Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Imagery’ Category

Joy – Hope – Peace – Love

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , , on December 17, 2011| 2 Comments »

Every Christmas for almost thirty years, Linda and I have sung with the Elkin Community Chorus.  This year marked the 51st annual performance of the Chorus, originally founded by Fran Greene, currently directed by David McCollum, and open to all comers . . . that is anyone who wants to commit every Thursday night to rehearsing Christmas anthems beginning way back in October.  Gets you in the spirit early!

This year’s Chorus has been a special joy for me for many reasons, but one is that David selected a piece by me for us to perform.  In 2010 my friend composer and director Mark Daniel Merritt asked me to write lyrics he could work into a Christmas suite for our semi-pro choral group Voce.  We premiered The Wanderer’s Carols last Christmas at Biltmore House, and this year on December 4th one hundred of my friends and neighbors in the Elkin Community Chorus sang the first movement, The Birds’ Carol.

.     .     .     .     .

The Wanderer’s Carols
Music by Mark Merritt Lyrics by Bill Griffin
[copyright 2010]
Movement 1
The Birds’ Carol

“Morning!  Morning!” trills the lark,
“The Babe brings gold to the sky!
A song of light now showers the earth,
And we shall know God this day.
.    Now is the dawn of our new life,
.    And we shall know God this day.”

“This coat I wear,” caws the rook,
“So black, so heavy, so grim.
Only One knows the way to make it bright –
The Child who reclaims us from sin.
.    He lifts our burden upon himself,
.    The Child who reclaims us from sin.”

“Come rest with me,” coos the dove,
“In this humble stable take ease.
Kings and shepherds together embrace
The Prince who unites us in peace.
.    You make us one in all the earth,
.    O Prince who unites us in peace!”

“I . . . Thou, I . . . Thou,” vow the geese
From dark earth to heaven above –
“May we join with Thee in a world made new;
May we fly forever in love.
.    Give us wings of Your perfect light,
.    And we’ll fly forever in love.”

.     .     .     .     .

IMG_9285

I’d like to share some thoughts about the background of these lyrics:

The Lark   –   Joy

In England the Sky Lark is known for its towering display flight, greeting the morning with loops and aerobatics, all the while filling the sky with its exuberant warble.  A fitting welcome for Christmas and the newborn Babe!

Our own North Carolina Meadowlark also sings a welcome to light returning to the earth   –   its melody seems to chant the words, “Spring of the year!”

.     .     .     .     .

The Rook   –   Hope

Every one of us encounters darkness during our lives; there is no one that does not shoulder some burden.  The Rook proclaims hope in the coming of the Child who will take our burden upon Himself.  The One who can bring light into our darkness.

The English Rook is first cousin to our American Crow, both of them highly sociable and intelligent creatures.  If you’re smart, you know you must look beyond yourself for the hope of salvation.

.     .     .     .     .

The Dove   –   Peace

The Dove has symbolized God’s promises since ancient times   –   picture the bird clasping an olive branch as it returns to Noah and the wanderers.  Today there is no more universal image of peace than the Dove.  In this verse, the Dove affirms that the peace of this Prince is promised to all people of whatever station in life, exalted or lowly, king or shepherd.  If we are to be united in all the earth, it will only be through Christ’s peace.

The Rock Dove is native to England’s cliffs and coasts, but after being imported to the new world it has become ubiquitous wherever there is human habitation   –   we call it a “pigeon.”  From the eaves of an abandoned building, doesn’t the sound of that cooing evoke peacefulness and home?

.     .     .     .     .

The Geese   –   Love

Next time you hear a pair of Canada Geese flying overhead honking back and forth (the male perhaps slightly lower pitched than the female), imagine that they are not only calling to each other but also to their Creator   –   “I, Thou . . . I, Thou.”

For me these Geese are a powerful symbol of love.  They mate for life and may live twenty to thirty years in the wild.  They constantly watch out for each other.  They protect their goslings most ferociously.  And when I hear their call through the trees at dusk, it reminds me that the love of our Creator surrounds us and lifts us up.

.     .     .     .     .

IMG_2548

If you would like to listen to the choral group Voce performing The Wanderer’s Carols (with harp accompaniment and boy soprano), please follow these links:

THE WANDERER’S CAROLS

1 – The Birds’ Carol

2 – Beside the Manger

3 – The Wanderer’s Prayer

.     .     .     .     .

Read Full Post »

Yodeling Fungus at Malaprop’s

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , on July 4, 2011| 2 Comments »

This is the book I had to write so that I could move on to higher literary endeavors.   David Treadway Manning

I came to Malaprop’s Books and Café expecting to be cracked up.  Which is to say, I came to listen to Dave read from his latest book, Yodeling Fungus.  After the introductory statement above, I knew I would not be disappointed.

I’ve been listening to David Manning read his poetry all across NC for the past ten years, nature poetry, love poetry, spiritual visions, politics, and I am always captivated by his ability to imagine fresh images.  He speaks truth from the heart.  And then . . . every once in a while he’ll startle me with a poem that is so sly, acerbic and right on downright damn funny I’ll just about strangle.  He confesses that these are the result of a genetic misfire from his muse, Guzman:

“Guzman de Pietro is a benevolent demon inhabiting the Manning bloodline for generations as a genetic hitchhiker, imparted into the genome to each its hosts humility and the restorative virtues of Merlot and bathtub naval strategy.  A form of male duende, Guzman erupts from time to time in newspapers and poems in outrageous and occasionally embarrassing public behavior.”

