After this week’s session exploring voice and sound, I wanted to share with you all a poem that I think does a wonderful job at playing with words and how the sound of certain words resonates and vibrates in mysterious ways. But I also wanted to create a thread in case anyone else has any examples of poems or books or films or plays that inspire you to think differently or more deeply about sound, or the magic of the human voice.
Here’s my contribution, a poem by Abigail Dembo that really inspired me:
I read her poem last week and it became lodged in my mind because of our discussion this week. At a friend’s new apartment last week, there was a copy of The Paris Review lying on the coffee table and I found this newly published poem inside it, which isn’t available for free online. I thought the poet had a stroke of genius in exploring the way “century” and “cemetery” sound, in a subtle, beautiful way, so close together. What a strange and brilliant sonic synchronicity. I’ve reproduced it below and hope that some of you might enjoy it too.
The Common Era
by Abigail Dembo
from The Paris Review, Issue 251
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After the last century—what a century!
such a rough, long century, we often said,
longer than most, and so tall—
a giant of a century,
it laid itself down
in so many enduring stone steps.
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Such bones in that century.
(What do we do with it now?)
A strong nose on that century (almost beautiful),
a tank of a nose, a fortress of a smile,
a stone explosion of a face.
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A penny for the man who would dare kiss it.
A penny for the man who would walk back down
its southern steps.
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A steep cemetery of a smile,
the last century—what a century!
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What a large cemetery. What a long cemetery.
What a large, green cemetery.