February Moonsong

the moon turning round from white to
white in morning’s sky where mercy appeared
irrelevant, the cottonwood’s naked black

February limbs reached for that sky that after-
noon—a Union Pacific graffiti-tagged freight
train surging beside a black & blue river the

rain pinging the gray tin roof that evening, the
season’s first rain as if metaphorical tears could wash this a-
way—moonset along the mesa in nimbus

overcast & bitterbrush—a heart tattooed &
straining—a freight train inside the tunnel—a mild
edema, a waxing moon holding water, a white

rope hammock in graying snow between the
cottonwood & the locust—the unin-
habited house trailer atop the bluff where trees

did not take root, the rusted drag harrow
cast off in a sky gray snowdrift—gibbous moon
in an afternoon sky weighed down with

power lines, expectation, a promise of ice the
damaged heartbeat the naked trees the train’s
graffiti as far as the eye can see


Jack Hayes
© 2011

My mid-February poetry spasm continues today with another new poem—& a reminder: if you're interested in reading the poetry from my most recent book, The Spring Ghazals you can either read them on the dedicated blog at the rate of two per week (Wednesday & Saturday), or purchase the book from one of these fine outlets:
Lulu
Amazon
Barnes & Noble (new—& a bargain at $11.40 US!)
Amazon UK (£7.94)

Both Amazon & Lulu have the book for $12 US. 

Spring Ghazals, One More Time!

A happy Friday to you all!  No Homegrown Radio this week—Caroline Pond is in the midst of various music projects & I’m most grateful that she was able to make the time to participate in the series—she provided a couple of dynamite songs.  If you haven’t checked out her music yet, you can hear both the songs Ms Pond submitted here on last week’s post.  You’ll also find links to her CDs there.  Homegrown Radio will return next month—& the featured artist will be Eberle Umbach!  There will be some interesting music for sure—all solo pieces composed & performed by Eberle herself.

In other news, a surprise: The Spring Ghazals blog is back, tho with a bit different format than in the past.  Now, I know regular readers have heard about the “return” of The Spring Ghazals so often that they may picture it as like the monster in one of those 80s horror films who just won’t stay dead.  But really, this incarnation is quite different.

From here on out, I’ll be posting the actual poems from the book, two per week (I’m thinking Wednesday & Saturday as an ongoing schedule, tho this week’s poem is up today, Friday).  That means there should be posts thru July, at which point I’ll assess what the blog’s ongoing function might be.  But until then, it’ll be all poetry, all the time.  The poems will be posted in “book order,” with the first poem, “Ghazal 4/24” appearing today, & then one poem each on subsequent Wednesdays & Friday until the manuscript is complete.  You can read “Ghazal 4/24” here.

& as it will be all poems, there won’t be any explication, explanation or background material.  The reason for this is simple—I’ve decided it’s time for me to let go of “my” Spring Ghazals & let them be yours, dear readers.  Of course, I’ll be happy to field questions & comments on the poems, & I’d encourage readers to do this if the spirit so moves them.   

But although this new format is intended to let the book go out, unmitigated as it were, to the readers, it also presents you as readers with a choice.  You can read all the poems on the blog over the course of these next several months, gratis, or you can shell out actual money to have a book.  An interesting thought I’ve been entertaining recently is that books may not go obsolete as some have predicted, but instead become “premium” items.  Just as many recording artists now allow you to “pay what you want” (sometimes even without setting a minimum price) for downloadable music, but charge for CDs or, even more especially, vinyl, the future of publishing” may follow suit in some way, especially as the net allows poets & fiction writers to become independent artists, operating outside the traditional publishing models.  Time, as usual, will tell—even if it doesn’t tell us.

So, please swing on by The Spring Ghazals from time to time to read the poems! 

& now for a words from our sponsors!


The Spring Ghazals can be purchased at any of the following online outlets:

Lulu
Amazon
Barnes & Noble (new—& a bargain at $11.40 US!)
Amazon UK (£7.94)

Both Amazon & Lulu have the book for $12 US.  

Music Theory for Poets #2

[This is a re-post from The Spring Ghazals blog.  Next time there will be a brand new music theory for poets post, probably next weekend.  No photo of the week today—simply put, our harsh winter weather has made it difficult to get around for picture taking.]

