Intro: RIDGE CROSSING
for mezzo-soprano & piano


     

I: Night-fire watch; II: The afternoon river's roar; III: Waking in wonder;
IV: Walking light; V: The high sheltered space; VI: The north-facing slopes;
VII: Through windflowers...; VIII: A pathless passage; IX: Moving on rhythm;
X: On the edge!: XI: Sight!:: XII: Returning!:;
XIII: Coming down; XIV: Traceless threads; XV: A day rises

I like to think of the form of a poem as a pattern which emerges out
of movement, much like the shape of a wave emerges out of the
formative flow of a stream. We hear the flow of spoken words, and
without trying to think about how the poem is written down or formally
structured, we sense a certain rhythmic pulse, a certain fluctuation of
density and texture. This is how I conceive of the poem's music,
again not so much as notation or what we see written on the page,
but rather as a kind of natural movement to be experienced.


With RIDGE CROSSING, I set out to explore the possibility of a new
kind of poetic miniature which is related to what in traditional rhetoric
is called syllabic verse. This is when we count the steps—or syllables—
that a sequence of words makes in a phrase and arrange them in some
kind of outward, more or less pre-determined structure. The result is a
kind of dance which is made with language instead of our feet. After a
lot of trial and error and experimenting with this idea, I eventually came
up with a little 37-step form that was both short enough to be heard as
a single breath, yet at the same time long enough to create its own space,
perhaps even with a kind of storyline or center.


One of the beautiful things about a a relatively short form like this is
that it can be repeated, thereby creating a sequence of variations. I've
always been struck by the extraordinary richness of, for example, the
Shakespeare sonnets—all 140 steps each—when hearing, say, just three
or four of them in slow, rhythmic succession. The flow from poem to
poem creates a wonderfully dynamic interplay of similarity and differ-
ence—similar in form, but different in actual content. This is, of course,
no different than how we experience form generally in the natural world.
There, we encounter, for example, the same basic spiral structure in the
arrangement of seeds in a pine cone, or on the disk on a sunflower
or the threads of water in a whirlpool in a fast-flowing stream.


But instead of going back to traditional forms like sonnets or, for
example, haiku, with their 17 steps, I'd much prefer to work wih
something new. This is because I'm very much looking for an organic
fit between, on the one hand, the outward form, and, on the other, the
inner movement of meaning in a composition. And well, I would also
argue that new meaning in a way must have new form in order to
properly manifest.


One last thought for those readers interested in the relationship between
music and poetry: If one were to write the poems down as I say them
in musical notation, they would all have exactly 37 notes, but the durations,
meters, accents, dynamics, and other articulations would look  
—and sound—strikingly different. In contrast, when written down
in standard English script, the result is in a subtle and fascinating way
quite misleading. This is because they do indeed look almost identical,
just like a series of sonnets would, but, remarkably, the mode of notation
does not display any of the just mentioned important differences. In other
words, this is much like having to perform J. S.Bach from a simple
sequence of pitches with no indicated rhythm, which would be almost
impossible. So, in a way—just like music—the poems have to be
actually heard to be understood.


Ridge Crossing is then a longer sequence or cycle of 15 little 37-step
poems, (go to text.) The poems are collected together in five sets of three
and, as a whole, make a kind of ritual walk from valley floor over a difficult,
dark, north-facing, mountain ridge and then continue on down the other
south-facing side of a new, unknown valley. (Instead of the title, Ridge
Crossing, the sequence might just as easily have been called North/
South. If the poems at first seem a bit austere in aspect, I suppose that
has something to do with the granite-like ruggedness of the country out of
which they have emerged. I can only hope that they start to, as the saying
goes, 'sound right' after a time.

II: The afternoon' river's roar . . .

III: Waking in wonder

IV: Walking light

V: The high sheltered space

VI: The north-facing slopes

VII: Through windflowers . .

VIII: A pathless passage

IX: Moving on rhythm

X: On the edge!



(featuring the *Swallow Klavier*)

XI: Sight!

XII: Returning!



(featuring the *Ice Klavier*)

XIII: Coming down



(featuring the *Water Klavier*)

XIV: Traceless threads



(featuring the *Granite Klavier*)

XV: A day rises . . .



   (featuring the *Star Klavier*)

[DOWNLOAD: Windows = right click; Mac = option + click] MP3 4.8 Mb | pdf [57 A4 pages 840 K] | | BUY Score ONLINE | music and text by Cliff Crego

or more information, e-mail to crego@picture-poems.com