Finding the Colors: Recently published photos and poems, December 2023
Writing and photos for your Winter Solstice perusal
I discovered an abundance of musical writing in the publications highlighted in this month’s newsletter (best read on a computer). But first, a little look back to summer with my photo (above) that appeared in Tiny Seed Literary Journal in their “wings” issue.
Posted on October 13 in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, five poems of mine – some people-themed, some music-themed (the six percussion players were at a performance of Ravel’s La Valse, the tiny brass cymbals (crotales) appear in Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune), and the last poem a rhythmic ode to a legal graffiti wall in Kingston.
Final Petal in memoriam Bob MacKenzie you a wild, wild rose, already bedraggled lost petals one by one, faster at the end so many poems and stories not written photos not taken, trails not walked at least you won’t have to avoid goose poop on the river path anymore and I won’t miss your photos of the geese I’ll miss sending you updates on my milkweed the two I planted from seeds gathered by the lake that got eaten each spring by some hungry animal and the third that grew this year unexpectedly a few inches away but not tall enough for flowers you would love my photo of garlic chives their simple lacy beauty, each blossom a burst of tiny white stars you never made it over the new bridge across the river, never saw the view of Belle Island’s north shore but you crossed another bridge dropped that final petal a whole garden of words ascends with your last breath
Voices for Whom All Is Dark
A voice blue over wind, over wave,
high as a moon-slice in the sky, a holy fool
weeps bitter tears for the poor, the starving,
deplores the longevity of items we covet
long past their usefulness, wraps himself
in a page from the book of the future.
A voice high and kind, heart
and mind bathed in ice fog,
she walks with shopping bags all day
in long black skirt and tights, wool coat,
felt hat, all in black down to her gait,
ponderous as blackstrap molasses.
Thwarted at every turn, they hear
no answers in the darkness.
June Blues
June erupts, too much, too soon,
shoves Spring off the train
like the conductor evicting the passenger
who didn’t listen when he yelled,
“If you are caught smoking on this train,
the next stop will be your last stop!”
Overgrown bushes and weeds appear
out of nowhere, an over-eager horn section
busting out all over before anyone
has time to make a plan for the show,
but Spring had dawdled along for the ride
and June just wants to get going
with all summer’s colours and lush harmonies.
Give me less drama—just a slow accelerando
through several shades of cool green,
pink and mauve, a bit of eye-popping white,
to the deep sunset tones of marigolds and nasturtiums.
Wanting Times of Anticipation
When six percussion players
walk onstage and stand
behind the orchestra.
When you listen to a piece
with so many horns you feel
like you have June bugs in your pants.
When you wait for that single ting
of tiny brass cymbals
during a lull in the clamour.
When you let your mind add the music
left out when the needle
passes over each groove on an LP.
When you slip into and away from each note
with fine-tuned style
and comb out the lullaby seeds.
Note: Composer Richard Strauss’s father told him his music had too many horns and made him feel like he had June bugs in his pants.
Tag Team
ENVY and CAILS
ERON and REMOS
tags on the wall
graffiti today
on a hot summer day
grab your best buddy
drive up in the van
unload the gear
scatter spray paint cans
across the grass
do a test patch of buff
your new pocket can
paint a background of red
or silver or blue
how ’bout a tribute
to Mother’s Day too
pickles and tentacles
ghosts and some teeth
never out of ideas
just give us some space 
From the fall, a photo that also appeared in Tiny Seed, in their “wetlands” issue. The marsh was particularly beautiful in early October evening light with the moon in the sky.
The journal paired the marsh photo with my poem Bog Scene, inspired by the landscape near the monastic site Clonmacnoise, on the Shannon River in Ireland. You can see the river in the background of a photo (below the poem) that I took at Clonmacnoise in 2019 during the rain and wind that heralded the arrival of Hurricane Lorenzo.
Bog Scene
Seasonal flooding of the callows creates a haven
in the wetlands for plants—reindeer moss,
bog moss, long-leaved sundew, sweet vernal-grass,
star sedge, marsh horsetail, ribwort plantain.
Yellow, white, purple and pink flowers flourish—
meadow buttercup, lady’s bedstraw, hare’s tail,
marsh pea, ragged-robin, quaking-grass.
Heather to feed animals, roof houses, insulate walls.
Knee deep in black mud and bog cotton,
turf cutters find fossilized tree stumps
below the surface, remains of pine trees
from when the land was dry.
Sphagnum peat, fen peat, bog iron deposits,
marl for fertilizer—trembling peat bog,
cool, wet and dangerous,
destroyer and provider.
