Walt Whitman Italian Music Coincidence
The fact that it was Cinco de Mayo meant that I did consider, off and on, the notion that I should probably have some tequila, but when empuje came to empujón, I opted for a martini. Hey, speaking of martinis, check this out, the Lemon Drop Martini:
[from More magazine, 5/2009)
I don’t generally keep vodka around the house--and never quite saw the point in vodka--I must admit, this drink intrigues me. Sounds like a nice summer thing.
A couple of days ago, I experienced one of the more amazing coincidences ever: lately I’ve been listening to a lot of opera, so I went to our library’s website and searched for their most recent opera CDs. The first ones I came to that appealed to me (that I didn’t already have) were some re-releases of Maria Callas albums, and I put holds on three of them: Bellini’s La Sonnambula and his Norma, and Donizetti’s Poliuto (which I’d never even heard of). Immediately after that, I picked up a book called Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud (edited by former U.S. poet laureate, Robert Pinsky). The first poem I came to was an obscure Walt Whitman poem called Italian Music in Dakota. I read it and came to the line:
not to the audience of the opera house,
Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home,
Sonnambula's innocent love, trios with Norma's anguish,
And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;
I ask you, what are the odds?
Italian Music In Dakota
Through the soft evening air enwrinding all,
Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds,
In dulcet streams, in flutes' and cornets' notes,
Electric, pensive, turbulent artificial,
(Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before,
Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here,
Not to the city's fresco'd rooms, not to the audience of the opera
house,
Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home,
Sonnambula's innocent love, trios with Norma's anguish,
And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;
Ray'd in the limpid yellow slanting sundown,
Music, Italian music in Dakota.
While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl'd realm,
Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses,
Acknowledging rapport however far remov'd,
(As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,)
Listens well pleas'd.