I am taking a songwriting class where we collaborate with composers and create songs out of poetry. I have recordings of my two songs in case you'd like to listen to it.

I decided to include all three poems in this series because Honeycomb is part of a set called Three Ways To Dissect A Woman.

Honeycomb (45 seconds), composed by Jesse Wright-Fitzgerald

Measuring tape lies
Across my breasts yellow and
Black like honeybees.

Milk

Is my waist a waste
If I don't ever expect
To be expecting?

Blood

My hips, fit to be
Carved and devoured, one
Heartbeat, two bodies.

Recently Living Rabbits (3:31), composed by Ben Phelps

My mother slaughters rabbits.
My mother breaks their necks and spines,
Feels life slip between fingertips.
She played piano when she was young.
Such sturdy fingers.

An apron she wears to stave off blood.
Not that rabbits always bleed,
When she cripples them as they still breathe.
"But sometimes," she says, "spine snags skin."
Their mammalian hearts, so used to beating.

I had a fondness for rabbits.
Their soft fur and wet eyes.
The unexpected presence of claws.
"Blood is surprisingly thick in rabbits,"
My mother says.

Labels: writing

( 3comments )

at April 4, 2006 9:58 PM  Alex_Knight said...

I think it's pretty cool to actually hear your poems as songs. Sounds like a neat class. However, the music itself doesn't work for me. Both songs are a bit too dissonant for me. More specifically the melody of the words don't mesh with the music of the piano. It's not that I just don't like the style that the composers are going for, it's that the songs don't sound... right... to me.
Still, it's neat to actually see... errr... hear...

 

at April 4, 2006 10:16 PM  Samantha said...

I actually couldn't be happier with Recently Living Rabbits. I think the creeping feeling in the music blends well with the intention behind the words. The violence of the poem is supposed to be beautiful, but threatening, and the sanity of the speaker is thrown into question. And I like how that comes across.

Honeycomb, too, I think was handled skillfully. We learned about composing music as text painting, and I think the message of lies both about body image and expectation comes through the dance the piano and the voice perform together in that piece.

 

at April 16, 2006 12:44 AM  Princess Blogonoke said...

I tried to compose music to one of your poems as a birthday present for you a couple years ago, but the music started to suck and it didn't do your words justice.

Maybe I oughta try and pick it up again. It's been long enough where it may not be disagreeable to my ears anymore. :p