For classical music aficionados: I was privileged to review a really wonderful new album of Brahms’ contemplative piano music played by Montreal pianist Jarred Dunn, Brahms in Solitude. Maybe an Intermezzo a day will keep the doctor away during these winter months, or at least that’s my working theory! You can listen to it here (or on Apple Music):
https://open.spotify.com/album/3l4ez7ZnCis5ncWsFY8MUS?si=q39S3bSVTYyv3a9wCPelGw
There is also a great little trailer for it, in which Jarred explains how he came to record the album: https://youtu.be/i2n6frG1OW8
Here’s my review:
Finding Solace in Brahms: Jarred Dunn’s Brahms in Solitude
If you are in the mood to find a calm, introspective space where Brahms’s piano music can help you settle into your own feelings – perhaps those of fear, doubt, sorrow, or insecurity – please do listen to Brahms in Solitude, the new album from Montreal pianist Jarred Dunn. Mr. Dunn has programmed the slower and more contemplative Brahms Intermezzi, allowing us to “ponder for the sake of pondering.” Try listening to the eleven pieces in the order presented on the album; it is a well-planned trajectory through this poetic music. Mr. Dunn is a Brahms natural.
We often think of Chopin as the poet of the piano, and Mr. Dunn has given us Chopin as poetry, on stage and in his previous album. In Brahms in Solitude, Dunn shows us that Brahms too expresses poetry in music, in that each piece contains deep meaning in a relatively concise package.
The album opens with three pieces from Klavierstücke Op. 118 – perhaps the most well-known opus of Brahms’s late piano music – which perfectly illustrate this concept. Mr. Dunn gives us a taste of Brahms’s meditative styles: first, the dramatic and emotional Intermezzo in A Minor; then the lyrical Intermezzo in A Major (the Brahms Intermezzo), beautifully played with interior lines of counterpoint; and ending with the foreboding, intense, chromatically colourful Intermezzo in E-flat Minor.
The two pieces from Klavierstücke Op. 76 that follow were written while Brahms studied Chopin’s music and are possibly less often performed than other works on the album. Each has an air of solemn nostalgia. Dunn handles the somewhat repetitive forms of these pieces such that we don’t hear repetition, but rather their inner voices and hidden melodies.
Next are the two E major Intermezzi from Fantasien Op. 116. These put the listener on somewhat unstable ground, with frequent shifts of rhythm, harmony, and melody that are often surprising. Here, Dunn creates the image of a muted spotlight blinking on and off, shifting its focus from one motive to another, again often using the inner voices to show Brahms’s changing moods. Dunn’s deft voicing and clarity are evidence of his deep understanding of Brahms’s idol, JS Bach.
Brahms called the three Intermezzi Op. 117 “lullabies of my sorrows.” Though quietly lamenting, each contains moments of agitation, particularly at climaxes. As is often the intention on this album, we hear timelessness and stillness, but Dunn ensures that these peculiar features do not dominate the mood or halt the music’s natural momentum. His soft sound is full-bodied, resonant, at times unthinkably quiet, the perfect combination for capturing the feeling of aloneness.
The final piece of the album, the first Intermezzo from Klavierstücke Op. 119, was no doubt carefully chosen to leave listeners pondering. Dunn plays this drawn-out Adagio so sensitively that it reminds us of Clara Schumann’s description of it as Brahms’s “grey pearl.” It is as close to impressionistic as Brahms ever is, a quality Dunn shows by expert shading of its complex harmonic lines. When the album’s trailer was released, Dunn received a mistaken notice of alleged copyright violation, suggesting that his Intermezzo Op. 119 No. 1 was the playing of such luminaries as Wilhelm Kempf and Radu Lupu. Dunn’s teacher Veda Kaplinsky (Head of Juilliard’s Piano Department) advised him to listen to Radu Lupu’s Brahms and when practicing to “insist on perfection.” Yet Mr. Dunn’s playing is not only the result of great teaching. Dunn possesses Lupu’s precision, sense of where the music is going, and knowledge of how to use the piano’s potential for colour. Like Radu Lupu, Jarred Dunn is a “thinking” pianist, who knows how to place every note without the end result sounding calculated. His Op. 119 No. 1 is serene contemplation free of exaggeration, an entirely successful creation.
Jarred Dunn, also a poet of the piano, plays Brahms with an innate and lyrical subtlety that may change the way listeners think of his music. Yes, we hear Brahms’s complex cross-rhythms, syncopations, and large chords, but they are not on display as athletic feats. To truly absorb Brahms in Solitude, do listen to each piece more than once. Perhaps because they are fairly short, slow pieces, we need more than one listening to fully process their intricacy and meaning. In Dunn’s playing, the late Brahms music has a faithful interpreter who plunges into the inner life of each piece. Surely Mr. Dunn would appreciate listeners enjoying contemplative exploration of this beautiful album.
