literature

Cello Sonata in E Minor

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Literature Text

La luna brushes
The spirits in their seasons
Against the wall,
Then tilts and turns
Toward darkness.

A la luz de la luna,
The dead tilt and turn
By the light of the moon.


                        she says it with a smile
                        that cuts your
                        knees out from under you:
                        'a la orilla del mar.'
                        by the shores of the sea,
                        in the season of snow
                        she still grows up from the earth -
                        saw-grass climbing dune crests.

                        the magician wolf-child
                        twists her fingers
                        and does not trust her words
                        the whole of winter -

                        and in spring
                        a spade turns the garden
                        from weed-green to brown,

                        flames turn the fields
                        from brown to volcanic black,

                        while, cello between her knees,
                        she plays to the ghosts
                        who know her name,

                        plays her cello
                        to the red wallpaper
                        soft as cream.

The black water
Beneath la luna
Shines pewter at
Its wave-crests.
The salt smells
Like summer hurricanes.


                        a la orilla del mar
                        the sand still clings to
                        the heat of the day.

                        the milky way
                        is a waving field
                        of wheat and silver barley grass,

                        and the wolf-child's padding feet
                        track sand inside the house.

                        she plays
                        with sand under her fingernails,
                        and her spirits
                        kneel and bow
                        to pick it out of the carpet.

                        their faces are painted
                        on the red wallpaper -

                        red
                        like the fires
                        in early spring fields.

                        and the magician
                        runs her fingers
                        through the barley grass
                        to teach it to sing.

With a sigh
La luna turns from the sun.


                       'a la orilla del mar,'
                       she says with a smile like cream.

                       she grows up from dune crests
                       with her cello between her knees
                       and autumn leaves
                       burning into the carpet,

                       returns her ghosts
                       to what they once were
                       as crumbled leaves
                       and old wheat stalks,
                       brown and gold as ashes.

                       a la orilla del mar
                       the cello-player
                       sends the spirits to the earth,

And autumn fades
To the season of snow,

A la luz de la luna.
Cello Sonata in E Minor (with piano accompaniment)

Written for #transliterations Prompt 7 and for my 100 Poem Project. I, obviously, chose the sonata form for my poem, which you can read about here if you're interested.

inspired by Herbjorg Wassmo's Dina's Book (specifically, a character concept), as well as Federico Garcia Lorca's La Casa de Bernarda Alba (specifically, the line "a la orilla del mar"). Composed to the sounds of Yo-Yo Ma playing Beethoven, mostly.

Just to clarify: a la orilla del mar = by the shores of the sea
a la luz de la luna = by moonlight (therefore, la luna = the moon)

This was a REALLY TOUGH prompt. Took me ages to figure out what I wanted to write about, and what musical form I wanted to use. Still would like to play around with the format just a bit. I'd love some critiques!

What do you think of the format? Do you like the way I've broken up the "solo" and "accompaniment"? Does it work?
As usual: how well does the imagery flow? Do you like the images themselves? Do they fit well together?
How do you like the repetitions? Is the "theme" (by which I mean musical theme, see [link] for reference) fairly evident?
Any other thoughts?

critique: [link]
Comments33
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Sperpy's avatar
:star::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty: Overall
:star::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty: Vision
:star::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty: Originality
:star::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty: Technique
:star::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty: Impact

Some thoughts from me, am going to work through stanza by stanza. Overall though, I would like to see you work on your linebreaks and possibly include some punctuation. The style of this poem lends itself to needing punctuation, especially commas and fullstops.

S1
"phantom seasons' feels like words that you have just thrown in there, I don't know what you mean by this although the image that it alludes to is interesting if you elaborate a bit more. Also don't know how I feel about Line 1 & 4 both starting with "La luna", perhaps play with your linebreaks here?

S2
Your linebreaks can work harder for you here. Consider a break after "cuts your". You have a tendancy to break at what I call sentence words, e.g. that, by, in, still.

Also reword "still she grows up from the earth / saw-grass climbing dune crests" as it doesn't totally make sense.

Stanza 4
Cut some of your sentence words e.g. the and on the third line. Don't really like "the whole of winter" and it also doesn't read right from a grammar perspective

Weed-green - change it to green weeds, it reads better. Turns from green weeds to brown.

"the cello" - this implies we know about this cello? Why not a cello? Or her cello?

Don't know how I feel about the repetition of "and in the spring", why haven't you joined this to the previous description of spring?

Cut "while inside", we know (or assume) that she is probably inside.

'is nearly pewter" - again, you're cutting too many words. Is the black water almost the appearance of pewter? I know what you mean, but it reads choppy. Definitely play with your linebreaks here

I like the image of the sand retaining the heat from the day but find a better adjective than "hold".

the parts of this stanza seem very segmented, and I can't quite ascertain the flow between them.

Stanza 10
why are you repeating the image of the cello between her knees?

"as ashes to earth" is cliche, you can find a better way to say this

Overall I enjoyed this and the images invoked however it does read quite choppy and segmented overall as a piece, it lacks a good flow at this point. This can be fixed through a) linebreaks b) cutting some sentence words c) building on other images (some that I have outlined).

I don't use the stars, so ignoring that bit on this critique feature