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Maybe the dome of heaven is made of feathers, and
when they fall to earth we call them miracles.
We are swept up, but not completely.
After a while they fall away, floating back to heaven.
We feel alone again, recongealed, atomized.
That's why they matter so much.
-- Jay McDaniel, 2019
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SWEPT UP WHOLE You aren't swept up whole, however it feels. You're atomized. The wind passes. You recongeal. It's a surprise. -Kay Ryan |
Photo: Susannah Stubbs, Open Horizons
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Bel Canto
Opera buffs today use the term bel canto all the time. Yet we each seem to bring a different set of assumptions to the concept....In its narrowest sense bel canto opera refers to the early decades of 19th-century Italian opera, when Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti dominated the field. But the overall concept of bel canto started much earlier, with a consensus among opera enthusiasts that there was nothing more ravishing than a beautiful voice singing a beautiful melodic line beautifully, especially a melodic line driven by a sensitive musical setting of a poetic and singable text." (Anthony Thomassini, NY Times, 2008)
It's the vocal centricity and generosity of bel canto opera that comes through most strongly. Cerrone’s soloists sing in full sentences, set in strophic, melodically memorable lines. He selects poetry not to deconstruct, but to heighten and concentrate it."
- Program notes, Timo Andres, for the performance of The Pieces that Fall to Earth
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A Note On Feathers
Kay Ryan wrote "The Pieces that Fall to the Earth" and "Swept Up Whole." The Poetry Foundation features her own reading of Pieces that Fall to the Earth. Click here. Before reading the poem, she says: "I thiink of them as pieces of the dome of heaven." She doesn't expect others to read the poem this way, but she does.
In hearing her say this, I thought of Whitehead's idea that what is done on earth is transformed in heaven and then passes back into the world.
What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love in the world passes into the love in heaven, and floods back again into the world. In this sense, God is the great companion— the fellow-sufferer who understands. (Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality)
We might imagine the transformed objects -- the objects of love -- as feathers. Whitehead also calls them 'initial aims.' These are fresh possibilities, discovered in our imaginations, for feeling, thinking, and acting, relative to the the situation at hand. For Whitehead they flood back continuously, as grace, albeit different each each moment, and perhaps sometimes seemingly random.
The gift of Kay Ryan, in the Pieces that Fall to Earth and Swept Up Whole, is to keep us honest. The floods of heavenly feathers can a bit sparse, at least to our conscious minds and life experiences. That's why they matter so much.
-- Jay McDaniel
In hearing her say this, I thought of Whitehead's idea that what is done on earth is transformed in heaven and then passes back into the world.
What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love in the world passes into the love in heaven, and floods back again into the world. In this sense, God is the great companion— the fellow-sufferer who understands. (Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality)
We might imagine the transformed objects -- the objects of love -- as feathers. Whitehead also calls them 'initial aims.' These are fresh possibilities, discovered in our imaginations, for feeling, thinking, and acting, relative to the the situation at hand. For Whitehead they flood back continuously, as grace, albeit different each each moment, and perhaps sometimes seemingly random.
The gift of Kay Ryan, in the Pieces that Fall to Earth and Swept Up Whole, is to keep us honest. The floods of heavenly feathers can a bit sparse, at least to our conscious minds and life experiences. That's why they matter so much.
-- Jay McDaniel