Brahms in Solitude is available on Spotify, and Apple Music.
© Meg Freer, 2023
Staying with the music theme, and more short prose, I wrote a nonfiction piece about a piano teaching experience I had many years ago that was published by Synchronized Chaos – what a great name for a journal.
https://synchchaos.com/poetry-from-meg-freer/
The Music Inside Is the Same
Paul* had signed up for piano lessons earlier in the year as a complete beginner, hoping for a creative outlet that might balance his academic work. He had progressed fairly quickly at first and showed quite a bit of potential but became increasingly distracted and had less and less time to practice. I had agreed reluctantly to be an itinerant teacher and come to his apartment, only because he pleaded that he couldn’t come to my studio for lessons and leave his two young children on their own.
One week, he did not answer my knock at the door, so I headed back down the hallway to the stairs. Suddenly Paul burst through the stairwell door dressed in full, flamboyant drag, pulling off his wig as he approached. We both stopped and exclaimed, “Oh!” at the same time. I said, “I was just leaving. It looks like it’s not a good time for your lesson.” He was most apologetic about having forgotten and said he had just come from the big city three hours away, adding unnecessarily that he had a lot going on and would have to stop taking lessons. I knew he did indeed have a lot going on, between the children and his doctoral program to finish in the spring. Now, he said, he also was in transition to become “Paulina.” His ex-wife didn’t know yet. He hadn’t planned to tell me this soon.
I heard later that Paulina had graduated with a PhD and moved away. Wherever she ended up, I hoped the digital piano had come along too, and that circumstances worked out for piano lessons to be an option again. Whether Paul or Paulina, there is music inside, and it only needs a chance to come out.
*Name changed.
© Meg Freer
Last, four poems of mine appeared in One Art Poetry Journal this month, all based on true happenings, except for the first stanza of the poem Small Weird Things. But wouldn’t that be fun to have mountains lie down in submission at your feet? I hope you enjoy these poems.
https://oneartpoetry.com/2023/12/05/four-poems-by-meg-freer/
We Can Always Tell a Longer Story
Long-dead aloe and jade plants
remain on a window sill
like intricately carved sculptures,
more interesting than the dullness
of frosted window film upstairs.
The building’s immune system
doesn’t seem to be working well.
I have not seen the occupant
for weeks, have not smelled
the cannabis when I walk by,
although certain lights stay on
around the clock. Skipped town
for a while, perhaps, but no one
knows where to look or who to call.
I collect the tomatoes at least, before
the vines fall over from the weight.
An abundance of milkweed pods
and ‘kiss me over the garden gate’ flowers
dangle with green and magenta exuberance
over the barren driveway. Those plants thrive.
They don’t care if anyone lives there or not.
*
Watcher
Winter evenings, she watches
snow-covered rooftops, the factory’s white exterior,
and even the limestone walls of the historic church
turn lavender briefly at sunset.
Distorted nighttime sleep allows her to see
stranger things from her high apartment windows.
The man who stands on a bus stop bench,
rocks it back and forth while he entwines
willow branches into a large wreath for his head.
She keeps an eye on the tiny house that sold
but that no one moved into, watches for squatters.
Mostly she hopes for better sleep, or at least
that someday she will see something useful
like the man wanted for assaulting a woman
in the nearby park, or find out who does things like
pull up all the garlic in the community garden at night.
*
Tea Party
After the drama and mild trauma
of visiting the hospital’s locked ward
for the first time, entering the bare room
with neither table nor chair, where my friend
must subsist until her world stops turning on her,
I seek refuge with my neighbours,
my heart in need of a bath to wash away
all I saw and heard. We talk in their kitchen
with cups of ‘Irish tea’—whiskey,
in their house—because they say
I’m too pale. The ‘tea’ slows my heart rate,
and I gently close the door on that day
before it bangs shut.
*
Small, Weird Things
in memoriam Bob M, poet
Breath combs the sides of my body,
clean lines of limbs between panes of glass.
Ginger and fig consort at the tip of my tongue.
I enter a secret room through the hole
in my pants pocket, discover bowls of silver coins.
Mountains lie down in submission at my feet.
Did I dream such things, or did you
send these images from the other side?
We wish you could see our celebration
of your life, then you enter the room
in the body of a squirrel—right on cue,
after a mention of “small, weird things,”
and we all cheer to know you made it.
Next morning at the bakery, a sign reads
Yesterday $3. Yes, I will take yesterday
for $3 if it means you will return again,
one more time. You always managed
to right yourself after falls of many kinds.
But even a squirrel will have one last fall.
I wish peace for people in the war-torn parts of the world, and all good things for you during the winter months.
Thank you for the collection of your work! I enjoyed what I read and will return for more.