jan zwicky: practising bach (gigue)

Gigue


        There is a sound
that is a whole of many parts,
a sorrowless transparency, like luck,
that opens in the centre of a thing.
An eye, a river, fishheads, death,
gold in your pocket, and a half-wit
son: the substance of the world
is light and blindness and the measure
of our wisdom is our love.
Our diligence: ten fingers and
a healthy set of lungs. Practice
ceaselessly: there is
one art: wind
in the open spaces
grieving, laughing
with us, saying
improvise.


and now, click on this link to hear the gigue.

Zwicky, Jan. "Practising Bach" The Best Canadian Poetry in English. Markham: Tightrope Books, 2009.

an easter piece

jan zwicky: practising bach (bourée)

Bourée


Partita, partie -- a whole of many parts. Pythagoras, who is said to have studied with the Egyptians, is also said to have taught that enlightenment meant solving the problem of the One and the Many, of coming to grasp the divine unity of the world through its bits and pieces, as these come to us in language.


   This may also be thought of as the problem of metaphor: that metaphor's truth, its charge of meaning, depends on assertion of identity and difference, on erotic coherence and referential strife, on meaning as resonance and meaning revealed through analysis.


   Lyric poets are always trying to approach the issue by forcing speech to aspire to the conditions of music. Bach comes at it from the other end: he infuses music with a sense of the terrible concreteness, the particularity, of the world. And enlightenment? -- Acceptance of, delight in, the mystery of incarnation.


and now, click on this link to hear the bourée.

Zwicky, Jan. "Practising Bach" The Best Canadian Poetry in English. Markham: Tightrope Books, 2009.

jan zwicky: practising bach (menuet I/II)

Menuet I & II


There's nothing special in it. All you have to do
is hit the right key at the right time. Time:
that stream in which we do, and do not,
live. Just practise diligently; it will all go well. You have
five fingers on each hand, just as healthy as my own. 
Unison, the octave; the fifth, the fourth, the third.
Of the strings? The viola, if I have a choice.
At the keyboard, don't forget to use your thumb.
God's glory and the recreation of the mind.
What I really need to know:
does the organ have good lungs?
The partita of the world, the dance of being: everything
has to be possible.


and now, click on this link to hear the menuets.

Zwicky, Jan. "Practising Bach" The Best Canadian Poetry in English. Markham: Tightrope Books, 2009.

jan zwicky: practising bach (gavotte)

Gavotte


E major: June wind
in the buttercups, wild
and bright and tough.
Like luck -- a truth
that's on the surface of a thing,
not because it's shallow, but because
it's open: overtoned.
Because it rings.
                           Fate, too,
it's character. But it's
the shape -- the cadence
and the counterpoint. Luck
lives in the moment, and it
looks at you: the clear eye,
gold, when being sings.


and now, click on this link to hear the gavotte.

Zwicky, Jan. "Practising Bach" The Best Canadian Poetry in English. Markham: Tightrope Books, 2009.