.

-Ogden Nash

Also check out this thread on the same topic -- maybe there are poems there that aren't listed above:

[www.emule.com]

Pam:

Of course, a cello players' thread! Now, why didn't I think to look there?

That's the poem I was looking for. I hadn't thought about it for years until this thread brought it to mind. Many thanks.

joet

I rarely search for things in a logical fashion- I just plug in the phrase and let Google do the work.

pam

"humph"

by John Sinclair


they say monk
couldn't play the music. they say,
monk, he limited
by his own vision

& just can't play right. monk,
he too weird. his music
don't sound right, and he gets up
& dances

while he's playing,
like a jackal preacher
at a revival meeting
in an old tent in north carolina.

they say monk sound too much
like a whorehouse piano player
from some pre-harlem ghetto
stuffed with back-woods renegades

& sporting women & gamblers,
street-level intellectuals. they say
monk, what is that ****
you trying to play, you just can't

do it that way,
you too way out baby,
that stuff ain't you. & monk,
in his infinite knowledge

& wisdom, shoots a grin
from behind the piano,
wiggles his ass on the stool,
lays down another few bars

of utter genius,
turns it over to the tenor player
& rises to dance beside the piano,
some more of that old north carolina boogaloo.


I see that the moderator has censored a four-letter word in the fifth stanza, presumably because - even though it rhymes with 'fit' - it is not considered fit for gentle readers on this site, to whom I apologize.



Post Edited (04-10-04 09:13)

i'M COMPILING A BOOK ON POETRY THAT PRAISES MUSIC OR USES MUSIC TO EXPRESS THE MEANING OF THE POEM. i HAVE BEEN TRYING TO FIND THE WORDS TO AUDEN'S ANTHEM TO ST.CECILIA THAT BENJAMIN BRITTEN SET TO MUSIC BUT HAVE BEEN UNSUCCESFUL. CAN ANYONE HELP?

I tried a google search and came up with this page -

[neuro.ohbi.net]

rikki.

(i hope it's right - i don't have any books with me right now to check it out)

p.s - just click on 'cancel' if it comes up with the 'language pack installation'
request (unless you want the Chinese version as well).

"The Player Piano" by Randall Jarrell


I ate pancakes one night in a Pancake House
Run by a lady my age. She was gay.
When I told her that I came from Pasadena
She laughed and said, "I lived in Pasadena
When Fatty Arbuckle drove the El Molino bus."

I felt that I had met someone from home.
No, not Pasadena, Fatty Arbuckle.
Who's that? Oh, something that we had in common
Like -- like -- the false armistice. Piano rolls.
She told me her house was the first Pancake House

East of the Mississippi, and I showed her
A picture of my grandson. Going home --
Home to the hotel -- I began to hum,
"Smile a while, I bid you sad adieu,
When the clouds roll back I'll come to you."

Let's brush our hair before we go to bed,
I say to the old friend who lives in my mirror.
I remember how I'd brush my mother's hair
Before she bobbed it. How long has it been
Since I hit my funnybone? had a scab on my knee?

Here are Mother and Father in a photograph,
Father's holding me.... They both look so young.
I'm so much older than they are. Look at them,
Two babies with their baby. I don't blame you,
You weren't old enough to know any better;

If I could I'd go back, sit down by you both,
And sign our true armistice: you weren't to blame.
I shut my eyes and there's our living room.
The piano's playing something by Chopin,
And Mother and Father and their little girl

Listen. Look, the keys go down by themselves!
I go over, hold my hands out, play I play --
If only, somehow, I had learned to live!
The three of us sit watching, as my waltz
Plays itself out a half-inch from my fingers.

Hey, I rode the bus down El Molino the other day!

pam

Down by the el, not the la, but the el, molino stream.

There once was a brown piano who eveyone thought was yellow it got really mad and felt really bad and no one cold play him again.

Tandy's Jarrell poem reminds me of this one by Sharon Olds -

I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.



Stephen

Hi! Does anybody know any poem that talks about remembering (or forgetting) a melody, a tune ?

