Rubato is not the only approach in music, stealing a bit of a beat from one note to give it to the next. Fermato – the bird’s eye – stops the count altogether, however briefly.
As if time in daily life is all that mechanical. Some days, after all, after longer than others. Or some minutes seem to go on forever, unlike others that leave us breathless.
Now, back to that matter of Rubato …
~*~
For these poems and more, visit Thistle/Flinch editions.
Steal away, steal away home, as the spiritual sings. That’s the essence of Rubato, poems in the chords of life on my way to here.
There’s much blazing in pain and desire, as well as denial and, well, pretense painful to relive. But it’s true to the path, all the same.
~*~
For these poems and more, visit Thistle/Flinch editions.
I could imagine myself an orchestral conductor, but there are many things that must be trusted to the players themselves. Something like Rubato, within a musical phrase, comes to mind. And then, in a flash, it’s passed. Reflect on that with these poems.
~*~
For these poems and more, visit Thistle/Flinch editions.
Matters of what’s stolen in the course of a life – time, affection, even a glimpse – give flexibility to the rhythm of these poems. In music, the technique’s called Rubato. Blame the Italians, if you will, though I won’t go there in this collection.
~*~
For these poems and more, visit Thistle/Flinch editions.
All along, I’ve felt a ping of guilt when taking time to write poetry or fiction. As if I’ve been stealing from others, even when I was living alone. Rubato, in Italian, means theft, although in music it’s applied as a way of making a phrase more flexible and ultimately sensual. And here it enters, as a dimension of my life journey.
What, then, is honest and what comes across as fake in a deep desire for love and affirmation?
I’ll let these poems sing and shout and lament on their own. I’ve somehow survived their transitions.
~*~
For these poems and more, visit Thistle/Flinch editions.
So much seems to depend on style. Surfaces and appearances, especially. And yet style can also be a matter of structure and form that supports what’s viewed or stroked.
And then there’s the reality of taste, extending beyond the tongue and food. Taste as it intersects with style.
A poet, like any other artist, has an additional appreciation of style as it becomes an individual, distinctive voice.
Sometimes these are within oneself or domestic. More often, they’re “out there,” where interaction often turns into a Foreign Exchange, as my latest collection of poetry observes.
~*~
For these poems and more, visit Thistle/Flinch editions.
Rouge on lips or toenails, the glimmer of gold jewelry or a gemstone, the glossy photograph or the slick magazine, the light in a drop of costly perfume, the shimmer in a particular weave or pattern of spectacular cloth, or the haute (hoity-toity) air of a trendy boutique: each reflects eternal desires and feminine intrigue. The interplay of status-seeking, gamesmanship, the swift-changing hunt, and the theater of fashion spreads out far from its urban epicenters – and crosses nations, languages, continents, and ages. How quickly a little girl insists on her own definitive style! The poet and poetry are not immune, either, infused with their own tastes and passions. Where a dictionary observes gloss as “the luster or sheen of a polished surface,” there is also the danger of “a deceptive or superficial appearance” as well as “an effort to hide or attempt to hide (errors, defects, etc.).” Still, a gloss may also attempt to interpret or translate. The curve or the motion, the smile or the gaze, skin itself, or hair in sunlight or moonlight, each concealing while hinting of revelations. So often, awaiting next month’s editions.
These are the poems that conclude my newest collection, Foreign Exchange.
~*~
For these poems and more, visit Thistle/Flinch editions.