Ready for some more music theory?  Remember, this is for poets (non-poets welcome too, of course), so we’re making this as painless as possible!

When I left you last, we were just starting to think about the difference between major & minor chords.  In fact, we discovered a chord called a major 7 that’s a combination of a major chord & a minor chord—music can be pretty witchy that way. 

OK—most folks know do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do.  It’s a major scale—what makes it major?  Actually, there are a few considerations, but for today we’ll just consider the most basic: that’s the interval between do & mi.  If you can sing “do-mi” you are singing what musical types call a “major third.”  If you have a piano or keyboard around the house, play a C followed by an E a couple of notes above it—again, a major third.  A plain old major chord contains just three notes: do-mi-sol.  That’s it!  Here’s that major third:

  C major chord-C minor chord by rfrostbanjo

Perhaps you have a guitar around.  Actually, since you’ll just be using one string, it doesn’t even matter too much whether it’s in tune.  Pluck the low E string—confusingly enough, the “low E” is the string that’s closest to your nose when holding the guitar in any conventional manner.  The high E is the string closest to your toes.  So pluck that low E, then fret the E string on the fourth fret.  In case you’re curious, that’s a G#.  E.  G#.  Major third!  Here’s what it sounds like:

  Guitar major 3rd by rfrostbanjo

Now there are a few differences between a major & minor scale, but for today, let’s just worry about chords.  & I can tell you there’s only one note that’s different between a major chord & a minor chord!  It’s hard to explain using do-re-mi; because the difference would be that rather than singing “mi,” you’d be singing “mi-flat.”  So if you have a piano, strike the C, then strike the Eb a note & a half above it (it’s the black note to the left of E natural).  That’s a minor third:

  Piano Minor 3rd by rfrostbanjo

With your guitar, pluck the E string, then fret the third fret.  You’re playing an E, then a G.  Just a plain old G natural, not G# as you were before.  That’s a minor third.

  Guitar minor 3rd by rfrostbanjo

So the notes of a minor chord are “do-mi flat-sol.”  “Do & Sol” remain the same.  This can be expressed as a pattern of “whole steps” & “half steps,” but this is music theory for poets, so we won’t worry about that right now.  Suffice it to say that sol is the fifth tone of the scale—you can see that easily enough: do-re-mi-fa-sol.  If you’re still at your piano, you will find the “sol” for C is G.  If you play C-E-G simultaneously, you’re playing a C major chord.  If you play C-E flat-G simultaneously, you’re playing a C minor chord.

  C major chord-C minor chord by rfrostbanjo

Now back to the guitar.  We know that if E is “do,” then G sharp is “mi.”  If E is “do” & a G natural is played, it becomes minor.  The “sol” of E is B natural—that would on the 7th fret of the low E string (guitar players—the 7th fret is always the “sol” or fifth of the open string!—also true of banjos, ukes, bass guitars, mandolins, etc)  So E-G sharp-B is E major; E-G-B is E minor.

  Guitar E major E minor by rfrostbanjo

If you recall last time, I mentioned that a major 7 chord adds the tone “ti” from the major scale.  That makes sense because if you count to seven, you’ll see that “ti” is the seventh tone of do-re-mi.  Now it so happens that if you play a C major scale, you’ll hear that B natural is the “ti” note.  Now think about it: a C major 7 contains the notes C-E-G-B.  Think about the C major chord: C-E-G.  The E minor chord? E-G-B.  See how that works?

In the poem “How High the Moon,” I wrote:

 “a trailer truck on Highway 95, the glass slide whooshing guitar strings, a riff existing somewhere between the major & minor modes”

&

“the glass slide existing somewhere between the major & minor modes”

There are a number of guitar riffs, particularly associated with the blues—& therefore by extension to rock & jazz & even country that incorporate the ease with which the guitar can move back & forth between major & minor chords, especially in certain keys.  One of the simplest is this, in the key of E: 

  Guitar major minor strum riff by rfrostbanjo

Here are a few I particularly like in the key of D (with the bass string tuned down to D):

  Guitar drop D riffs by rfrostbanjo

Of course using a slide—which regular readers of Robert Frost’s Banjo know from my Monday Morning Blues series—enables the player to move between tones (& actually even in micro-tones of the established scale) without actually pressing down the strings.  So moving back between the major & minor thirds—again in the key of D, on a guitar tuned to an open major D chord (hey, you know what that means now), sounds like this:

  JH-D slide riffs by rfrostbanjo

That’s all for now.  Next time?  Extended chords!

