This two-inch thick tome has been with me since I first had a real job and could afford to buy books. (When you see that the stick price is $7.95, you can compute just how long I have treasured this rather battered paperback.) It is a classic reference, and continues to be updated. Arranged alphabetically, with entries from “Abecedarius” to “Zeugma,” it is my first reference of choice for all things poetic, and it is usually the most complete. Yes, the prose is a little bit dry, and the font size (arrayed in two columns per page) can be politely described as miniscule, but if it were in a reader-friendly 12. font then I wouldn’t be able to lift it. (As it is, the paperback I own weighs three pounds on my kitchen scale.)
This doughty workhorse has no page-turning narrative arc but were I packing a sea chest for a sojourn on a desert island, I would make room for it, right next to my dictionary, blank note books, pens, energy bars, and sunscreen.
Regarding today’s Poem, “Zither”:
For those of you who asked to receive the daily poems, I hope this short video will help give some background resonance to the poem for today. I can’t play a guitar or even a piano myself, much as I have longed to coax music out of both, yet I can see how the three are related. Folk music, and making music at home–can we think about these trends in the past two hundred years without the instruments that made them possible? I would add to that the flute and penny whistle, the recorder (and, of course, the concertina!)
This comes performance of the Beatles “Let it Be” comes from musician Etienne de Lavaulx. I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I do. (Please know that de Lavaulx, a native of France now based in Western Australia, has many YouTube performances of familiar songs and also offers CDs and sheet music. You might want to look for his rendition of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence” online. If you have a little more leisure–just twelve minutes!–look at this autobiography in which he demonstrates his life as a musician specializing in guitar and zither.)
(Note: there is no entry in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics for “zither” but there is one for “dithyramb.”)
Until tomorrow,
LESLIE
How, do you think, mandolins and zithers are connection in terms of the evolution of musical instruments? I wondered about that as I delved into this topic.
Fun to learn about this book/tome I don’t know. Just the idea of it makes me want to watch for it if I go a-wandering in second hand bookstores as I do in the summers now and then.
Had never heard of this musician and am delighted to learn about him and his musical style as well. Saving the 12 minutes for another time. Thanks.
Oh! I must find a zither! Thank you for this.