Afghanpress

This piece from Songs for Married Lovers is a setting of a poem by American poet Richard Wilbur (b. 1921).

One of the most lyrical yet technically skilled of poets, Wilbur writes in sophisticated verse forms filled with wit and learning.  His long career has been filled with honors and awards, including two Pulitzer prizes and a tenure as the Poet Laureate of the United States.  He might be best known to musicians and music lovers as the lyricist for many of the songs in Leonard Bernstein’s Candide:  “Glitter and Be Gay” and “We’ll Make Our Garden Grow” are two of the pieces from that opera/musical with lyrics by Wilbur.

I am deeply honored that he has allowed me to set “The Catch,” a charming and elegant poem describing that moment when a wife returns from a successful shopping trip.

“From the dress box’s plashing tissue paper

She pulls out her prize . . .”

The speaker in the poem, the husband, doesn’t appreciate the dress until she puts it on, with jewelry and

“A light perfume,

Whose subtle field electrifies the room.”

Now satisfied that her husband realizes the value of her purchase, the wife puts the dress away,

“. . . hung now in the fragrant dark

Of her soft armory.”

That last word, armory, with its layers of suggestion and its reference to the historical origins of the word armoire, is a small but typical example of the learning and wit of Wilbur’s poetry.

Musically, the setting oscillates its rhythm between the opening tango and a waltz (when , for example, the wife models the dress for her husband).

“The Catch” is available in Songs for Married Lovers, from Afghan Press, Melody’s Traditional Music, and other fine music stores.

http://www.afghanpressmusic.com/en/502-songs-for-married-lovers.html

Probably more than any other poems, three by Paul Zimmer (American, b. 1934) made me want to write a collection of Songs for Married Lovers.   I probably first encountered Zimmer’s poetry when I was an undergraduate English major, and I certainly taught many of his wonderful poems in my own literature classes at McNeese.  Zimmer has received many significant awards and honors for his poetry, including two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships for Literature, and he won the National Poetry Series award in 1998 for his collection The Great Bird of Love.

I remember how tears sprang into my eyes the first time that I read “The Weathers of Love.”  This deeply moving poem is written in four sections, two of which I asked for permission to set to music.  I’m always thrilled by the ending of the first section, in which the couple have been walking outside in windy autumn weather, and the blue sky suddenly appears at the end of the day:

Tiny flowers unwrap in sunlight,

Moss begins to passion.

So we have done it again,

Walked all day to love.

The concluding section of the poem asks

What to say to our children

Of our long time in the weathers of love?

and offers several answers, the most moving of which, I think,  are the last lines:

That to see you waving to me

From a hazy distance is as precious as hold your in my arms.

That sometimes on a rainy day

Just knowing you are in the next room saves my life.

The third Zimmer poem, “An Enzyme Poem for Suzanne,” was always a huge crowd-pleaser when Paul Zimmer read it at MFA poetry readings.  This poem is scored for baritone and harp, with the addition of a bongo bell at the end, where the tempo changes to a mambo.  The poet tells his wife (Suzanne) that though he can might go along for weeks ignoring her (“like my heartbeat”), sometimes she can suddenly walk through a door (the mambo tempo begins at this point) and make him want to make up for lost time:

This is to tell you that you are my enzymes, my yeast,

All the things that make my cork go pop.