Music Theory For Poets #1

Happy Saturday!  The schedule here at Robert Frost's Banjo has gone a bit haywire, but I'm jumping into the breach with a series that started on The Spring Ghazals blog & that I've planned on continuing here.  Hope you enjoy it.

There are a lot of musical terms in The Spring Ghazals—makes sense: in addition to being a poet, I’m also a musician & music teacher.  When writing lyric poetry I believe the poet’s senses should be engaged, & music is certainly one of the things I hear the most.

However, with a few exceptions, the musical references that come up in The Spring Ghazals have less to do with “songs” than with musical moments or musical figures.  In particular, it has to do with chords & scales—after all, these are the building blocks from which music is made.

When talking about chords & scales, one can toss a lot of numbers & letters around.  This is true because a scale, in addition to being do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do can also be expressed in the numbers 1 thru 8; it can also be expressed alphebtically in letters between A & G, with & without sharps & flats.  & since chords are based on various scales, they also are expressed in letters & numbers.

But this is music theory for poets (& if you’re not a self-professed poet, that’s ok—we’re glad to have you along).  Let’s not worry so much about the theories involving various intervals, & instead let’s concentrate on what things sound like.

For instance, one chord that gets mentioned a few times is a chord called a “major 7.”  Here are the examples:

Grace #2

—& here comes another star & it’s just as you say the stars are shattered glass like a C major 7 chord that won’t stop ringing

Helix #5

A flock of guinea hens cackling in the cottonwood
A C major seven a D minor seven transposed a major third
A divided highway at 3:00 a.m.

Cloudland

A daydream sweetly dissonant as a major seven chord swelling in a room—

& here’s what the chord C major 7 sounds like:

  C Major 7 by rfrostbanjo

Isn’t that a pretty sound?  There are several ways to play this chord on a guitar, & they all sound nice, but when I was writing the poem I was thinking of the first way of playing it: low on the neck with lots of deep open strings.  I can tell you that there are four unique tones in a major 7 chord: do, mi, sol & ti.  If you’re good at singing do-re-mi you can probably sing this chord.  The fact that it’s a “C major 7” simply means that in this case, “do” is C.  When do becomes a different note, some ways of sounding the chord will seem a bit different—for instance, you can listen to a D major 7, an F major 7 & an A major 7 & hear that there’s something a bit different about each, tho the overall sound quality is the same.  That’s because the notes are sounded in different order in relationship to each other depending on which guitar strings are fretted & which (if any) are left open. 

  Major 7 in different keys by rfrostbanjo

Now this is a “major chord.” We can put aside for a moment the different intervals that distinguish between a major & a minor chord; but if you have any musical background to speak of, you probably know that a major chord sounds—well—more “happy,” more “bright,” more “positive,” while a minor chord sounds more “sad,” more “dark,” more “negative.”  Yet the major 7 chord has a kind of melancholy ring to it, doesn’t it? 

I do think most folks hear this.  It’s a bittersweet chord.  If you listen to bossa nova music, you hear this chord a lot in various keys—just as one example, a major 7 chord is the first chord played in the song “The Girl from Impanema.”

OK, so if this is a major chord, why does it have that bittersweet edge?  I’ll tell you.  Because if you broke the four tones of the chord down into parts & rearranged them, you could make both a full major chord & a full minor chord.  Wild, isn’t it?  In the case of the C maj 7, you have all the constiuents of both a regular old C major chord & a regular old Em chord.  You can hear these—then hear how the C major 7 combines them! 

  C major E minor by rfrostbanjo

That’s enough for today—almost; you can check out yours truly playing the song “Rubato Kangaroo in the final mp3.  I wrote this guitar part several years ago, & guess what?  It starts off with a C major 7 chord!  

