Thanks, Mary. I enjoyed that combination.
You are helping to keep alive Western Civilization.
When I started taking music classes, I also enrolled in a poetry class, since I was writing poetry that I wished to set to music.
In the first class, the obvious Marxist asserted that Tupak Shakur was a better poet than Percy Shelley, and that any poetry that was personal and not political was not worth writing.
I dropped the class after one session. I later learned, to my surprise, that he had been fired: He was too extreme even for that leftist English Department.
There are, sadly, more people like him than like you in the arts nowadays. Keep up the good work.
What an ANGEL you are!
I’ve read poetry since I was so little that I would hide Shakespeare’s Rape of the Lock as being too shocking to admit reading. I had two boyfriends in high school who would leave poetry on my doorstep for me to find and who would recite as we walked. But what I studied for my college entrance exam was just depressingly dull and purposely obscure. If I hadn’t already developed such a love of Matthew Arnold, that would have killed my interest in the topic.
I knew my father was a poet in Greenwich Village, but all my searches for his books turned up nothing until I got into my Henry Livingston research and then FINALLY discovered one of father’s books published under a misspelled name. My gut instinct had always been that I’d understand who he was if I could only read his poetry, because I think of poetry as cutting to the essence of who you are.
And I was right!
http://www.iment.com/maida/family/father/oldsoldiersdrums/frontcover.htm
OLD SOLDIERS’ DRUMS
I’m just too old for drilling
I can’t hike anymore;
So I’m bound for the soldiers’ graveyard
Behind an office door.
They sing - “Old soldiers never die.”
We don’t; we live on crumbs -
The shrilling, splendid bugles
An’ the thunder of the drums!
I won’t do Guard in a snowstorm
An’ I won’t hafta go an’ fire;
It’s just messin’ around an office
An’ waiting to retire.
“Approved per First Indorsement ...”
An’ through the window comes
The music of a Guardmount
An’ the cadenced, throbbin’ drums!
Twenty-three and a butt in the Doughboys;
Why, I’ve hiked a million miles!
But they said my age couldn’t stand it
An’ they detailed me to the files!
This work is nice for some men
Who can take it as it comes.
But you know their hearts ain’t achin’
For the pullin’, poundin’ drums!
D.S. 1/4C. an’ a non-combatant!
When there’s guys tha’d give their life
To piddle around an office
An’ go home at night to the wife.
But I’ll get back to formation;
There’s a day that always comes:
An’ I’ll ride on a painted cassion
With the muffled, sobbin’ drums!
By the way, have you ever looked at Henry Livingston’s music manuscript book?
I’ve been able to transcribe maybe half of it. It’s one of the largest known from that period. I don’t know anything about protestant church music, so I’m dead in the water on the religious psalms and hymns, which Henry only seems to show in the part he played. Which is driving me batty for two religious poems I had Byron narrate. Hate using old dance music for those.
http://www.henrylivingston.com/music