In this world of people plugged into their iPods, you will be horrified to note that I haven’t had a stereo since we moved into this apartment last May. I have a laptop, on which I can play CD’s, but I don’t often (once you’ve had good speakers and lost them – ugh). I listen to streaming radio sometimes – not often – usually because I have to sing and bop along and can really get nothing else done if I’m listening to music that doesn’t have a set time to begin and end. (I’m very jealous of all the people who can write while listening to music with lyrics. I can’t.) Very, very soon I’m going to have access to my music again, because music is as necessary as circulation and breathing… and, this morning I was listening to some shiny-happy sugary pop music and thinking about music in general.
Okay, so I know I was a really weird child, obviously, as I’ve grown up to be a really weird adult-sized child. But, it warms me that someone else was just as weird, and this poem really struck me. How well I remember lying on the floor, sobbing in bewilderment as I listened to Bach’s Komm, süßer Tod, or Ave Verum Corpus. (You may ask why a child was listening to these things. Because they were on a record that was on… and I stopped playing, and listened.) This is the best reason yet I’ve ever understood why those massive choral anthems struck me so hard — they were a part of something so very, very big, and my smallness, at seven, was not yet large enough to hold it.
My smallness probably will not ever be.
Music
–by Anne Porter
When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother’s piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold
And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying
Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country
I’ve never understood
Why this is so
Read the rest of this poem by Anne Porter, here.
I was eager to read more about the poet, and did a bit of digging online. I ran across this Wall Street Journal article from 2006… Anne Porter published her first book of poetry in 1994… when she was eighty-three.
Oh, my dears. We have no excuses not to do what we want to with our lives, do we? Really: no excuses.
Poetry Friday today is at Great Kids Books.
Love this poem, and your post! For me, it was Elizabeth Cotten performing her folk/blues song "Freight Train" that had me as a kid.
Loved listening to music thru headphones as a teen; gave it up for years, then got an iPod. Now, I can't live without my music mixes. I can't write with music on, but need music in order to switch gears and get inspired between projects.
I love Anne Porter and I especially love that poem. That was the first of hers I ever read, too, and she won me over forever.
The album "The Ballad of the Green Berets" made me cry as a kid. Later, in college, it was Pachelbel's Cannon in D.
Books that have made me cry? Too numerous to list!
What a moving poem! I had those moments, too, as a child, because my dad was big on music and always had the stereo on. I would sit there simply spellbound. Growing up, I liked listening through my headphones. Haven't done that much recently, and want to get back to it.
Oh, and I can't listen to any music (with lyrics or not), if I'm trying to write something.
Oh thanks! Must go work (boo), but I'll read it later. Glad I wasn't imagining things.
p.s. I love hymns.
Also, Jules: I found D.H. Lawrence's piano poem(s) – both his notebook version, and the final one. Thanks for reminding me of that.
Oh, Piper… an amazing kid.
The title of this post is taken from an 1870's Methodist hymn:
Sometimes I hear strange music
Like none I heard before
Come floating softly earthward
As through an open door….
…
O sweet, celestial music,
Heard from a land afar—
The song of Heav’n and Homeland,
Thro’ doors God leaves ajar!
…this just makes me think that I need to pay more attention to music. Sit with the headphones on, listen, and do nothing else.
p.s. I'm totally going to read this to my five-year-old. Yesterday, when reading a book, she teared up during a moving part and said with wonderment, "I don't know why I'm crying."
I just love that. Love it a whole lot.
I also cannot work if songs-with-lyrics are on. This is almost true, too, for lyric-less songs. Sometimes. I have to give attention to the music and then can't focus on work.
When I was a child, I used to just sit and listen to music on headphones. No multi-taking. That was all I was doing. I don't do this anymore, unless you count driving long enough in the car to hear music. It's sad.
This poem really captures the mystery of hearing a beautiful piece. It's like when I was a kid and I used to think about the universe, too, wonder if it had an end. I'd sit there in amazement. Hearing a really beautiful piece isn't that different. (And isn't there a great D.H. Lawrence poem about him hearing his mother on piano? I'll have to look this up.)