  Rubato Kangaroo-guitar by rfrostbanjo 

Next time around: what makes a major chord “major” & a minor chord “minor?”  Hope to see you then.

All sounds recorded using my well-loved ’58 Harmony archtop as seen in the pic!  Except "Rubato Kangaroo" was recorded with an electric guitar.

The Spring Ghazals can be purchased at any of the following online outlets:

Lulu
Amazon
Barnes & Noble (new—& a bargain at $11.04 US!)
Amazon UK (£7.94)

Both Amazon & Lulu have the book for $12 US.  

January Morning

[This poem, written almost exactly one year ago, is from my collection The Spring Ghazals—more info after the poem itself]

January Morning

the cow pond exhaling smoke at 6 degrees the blue gray fog an aquarium miasma filled with sagebrush & emptiness

a face staring backwards & forwards in the blue gray frozen fog thru the willow thru the cloud of juncos & sparrows & the sagebrush breaking thru the snow on the round hill eastward

the rocks white the willow’s long hair black the poplars skeletal

a face staring backwards & forwards in a cloudy mirror & the mule deer outside the window leaping the barbed wire without any effort the dazzling flight of a magpie subdued in the freezing mist & white air

the chill is a teardrop mandolin tremoloed in its icy throat on a high octave E & the crow’s bitter snow is a chill in the heart muscle a contraction

tho the air is blue & gray & opaque & the ridge to the east has sunk below this sea of fog with its frosty water droplets distributing chill to the lungs

the cowpond exhaling smoke at 6 degrees the owl on the wing over the skeletal grape vines the owl appearing to me each night its face a white fog of feathers its wings knifing silently thru the white air soaring south

& the road is white with ice a frozen current swerving south without moving

a face staring in every cardinal direction seeing the white air the willow’s long black hair streaked white with hoarfrost

a rheumatic shoulder the lungs an aquarium miasma filled with sagebrush & emptiness the heart contracting its owl's wings in the white white air

a face staring into a blue gray frozen ocean stitched with barbed wire without a horizon

is it a new day

John Hayes
© 2010

My collection of recent poems is called The Spring Ghazals & it can be purchased at any of the following online outlets:

Lulu
Amazon
Barnes & Noble (new—& a bargain at $11.04 US!)
Amazon UK (£7.94)

Both Amazon & Lulu have the book for $12 US.   

In addition, you can read an excellent review of The Spring Ghazals by Sheila Graham-Smith on the Tangerine Tree Press blog right here.  In the course of the review, Ms Graham-Smith offers a beautiful reading of "January Morning."

Virtual Reading #1

Happy Friday to you all!  Today is the day we bid 2010 a fond(?) farewell.  As my own personal ave atque vale to this year, I’m offering a virtual reading of two poems from my collection The Spring Ghazals.

Both of these poems found their titles in the works of others—“don’t think twice” obviously coming from the old Bob Dylan tune & “what can we talk about that will take all night?” coming from a powerful Kenneth Patchen poem titled “Do the Dead Know What Time It Is?”  Patchen is a personal favorite. The poem “don’t think twice” falls in the middle third of the ghazal sequence, while “what can we talk about that will take all night” falls in the final third.

As a reminder: you can purchase The Spring Ghazals at the following online outlets (links go directly to the book):

Lulu
Amazon
Barnes & Noble (new—& a bargain at $11.04 US!)
Amazon UK (£7.94)

Both Amazon & Lulu have the book for $12 US. 

Hope you enjoy the poems!




Pic shows roses on the pergola at Swannanoa, Virginia-detail from a larger photo

Who’s in the Audience?

Anyone’s who’s ever performed under stage lights knows: the audience is a group of mostly figures, their features indistinct, if visible at all.  & yet as performing artists, we thrive on this group of unseen people—why?  Energy: although we can’t see the audience except for a few faces in the front rows, we can feel them.  Audiences give something to the performer: energy, vitality, inspiration.  Almost without exception, an integral part of a good performance is a good audience.

How does this idea of audience energy pertain to writers?  After all, theater, music & dance are “performing arts”—writing poetry & fiction—the actual creative acts—this is almost always done in isolation—we don’t invite our friends to watch us while we type out words!

