{"id":185,"date":"2011-05-30T17:44:24","date_gmt":"2011-05-31T00:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=185"},"modified":"2011-05-30T17:44:24","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T00:44:24","slug":"words-and-music-from-an-inner-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=185","title":{"rendered":"Words and Music from an Inner Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

For more than forty years, my friend Diana Neutze <\/a>has endured the relentless thefts of\u00a0 multiple sclerosis and grief for a son lost too young. Throughout that time, she has continued to write powerful and moving poems. Recently, her body closing down, she commissioned the New Zealand composer Anthony Ritchie <\/a>to set some of her poems to music. The cycle of seven songs, \u201cThoughts from an Inner Garden\u201d premiered April 2011 in a performance at Diana\u2019s house in Christchurch, New Zealand. Diana recently sent me a CD of that performance. I\u2019ve been playing it over and over, overwhelmed by the beauty and intensity of the work.<\/p>\n

From Diana Neutze\u2019s published collections, A ROUTINE DAY<\/a> and UNWINDING THE LABYRINTH<\/a>, Ritchie selected poems that express the poignancy of the poet\u2019s sense of connection with the tangled garden that surrounds her house, a garden that has become her world. Transcending the nightmare of her chronic illness, she finds meaning in the details of the natural world: the play of light and shadow, the song of a bird.<\/p>\n

The cycle opens in a minor key, an ancient, timeless sound that describes a day of wet greyness without wind<\/em> when the garden is holding its breath<\/em>. In \u201cBridal,\u201d the second song, the poet, showered by autumn gold<\/em>, imagines the roses and smoke bush as witnesses to a marriage between herself and the garden. The mood changes in \u201cChronic,\u201d where Ritchie\u2019s urgent rhythm reflects the tick-tocking of illness\/ relentlessly<\/em>. \u201cAnd the Birds Sing\u201d is a meditation on the cycles of life and death. \u201cA Scent of Water\u201d offers a fragile hope in the face of grief:\u00a0 a frosting of growth\/ a shivering of buds in the morning light<\/em>. The rhythms of an old folk dance come to mind in \u201cMeaning.\u201d A moment in late afternoon, a blackbird singing in a weeping elm,\u00a0 and the day is flooded with meaning<\/em>. The cycle closes with \u201cGoodbye.\u201d The poet recalls the garden images she will die loving. The theme of a Bach partita enters the music as she describes its architectural splendour \u2026 arch after musical arch soaring upwards.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For more than forty years, my friend Diana Neutze has endured the relentless thefts of\u00a0 multiple sclerosis and grief for a son lost too young. Throughout that time, she has continued to write powerful and moving poems. Recently, her body closing down, she commissioned the New Zealand composer Anthony Ritchie to set some of her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125,129,8,91,7,19],"tags":[131,130,133,421,403,132],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}