Hot Lyric Imagination

Hot Lyric Imagination is what one colorful translator attributed to the modern Greek poet Varnalis. I was looking for an English translation for a friend who wanted to know the subtleties of "The Fated Ones", a Varnalis poem set to music by the composer Mikis Theodorakis.

The poem itself is a kind of "Aman" or "Alas" lyric, as highly favored by Greek musicians as by American bluegrass singers (imagine George Clooney lip-syncing "I am a man of constant sorrow" in the film "Oh Brother Where Art Thou).

One of my favorite Greek songs in the old days went

"I was born to pain and tyranny.

I curse the burden I have suffered": Very satisfying to sing when you're washing dishes. (My mother used to sing something called the Prisoner's Song when she was washing dishes: "If I had the wings of an angel, Over these prison walls I would fly.")

The comment on the Varnalis poem was a poem in itself: "His work is written in the demotic and has well taken care of form and plasticity in the expression. It is characterized by hot lyric imagination and satirical disposal with interest for the modern person. His poetry, particularly, is characterized from intense playful disposal and deep musical feeling that is combined excellently with the satyr."

I didn't find any satyr in Varnalis' lyrics, but I did find a wonderful kind of description which almost transcends language. With a rudimentary grasp of demotic Greek, one can visualize the setting and the intent of "The Fated Ones". It is guys in a bar, but there is a hurdy-gurdy churning out strange tinny music which accompanies a kind of Greek chorus. It might be one of the great dramatic tragedies from centuries ago, or it might be a smoky scene from modern times.

Not many poems manage to evoke a scene this vividly. Robert Bly spoke about "leaping poetry", poetry whose imagery could leap off the page and take the reader on a journey. Bly was particularly good at doing this, especially in his collection "Loving a Woman in Two Worlds".

Or in a tiny poem which I must paraphrase because I heard him speak it but have never found it written down:

Lord, have pity on me,

Thy ocean so immense,

My boat so small.

"The River-Merchant's Wife", a poem by Li Po, must one of the most perfect poems ever written in this regard. There are no opinions or conclusions. The speaker does nothing but describe, but the images are almost beyond time.

"At sixteen you departed...

You dragged your feet when you went out...

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

Please let me know beforehand,

And I will come out to meet you."

The speaker doesn't have to say how much they love and miss each other. You know it from the paired butterflies which hurt her, from the leaves falling early, from the monkeys which make sorrowful noises.

Solomon's Song has Hot Lyric Imagination. So does Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach". And I have heard hot lyric imagination in words composed by Dolly Parton.

(Lyre, National Museum, Athens)

Bread and Music

I learned to make bread before I learned to boil water. It is my primary cooking skill, built on the experience of many failures. I made mud pies as a child, and as a bride of 19, I baked my first loaf of tsoureki, the Greek Easter bread, which looked like a big brown clover leaf with a red egg in the middle. The recipe failed to mention that you were supposed to roll out and braid the three sections of dough.

Bread-making is satisfying on many levels, especially the part where you knead the dough. I whale the dickens out of the raw dough, because the more you beat it, the better it is. There are all sorts of bread rituals such as "proving" the yeast, though I have yet to find any supermarket yeast which does not foam up in warm water with a bit of sugar in it. 

The Tassajara bakers advocate making a paste before adding most of the flour, and this does seem to strengthen the leavening power of the yeast, but I doubt that the folk traditions of punching the dough down exactly three times or putting a man's garment on top of the towel covering the dough make much difference.

My piano teacher, Robert Sheldon, and I wrote quite a few songs together. He would take my lyric and make it into music. The main difference between lyrics and poetry is that the words must be subject to the music, rather than containing the music within themselves. 

The Kneading Chant below was one of Ten Pastoral Songs. Sheldon's music actually sounded like the rhythmic kneading of bread, and at the end of the song, the harmony sat down, like the words of the lyric. I still don't understand how he worked this bit of magic.

Kneading Chant

Green is the wheat

when it springs from the field.

Green goes to brown in the sun of the summer.

Brown goes to white in the press of the millstone.

Flour, draw the water;

leaven, draw air.

I beat the dough just as fierce as I'm able

and we all eat the bread

at my grandmother's table.