18 An Uninvited Guest or
How Puff, the Magic Dragon Almost Ended My Poetic Career
~ By Catherine Chandler
M
y love of formal poetry and its rhythmic expression of human emotion is inextricably linked to my love of music. A cognitive neuroscientist might say that the arrangement and flow of sounds, the tone color, chords, phrases and sequences, textures and subtexts in the lullabies my mother sang and the popular music that played — and with which she sang along — almost non-stop in our kitchen in the ’fifties, became encoded in my developing brain. I prefer to think that what I heard found a special place in my heart. My musical consciousness — as opposed to my visceral love of songs — began with my formal piano training when I turned seven, insisted on by my mother, with the addition of the organ at the age of nine. I’ll never forget my first piano lesson — the octave and the tones within it, and that, no, there is no “h” note. Other “rules” followed — key and time signatures, and the allimportant measure, modulation, and cadence. These rules would apply both to my first recital piece, “Trot, Pony, Trot!” as well as my last, Chopin’s “Polonaise, Op. 40, No. 1.” The notes and notation were like secret codes just waiting to be broken. Another language that translates symbols into beauty, as the words of a finely-crafted sonnet invariably will do. The first time I wrote a poem to accompany a musical piece was when I wrote the lyrics to our class song in 1968, but I’d been writing poetry long before that. One summer, when I was around eleven years old, I heard the Muse whisper in my ear. As I already had four sisters and a brother at the time (we were eventually seven), I knew there were only two places in the house
I could find some peace and quiet in which to write — either the dark, damp, musty cellar or the hot, stuffy attic. I chose the attic. With much difficulty, I moved an old, oak desk and chair as near to the window as I could, so I could have a “window tree,” as well as some fresh air (yes, I was already into Frost by then), and sat down to write. However, my first creation was not a poem at all, but a crude crayon sketch of a flower and a Pillsbury biscuit declaring, “Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.” (I’d been reading Sandburg, as well.) I tacked the poster on the attic wall and wrote my first poem, “Autumn.” The almost unbearable heat of that July day must have been my inspiration. A few years later, the poem was published in my high school journal. Ironically, though, it was music that drove me from my attic refuge, nevermore to return. We lived in a double block with my numerous cousins next door, and our connecting attics allowed for the transfer of sounds between our two sides. Unfortunately, that summer my cousin Ricky was learning to play