.     .     .     .     .

IMG_0250

Starry Campion

Terminal Issues

Far from faculty teas, and leather elbow-patches,
out in the blue-collar, bare-knuckle world,
out in the cliché-ridden, six-pack world,

the little magazines flash in and out like
virtual particles in the plenteous void.  Some
catch and flicker into light to illumine

the pages of Poet’s Market for a year
or two.  Names like Manna, Pegasus go up
like bottle-rockets then fall for next week’s

recycle.  Somehow Lyn Lifshin strides
their galaxies as if on stepping stones
before they vanish, the tiny journals,

home-grown in someone’s sewing room.
Coastal Plains, Wellspring, Potato Eyes –
I’ve had a poem in the final issue

of each one.  I have sent my coup-de-grace
like poisoned arrows into their vitals.
Amelia took my killer limerick then died

(with editor Fred) before the fatal fetal poem
could be born.  And Knuckle Merchant greeted
my aggression open-armed then shuddered,

limp into rain-soaked tabloid rags.  Now,
I send out poems, with a warning
like a black box label on a drug.

Enclosed are five new poems.
Thanks for you consideration.
The side effect is death.

.     .     .     .

What I should Have Said to the Young Poet Who Asked, “What Is the Typical Age of Your Reading Group Members?”

It’s don’t ask, don’t tell
when we wheel in our IVs
& orderlies.  Just come with some poems.
At noon we bring our lunches,

community oxygen & an extra tank
or two.  You won’t feel out of place
after we lay a few lines of Thanatopsis
on you with our cool blue hands.

Come visit – you’ll fit right in –
like six by three.  We keep out too much
sun, so you can ease back on one
of our satiny pillows & enjoy.

They keep the black van running
outside & Brown-Wynne on speed-dial.
Yesterday a youngster with progeria
came & caught up real fast.  Don’t worry,

before you know it you’ll be
one of us.  Your hands will clammy up
real fine – knobbly veins and all – and
those cheeks of baby fat will croc-o-dile.

.     .     .     .     .

Dave, Worthy Evans and I read as the “Poetrio” at Malaprop’s Books and Café on July 3, 2011.

Yodeling Fungus, Old Mountain Press

Other books by David Manning:
The Flower Sermon
The Ice Carver

Previous GriffinPoetry post Featuring Dave Manning

IMG_1827

Read Full Post »

Green Revolver at Malaprop’s

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , on July 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

After the reading I’m talking to Worthy Evans, admiring his poems.  He says, “I think I have multiple personality disorder.”  I say, “Must come in handy.”  And doesn’t it though.

Worthy’s new book from University of South Carolina Press, Green Revolver, is populated by a neighborhood, an entire quirky village of personalities.  They are on maneuvers waiting on edge for their enemy; staring at incomprehensible instructions on the computer screen in their cubicle; watching an orange-vested family build a sky-scraper; lying in a hospital bed with a puffy head covered with bandages.  Whatever they’re doing, it seems serenely commonplace, like you and I could be doing it, too.  You and I and Rod Serling.

The poems can be dark, disturbing, or simply quizzical, but hearing Worthy read them they develop into a universe warmly personal.  Not just personal in that there’s his own portrait in each, framed by the hole sawed in the wooden barricade at a construction site where passers by can watch the action.  And not just the personal history that filters up through the mundane circumstances: soldier, journalist, cubical drone.  No, more than that the poems become personal because I the listener/reader am invited right into the mild chaos that accompanies everything we do day to day, if we really think about it.  Family life, work, interpersonal politics, it all really is a little strange, isn’t it?  I feel much better now.  I feel better now that Worthy accompanies me on this strange trip.  Hey, we’re all in it together.

.     .     .     .     .

IMG_0265

Naked-flowering Tick Trefoil

Pre-Op

Dan Jones is coming to meet with us.
All of us, Monday at 2:30 p.m.  Dan
Jones will meet with all of us two
days from now.  It is all we were
told.  Neil Diggs walked up and gave us
the tip, but he didn’t say why Dan
Jones was going to meet with us,
or who Dan Jones is and what
kinds of business Dan Jones was
after.  Dan Jones could be a barber, and
for all I know that’s what he is.  I looked
down to see what Dan Jones did to me,
the hair on the floor, a drop of blood
smeared onto my pant leg when the clipping
became fierce.  I heard opera music and
saw a delicate white hand cross over
cold steel instruments resting on the soft linen.
Tulips grew in the garden outside
the window where Dan Jones, the faculty
and I were meeting to discuss budget cuts.
All of us topping our shaggy manes until Dan Jones
rides by on his penny-farthing to give us a clip.

.      .     .     .     .

Never visit Asheville without stopping by Malaprop’s, at the corner of Walnut and Haywood.  It is the best independent bookstore on the planet.  The cool stuff, the Smoky Mtn. Roasters, the Ashevillians, oh yeah and the books – I could live there.  Tell Virginia “Bill says Hi.”

Green Revolver at Malaprop’s Books and Cafe

Charleston City Paper Article about Worthy Evans

Green Revolver at USC Press

IMG_0768

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »