too much

costumes-hats-drama-gestures-opera-spinning-intensity

 

diva

princess

child of God

channeled

creative

intense

Meeting Kavi at Ginger’sHouse

Meeting Kavi at Ginger’s House

I like the way,
at Ginger’s house
we took turns
around the circle.

First there was Kavi,
17 months old,
circling the rooms:
his carry-case abreast.

He crooned-
and delicately chewed
the cranberries and nuts
to Indian/African tunes.

From 17 months to
77 years old we each
took turns being
acknowledged:
aunties, uncles, cousins, moms and dads.

Spoke of opera, museums,
moving films we’ve made
created from a place
that played and sang and danced:

“How best can we take care
of earth, and man, and woman?
Teach our tiny ones to care,
discover life and share?”

Together.
Together,
always in this circle.

A Pavarotti Visit

 

Calligraphy by Jeanne Poland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honda Pavarotti

by Tony Hoagland

I’m driving on the dark highway

when the opera singer on the radio
opens his great mouth
and the whole car plunges down the canyon of his throat.

So the night becomes an aria of stars and exit signs
as I steer through the galleries
of one dilated Italian syllable after another.

I love the passages in which the rich flood of the baritone
strains out against the walls of the esophagus,
and I love the pauses
in which I hear the tenor’s flesh labor to inhale

enough oxygen to take the next plummet
up into the chasm of the violins.
In part of the song, it sounds as if the singer
is being squeezed by an enormous pair of tongs

while his head and legs keep kicking.
In part of the song, it sounds as if he is
standing in the middle of a coliseum,
swinging a 300-pound lion by the tail,

the empire of gravity
conquered by the empire of aerodynamics,
the citadel of pride in flames
and the citizens of weakness
celebrating their defeat in chorus,

joy and suffering made one at last,
joined in everything a marriage is alleged to be,
though I know the woman he is singing for
is dead in a foreign language on the stage beside him,
though I know his chain mail is made of silver-painted plastic
and his mismanagement of money is legendary,
as I know I have squandered
most of my own life

in a haze of trivial distractions,
and that I will continue to waste it.
But wherever I was going, I don’t care anymore,
because no place I could arrive at

is good enough for this, this thing made out of experience
but to which experience will never measure up.
And that dark and soaring fact
is enough to make me renounce the whole world

or fall in love with it forever.

“Honda Pavarotti” by Tony Hoagland, from Donkey Gospel. © Graywolf Press, 1998. Reprinted with permission.