Page 41 - Litteratteur Redefining World December issue

Litterateur redefining world December 2020

experience of silence is a deep one. Paradoxically, it is this moment of silence
which gives the poem its maximum sense of self-awareness. Hearing “Chorus:
SON(G)” for the first time, a friend wrote to me that it “seduced the listener into the
willing participation in chaos.” That seems to me an extraordinarily apt description
of the poem’s effect: the “chaos” is the chaos of voices—all wildly different from
one another—inhabiting the same space.

At the same time, however, I wish the poem to be a display of skill: the idea of craft
is by no means entirely subsumed in the idea of transformation. The poem is
rehearsed; we are careful in performance that the two voices end at exactly the
same time—a fact which the audience always notices and comments on. That the
poem is meant as a kind of religious experience is suggested by its constant
parallels—somewhat blasphemous ones—to the Catholic Mass. The poem
maintains itself throughout in a deep openness—“Voices of the sea”; it contains

even a strictly rhymed passage—another deliberate instance of “skill.”

“Chorus: SON(G)” is also, deeply, a California poem—not least because it
mentions East Oakland (where I live). The intensity and diversity of the West Coast
—even the ocean, which Kerouac attempted to mime at the conclusion of Big Sur—
is present in it. It is tender, fierce, and in a certain sense violent: “at large in the
world.”

“Chorus: SON(G)”

AUDIOLIZATION

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EXPERIENCE THE PERFORMANCE POET

JACK FOLEY

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