Here's one I wrote several years ago fro my friend Vince, who didn't think I could write a limerick for every person in the office.

HA !

There once was a Vince Iuliano
who's half Jewish and Italiano
who looks down on those
who like lesser prose
but his dog's stuck inside the piano

Fingernails
(Joe Ely)

I keep my fingernails long
So they Click when I play the piano
I keep my fingernails long
So they Click when I play the piano
I'm gonna keep 'em that way
Till the Swallows get back from Texarkana.

I keep my fingernails long
So they Click when I play the piano
I keep my fingernails long
So they Click when I play the piano
I'm gonna keep 'em that way
Till the Swallows get back from Louisiana.
Well, I used to chew 'em off
I was Nervous over you.
I missed that clickin', tickin' sound,
Honey, what I'm gonna do,

Is keep my fingernails long
So they Click when I play the piano
I keep my fingernails long
So they Click when I play the piano
I'm gonna keep 'em that way
Till the Swallows get back from Alabama.

i'm honored! (i think)
john, was it?
thanks.
haven't heard from you in what? 15 years...

Chintz, is that really you?

Say something that only you and I would know !

enjoy

Stevens' "Ordinary Evening. . . "

Im making an anthology of poems about music and I need some more ideas can anyone help?

What ideas have you got already?

I need stuff other than Instruments And unusual

Ive got stuff on instruments and some other stuff but i need something different

Google comes up with 6.6 million hits on the subject, maybe you can find something there:

[www.google.com]


Les

Does any one know a good poem about Drums?

The only one I can think of offhand is The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna. Although it starts 'Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note' the rhythm of the whole poem is that of military drums making a slow march for a funeral.

heres a one

[www.corpusnet.com]

How about this one?

pam

BEAT! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation;
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride;
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plowing his field or gathering his grain;
So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.

2
Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets:
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? No sleepers must sleep in those beds;
No bargainers’ bargains by day—no brokers or speculators—Would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.

3
Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley—stop for no expostulation;
Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer;
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man;
Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties;
Make even the trestles to shake the dead, where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump, O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.

--Walt Whitman

By Donald Justice

Variation for Two Pianos

for Thomas Higgins, pianist



There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.

Movers dismantled the instruments, away
Sped the vans. The first detour untuned the strings.

There is no music now in all of Arkansas.

Up Main Street, past the cold shopfronts of Conway,
The brash, self-important brick of the college,

Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.

Warm evenings, the windows open, he would play
Something of Mozart's for his pupils, the birds.

There is no music now in all of Arkansas.

How shall the mockingbird mend her trill, the jay
His eccentric attack, lacking a teacher?

Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.

[tinyurl.com]

It has been a bad month, Hugh, not only Donald Justice, who I have come to admire a lot but also Czeslaw Milosz. A great poet that I shall miss.

"A Confession"


My Lord, I loved strawberry jam
And the dark sweetness of a woman's body.
Also, well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil,
Scents, of cinnamon, of cloves.
So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit
Have visited such a man? Many others
Were justly called, and trustworthy.
Who would have trusted me? For they saw
How I empty glasses, throw myself on food,
And glance greedily at the waitress's neck.
Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness
Able to recognize greatness wherever it is,
And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant,
I know what was left for smaller men like me:
A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud.
A tournament of hunchbacks, literature.

Czeslaw Milosz

Lots on Justice here, but may be too much to read in a single sitting:

[tinyurl.com]

i have a pome john sinclair wrote for me one day after he got out of jail in michigan back in 74 or 5 he picked me up hitch hicking and wrote me a pome on a piece of scrap paper the pome is short but it about hitch hicking

So y dont u go ahed let us reed it?

Hugh,

You made a couple of errors in your post.

1) The sentence is capitalized.

2) You used the correct punctuation at the end of the sentence.

Please disimprove your skills before attempting another text message.

pam

Limericks are his strong point, not parody

Oh man.. Beat Beat Drums... I sang that for All-Region choir...

Thats an odd one.

the cheese has it!

The Cheese Stands Alone !