One of my favorite events of the year occurred last Saturday, Dec., 15. The Southwest Minnesota State University Music Program gave their holiday performance at the Schwan's Community Center for Performing Arts at Marshall Senior High School.
I'm grateful for the amazing music faculty we have at SMSU. Dr. John Ginocchio, conducted the SMSU/Community Concert Band and the SMSU Jazz Ensemble. Dr. Stephen Kingsbury conducted the Bella Voce and Men's Glee Club and the SMSU Concert Choir. Dr. Daniel Rieppel conducted the Southwest Minnesota Orchestra.
Poetry was a new addition this year. In between the great music, SMSU's Dean of Arts and Letters, Dr. Jan Loft, read poems by SMSU English faculty past--Philip Dacey, Leo Dangel and Bill Holm--and present--myself--which I've posted here with permission. It was an honor to have one of my poems read along with these writers who I have admired and who helped to create such a strong tradition of creative writing at SMSU.
May you be blessed to find these darkest days of the year brightened by the magic of music and the power of poetry.
The Animals' Christmas
They are always living
in Christmas.
Though they walk years
through a field
they can never step
out of the birth of a god.
In each dark brain
a star
sending light through their sinews
leads their hooves
forward from one miracle
to another,
the gleams
tipping grass
like the bright eyes
of uncountable millions
of babies
a field has borne.
When they rub a tree,
a secret myrrh
descends onto their backs.
They carry and offer it
without even trying.
From their nostrils
they breathe good news.
-Philip Dacey
(first published in The New York Times on Dec. 21, 1970 and subsequently reprinted in How I Escaped From the Labyrinth and Other Poems, Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1977.)
One Winter Night
A farmer sits on a kitchen floor,
building a toy barn for his son.
The farmer uses wood
from peach boxes and apples crates
because it costs nothing.
He straightens the old nails
and hammers them into the barn,
explaining to the boy
how a ridgepole
will make the roof solid.
There's a blizzard outside,
the kitchen window looks black,
and snow grains brush against the glass.
The barn, made of free wood
that could easily split and splinter,
comes together strong
because of the habits in the man's hands.
The son's barn on the kitchen floor
has the proportions and shape
of the man's huge red barn outside,
except that, on the small barn,
the man uses some gray paint
left from painting the porch floor
two summers ago.
He explains to the boy,
there is no leftover red paint,
and the boy, because he is the son
of this man,
knows that the logic of a gray barn
is perfect.
-Leo Dangel
(from Home from the Field--Collected Poems, Spoon River Press, 1997)
Christmas Vacation
-after Stephen Chbosky and Baz Luhrmann
I'm grateful for the amazing music faculty we have at SMSU. Dr. John Ginocchio, conducted the SMSU/Community Concert Band and the SMSU Jazz Ensemble. Dr. Stephen Kingsbury conducted the Bella Voce and Men's Glee Club and the SMSU Concert Choir. Dr. Daniel Rieppel conducted the Southwest Minnesota Orchestra.
Poetry was a new addition this year. In between the great music, SMSU's Dean of Arts and Letters, Dr. Jan Loft, read poems by SMSU English faculty past--Philip Dacey, Leo Dangel and Bill Holm--and present--myself--which I've posted here with permission. It was an honor to have one of my poems read along with these writers who I have admired and who helped to create such a strong tradition of creative writing at SMSU.
May you be blessed to find these darkest days of the year brightened by the magic of music and the power of poetry.
The Animals' Christmas
They are always living
in Christmas.
Though they walk years
through a field
they can never step
out of the birth of a god.
In each dark brain
a star
sending light through their sinews
leads their hooves
forward from one miracle
to another,
the gleams
tipping grass
like the bright eyes
of uncountable millions
of babies
a field has borne.
When they rub a tree,
a secret myrrh
descends onto their backs.
They carry and offer it
without even trying.
From their nostrils
they breathe good news.
-Philip Dacey
(first published in The New York Times on Dec. 21, 1970 and subsequently reprinted in How I Escaped From the Labyrinth and Other Poems, Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1977.)
One Winter Night
A farmer sits on a kitchen floor,
building a toy barn for his son.
The farmer uses wood
from peach boxes and apples crates
because it costs nothing.
He straightens the old nails
and hammers them into the barn,
explaining to the boy
how a ridgepole
will make the roof solid.
There's a blizzard outside,
the kitchen window looks black,
and snow grains brush against the glass.
The barn, made of free wood
that could easily split and splinter,
comes together strong
because of the habits in the man's hands.
The son's barn on the kitchen floor
has the proportions and shape
of the man's huge red barn outside,
except that, on the small barn,
the man uses some gray paint
left from painting the porch floor
two summers ago.
He explains to the boy,
there is no leftover red paint,
and the boy, because he is the son
of this man,
knows that the logic of a gray barn
is perfect.
-Leo Dangel
(from Home from the Field--Collected Poems, Spoon River Press, 1997)
Christmas Vacation
-after Stephen Chbosky and Baz Luhrmann
So much bustle, but instead of baking cookies
or writing a Christmas letter, I read a book
my daughter likes, the one friends are passing
around, The Perks of Being a Wallflower,
written in the voice of Charlie who is entering
that special hell called high school. I'm pulled
right inside Charlie's life, like I'm wearing
his Chuck Taylor's, trying to survive, trying not
to fall in love with that girl who's "beautiful but
in an unconventional way," trying to figure out
what's wrong with me? Even when I finish
Charlie's story, he's still hanging out in my head,
even after my daughter and I talk about a movie
we've just watched, Strictly Ballroom--
she's seen it a kazillion times, my first time.
When I say that Fran, the girl who gets the guy,
is beautiful but in an unconventional way,
my daughter lifts her eyes from the video box,
says she was just thinking the exact same thing.
-Marianne Murphy Zarzana
(from Fly-over Country, MFA Thesis, Minnesota State University, Mankato)
RSS Feed
