“Musicianship” by Barbara Guest

Posted on January 29, 2007
Filed Under Poetry, Reading |

From Barbara Guest’s 2002 book, Miniatures:

Musicianship

How far are you going in the culture program? Lizt draws nearer. Wagner overwhelmed us in that last demonic song.

Where the snowline fell on its supple track, people lost their maps in advance culture. And the faces, on the back row singing: rare tonalism, lying on its sides like a walrus, chord broken and chewed in liberation.

A poem like this certainly puts my practices of interpretation (see previous post) to the test, but I don’t think it breaks them. The poem makes large, but not impossible, demands on the reader. Or perhaps it simply demands a reader informed about certain things.