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| Sunrise over Lake Michigan. Taken by me. 22 Dec. 2024. |
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This was a draft I did that never made it into the blog because of Mr. Hugo’s demands on my time. I am over the trauma of moving that led me to look into Dad’s legacy as a teacher of composers, but I remain interested in them, so I think I will finish off with all the ones I can remember in future posts. As you can already tell, they are quite remarkable in their variety, so I hope you will click on the links and explore as the spirit moves you. Without further ado, here is a thank you to Diane Sahms at North of Oxford, for publishing my poem, “New Bridge at the River Kwai,” and a tribute to Dennis Kam, composer. |
I am proud that “New Bridge . . . ” is included in The Russell Streur Nature Poetry Anthology I at North of Oxford. I really like this poem, which I believe combines several strands of my interests in a meaningful, moving whole. These strands are nature, specifically elephants; music, specifically Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata; exploitation and abuse, as suffered by nature, Beethoven, and elephants; neuroscience; and healing. The poem is essentially an ekphrasis of a video of pianist Paul Barton playing the “Moonlight Sonata” for an elephant in a preserve near the Khwae Yai River (the actual river misidentified as the River Kwai in history, novel, and film). The poem was rejected a fair amount, which surprised me a little because I think it is one of my better efforts, but when I submitted it to the Russell Streur anthology, Poetry Editor Diane Sahms accepted it long before the deadline, suggesting that she also saw something special and moving in it, for which I am deeply grateful. |
I did not know or even know of Russell Streur or his work before reading the submission call for the anthology, but his bio evokes an extraordinary person, dedicated to saving what is most important and most endangered in our current moment–not only our natural world but in ourselves, our feelings, and our outlook. From what I have read, the poetry in the two volumes dedicated to Streur reflects his empathic respect for nature, gently holding it up to the light while maintaining a respectful exegetical distance. I am honored to be part of this legacy. |
To continue my exploration of those students of Dad’s who corresponded with him, I therefore choose Dennis Kam (1942-2018) to conclude this post. According to John Van der Slice, in the early 70s, Kam’s music took a turn away from a Western, teleological bent disrupted by modernist effects and toward an exploration of different perspectives within an “extended focus” on a “unitary music ‘object,'” with an emphasis on “the palpable present.” This turn was motivated by minimalist trends in concert music, Kam’s interest in painting (a temporally static art), his Christian faith, the environment of Hawaii, where Kam grew up, and possibly the Eastern traditions to which he is linked by his ethnicity. |
Like Streur’s, then, Kam’s work embodies a stillness in which one approaches the moment and the objects in the moment with respectful, perhaps prayerful, empathy, constantly keeping the self, with its greed, instrumental rationality, and projections, in check. That Kam, like Streur, saw this as crucial in our approach to nature is explicit in his piece, Forever Everglades. Other works may be accessed through the website dedicated to him and linked above on his name, or simply by doing a Google search. |
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