But for me, audience has always been a crucial part of the writing process.  However, for the longest time, I focused exclusively on those few faces I could see past the stage lights, not on the figures beyond them who were faceless shapes.  Yes, I’ve always written with an audience in mind, but an audience made up of a discrete number of people—a half dozen, perhaps a dozen at most.  & indeed, I received energy, vitality & inspiration from that audience.

How is this relevant to publishing in general & to the process of publishing The Spring Ghazals in particular?  The Spring Ghazals actually began with a series of poems addressed to an old friend—I say “friend,” because I don’t know a word to better define what has been a complex & perhaps unique relationship.  In any case, the poems that now appear in the book as the “Kitchen Poems” section began as a direct address to her, tho they were shared with a handful of other people as well—other distinct faces in the audience. 

This was before Robert Frost’s Banjo.  With one exception, a poem which this friend posted on her blog—a once popular site that’s no longer extant as she’s moved on to different things—the “Kitchen Poems” had a very small audience.

I’ve generally made myself comfortable with that—I was content circulating poems in a circle of other writers & creative people while taking an MFA—this included publishing in journals run by friends & acquaintances; I was content giving readings & publishing in a punk rock ‘zine while in San Francisco.  I used to say I had a very 16th century view of publishing—that I wrote poems for an intimate circle—those few recognizable faces in the first rows.

But at a certain point, I realized that if I were to keep writing now, in my middle-aged return to poetry, I needed a larger sense of audience.  First there was the Robert Frost Banjo blog—the prose poems in the “Cloudland” section of the book were written for the blog long before I even knew a book was in the offing.  Then the “Ghazals” themselves were written for the blog in the spring of 2009, & as the sequence grew, I began to see a “book” taking shape.

But all the time I was posting these poems on a blog with a growing readership, to be read & commented on by people I scarcely knew, I was also writing the poems for the same intimate circle as always; & I was writing them as much for my old friend as ever, tho at that point we were no longer in touch….

Here’s the fact of the matter: at a certain point I realized that it’s necessary to draw energy & inspiration from the audience as a whole, not just from those few faces you can see.  If what we’re giving in art is a mode of communication, & this seems true whether we’re using words or notes on a guitar or dance gestures or brush strokes, then at some point we have to decide whether we really want to circumscribe that communication.  If I’m onstage playing music & I decide to somehow restrict my communication to the few people I can actually see in the front row, then I won’t give a good performance—it’s all about “giving” & “receiving.”  But yes, I do focus on a few faces I recognize, but I let them take me to the rest of the audience—the indistinct figures in the further rows.

In the writing game, we call that publishing.

On Thursday: “What Have You Published?”


Photo of the Alice in Wonder Band during an ovation at the Alpine Playhouse by Tim Hohs

The Spring Ghazals on Robert Frost's Banjo

Happy Friday to you all!  This morning we have a bit of a poetic excursion planned, & in doing so, I’m introducing a new feature to Robert Frost’s Banjo—one I hope you’ll enjoy & one that I hope will be helpful to me: the proverbial “win-win” situation.

As some of you know, I started a blog dedicated to my collection of poetry, The Spring Ghazals.  In case you’re not familiar with this, The Spring Ghazals is made up of poems I wrote between May 2008 & February 2010.  The poems are concerned with love & loss & memory & time, & in a fragmented & lyric sense of the word, describe a narrative arc. 

I decided recently, however, that the dedicated blog wasn’t really spreading the word about the book in the way I’d hoped.  As a result, I decided to close the shutters on that blog & try to spread the word here in hopes that the wider readership would result in more people being interested in & ultimately purchasing the book.  Speaking of which: The Spring Ghazals is available at Lulu, as well as on Amazon & Amazon UK.

As a “kick-off” to this new series, which will appear at irregular but frequent intervals (at least weekly) during the month of December, & then will probably move to its own weekly day in January, I thought I’d post a virtual reading of one of the poems, complete with video slideshow.  This poem, “Fondue,” comes from “The Kitchen Poems” section of the book, seven poems all based on some type of food.  

Future posts will include discussion topics about the book & self-publishing; some background about the composition of the poems; (more) virtual readings; a series called Music Theory for Poets; any noteworthy book news—& more.  Hope you enjoy it!