I’ve never really “got” poetry. Some people love poetry, savouring the subtlety and splendour of the careful concoctions of words which paint pictures and express emotions far beyond themselves. Sadly, I’m not one of these people. Perhaps I’m always in too much of a rush to really “get it”.
Recently, though, I’ve taken an interest in the work of the American poet Sara Teasdale, not through reading her poetry – her Collected Poems, which my wife kindly bought me for Christmas, remain largely unopened, spine unbroken, on the bookshelf – but through its lush and evocative settings for choir by the Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds.
Ešenvalds’s music brings the beauty of Teasdale’s words to life, perhaps nowhere more so than at the close of Stars, where a choir and humming wine glasses (yes, you did read that correctly) hold a chord as the altos intone the poem’s final words:
