Personal anthology: Frank Bidart

By on June 25th, 2006

I’m listening to Zinka Milanov and Jussi Björling singing their hearts out as Aïda and Radames on the Sunday Opera Matinee this afternoon, and this poem popped into my head as suddenly apropos.

For the Twentieth Century

Bound,  hungry to pluck again from the thousand
technologies of ecstasy

boundlessness,  the world that at a drop of water
rises without boundaries,

I push the PLAY button: —

…Callas, Laurel & Hardy, Szigeti

you are alive again, —

the slow movement of K.218
once again no longer

bland, merely pretty, nearly
banal, as it is

in all but Szigeti’s hands

            *
Therefore you and I and Mozart
must thank the Twentieth Century,  for

it made you pattern, form
whose infinite

repeatability within matter
defies matter—

Malibran. Henry Irving. The young
Joachim. They are lost, a mountain of

newspaper clippings,  become words
not their own words. The art of the performer.

— Frank Bidart

I went to one of Frank Bidart’s readings a few years back; I think this was one of the poems he read, though the ones I remember best are "Guilty of Dust" (especially the lines "LOVE IS THE DISTANCE / BETWEEN YOU AND WHAT YOU LOVE") and "Dark Night" (which is a translation of San Juan de la Cruz’s "Noche Oscura").  In some registers, he sounds like a metaphysical poet; in this poem, not quite so much, but it’s stayed with me because it captures some of the simultaneous wonder and eeriness of listening to the voices of singers from decades ago.

(Footnote: We used to play the Triumphal March from act 2 of Aïda in my middle school orchestra. To this day I can’t hear it without either humming along or wanting to stand in the middle of the room and conduct. Now I’m hearing it played by the Rome Opera orchestra and chorus, and it’s amazing how much of it I still remember.)

Categorized under: Commonplaces, Sunday opera blogging.
Tagged with: no tags.

3 Responses to “Personal anthology: Frank Bidart”

  1. brd says:
    June 26, 2006 at 4:11 pm

    I remember the first recording I purchased of Kirsten Flagstad. The jacket portrayed her wearing a Die Walkure helmet with horns. Her voice was not technically enhanced, but oh it was beautiful.
    I also remember sitting behind a beret-bedecked man at a performance of Tosca at the Met. The soprano was old and I wasn’t impressed. The beret guy was though. No doubt he knew more than I, having listened to previous performances and recordings of this old diva, renowned for her interpretation of the role. At the end of the show he threw flowers and shouted loudly, “She’s the only Tosca, the only Tosca.” More than the music was beautiful that evening.

  2. Amanda says:
    June 27, 2006 at 9:11 am

    What a great story! Who was the soprano?

  3. brd says:
    June 27, 2006 at 6:27 pm

    I don’t even remember who the soprano. I do remember her acting during the scene when she killed Scarpia. (I love the drama of that scene when it’s done right.)
    Mostly I remember the guy in the beret.