Piano Work   (2015Sep20)

Sunday, September 20, 2015                                            4:15 PM

I played the piano for forty-five minutes today—I’m getting so active that I’m letting a bunch of recordings go—I can’t make a video out of everything I play these days—life is too short.

But I did stitch together all the improvising I did between the Brahms and the MacDowell—it came to just over eleven minutes, but it’s actually three different improvs ‘smushed’ together. The final segment has a break where the camera ends one file and starts another—my camera does that every twenty minutes. If I want to be sure of no interruptions, I have to jump up and restart the recording every time I play a separate piece of music.

The MacDowell is very fragile stuff—I tried to keep the phrasing intact while I let the tempo lag, trying to get my shaky hands to settle in to the proper configuration of each chord to be played. He’s such a romantic, he even added little phrases and poems to the titles of his works:

Xper Dunn plays Piano

September 20th, 2015

Three (3) Pieces by Edward MacDowell

from “New England Idyls”, Op. 62

  1. An Old Garden

“Sweet alyssum,

   Moss grown stair,

Rows of Roses,

   Larkspur fair.

 

All old posies,

   Tokens rare

Of love undying

   Linger there.”

from “Sea Pieces”, Op. 55

  1. Nautilus

“A fairy sail and a fairy boat”

from “New England Idyls”, Op. 62

  1. With Sweet Lavender

“From days of yore,

Of lover’s lore,

A faded bow

Of one no more.

 

A treasured store

Of lover’s lore,

Unmeasured woe

For one no more.”

I also played the Brahms Opus 117 again, all three intermezzos, like I do every day—I almost posted today’s, but it still isn’t quite ‘there’ yet.

SHAKESPEARE SONNETS – Sonnet II & Sonnet III (2014Oct18)

Sonnet II

When fortie Winters ſhall beſeige thy brow,
And digge deep trenches in thy beauties field,
Thy youthes proud liuery ſo gaz’d on now,
Wil be a totter’d weed of ſmal worth held:
Then being askt,where all thy beautie lies,
Where all the treaſure of thy luſty daies;
To ſay within thine owne deepe ſunken eyes,
Were an all-eating ſhame, and thriftleſſe praiſe.
How much more praiſe deſeru’d thy beauties uſe,
If thou couldſt anſwere this faire child of mine
Shall ſum my count,and make my old excuſe
Proouing his beautie by ſucceſſion thine.
This were to be new made when thou art ould,
And ſee thy blood warme when thou feel’ſt it could.

In this poem, Shakespeare casts Time in the role of a military force, attacking youth. He urges youth to act, to produce new youth, before time can claim its victory over his own ‘lusty days’. Keep in mind that ‘forty winters’, in Shakespeare’s time, was nearly synonomous with a life-time.

20141017XD-ShakspearSonnt_No_II(TitlesCARD)

 

Sonnet III

Looke in thy glaſſe and tell the face thou veweſt,
Now is the time that face ſhould forme an other,
Whoſe freſh repaire if now thou not reneweſt,
Thou doo’ſt beguile the world,vnbleſſe ſome mother.
For where is ſhe ſo faire whoſe vn-eard wombe
Diſdaines the tillage of thy huſbandry?
Or who is he ſo fond will be the tombe,
Of his ſelfe loue to ſtop poſterity?
Thou art thy mothers glaſſe and ſhe in thee
Calls backe the louely Aprill of her prime,
So thou through windowes of thine age ſhalt ſee,
Diſpight of wrinkles this thy goulden time.
But if thou liue remembred not to be,
Die ſingle and thine Image dies with thee.

There’s certainly cause to label these first seventeen the ‘procreation’ sonnets! Reading this third one, I imagine Shakespeare may be Literature’s greatest Yenta. And though he meditates on the grand circle of life’s bud, bloom and wilt, I spy a bit of simplicity to his attitude. While he warns the youth that beauty is fleeting, he also agrees with the utter value of that beauty–he doesn’t dispel vanity, he gives it advice.

20141017XD-ShakspearSonnt_No_III(TitlesCARD)

XperDunn recites Poetry – SHAKESPEARE SONNETS – Sonnet I (2014Oct17)

Friday, October 17, 2014                       1:52 PM

Shakespeare Sonnets – A Proposed Series

 

Sonnet I

From faireſt creatures we deſire increaſe,

That thereby beauties Roſe might neuer die,

But as the riper ſhould by time deceaſe,

His tender heire might beare his memory:

But thou contracted to thine owne bright eyes,

Feed’ſt thy lights flame with ſelfe ſubſtantiall fewell,

Making a famine where aboundance lies,

Thy ſelfe thy foe,to thy ſweet ſelfe too cruell:

Thou that art now the worlds freſh ornament,

And only herauld to the gaudy ſpring,

Within thine owne bud burieſt thy content,

And tender chorle makſt waſt in niggarding:

   Pitty the world,or elſe this glutton be,

   To eate the worlds due,by the graue and thee.

 

Here in the opening sonnet, Shakespeare exhorts the ‘beautiful people’ to get busy making babies—to produce from their beauty beautiful children, thus increasing the world’s beauty, rather than selfishly luxuriating in their own.

(These first seventeen sonnets are often dubbed the ‘procreation’ sonnets….)

 

20141017XD-ShakspearSonnt_No_I(TitlesCARD)

I Insist On Having A Dragon To Kill by XperDunn (2013July03)

I Insist On Having A Dragon To Kill by XperDunn (2013July03).

via I Insist On Having A Dragon To Kill by XperDunn (2013July03).

POSTED TO POETIC DUELING ON FACEBOOK: (2013June30)

I’ve been looking over my juvenalia lately (my high school poems, that is) and I found this one written to my (or I should say Our) late friend, Carol Rosenberg. You’ll notice it’s a gift poem, not a love poem–we were friends and it was her birthday and I was writing poetry about anything I could think of, trying to learn all the classical forms, and trying to sound like a grown-up, and this was the sort of thing that came from me at that time.

The Sun
(crossed out)
AKA – Birthday Acrostic to C.R. (Which just happens to be a sonnet)
(crossed out)
AKA –

Sonnet Acrostic in Honor of Carol’s Birthday

Chariot bright with the gift of day
After the roots of night are broke
Run with my shackles and debts away.
Open the door with a savior’s stroke,
Letting loose the white unicorns which, released,
Run ‘cross the dome with majestic mirth
Over blue plains where the stars increased
Since the emerald birth of the buxom Earth.
Even Diana must fall to your power
No star can but falter and fade and dim.
Beneath the gray tomb of the dark’s dread tower,
E’en though I can’t see your sharp eye or gold rim,
Remembering, I can hear wealth where you’ve run,
Glittering, burning, my jewel, the Sun.

 

(NOTE: If you forget what an acrostic is, it means that the first letters of all the lines spell out CAROLROSENBERG.)

 

Sonnet to the Dawn in Summer

The Sun hurls out in surprising showers
Woven bolts dyed in fiery tints
Which unrolled as the rippling cloths of Dawn
And turn the clouds’ boiling, pearly towers
Into heaps of coal through which the sky glints
As Venus is ambushed and, shuddering, is gone.
All the Giants of Earth wash their faces with splashes
Of the fiery streams from the chariot bright
And laugh like mountains to greet the morning
While their eyes mirror back the blood-rubied flashes
Or monstrously blink at the early sight
Whose flare of of the hot noonday Sun is a warning—
For though the Dawn’s music is pleasing to hear
The summer-day’s fire can blister and sear.

[I signed this ‘CJAD’, my invented name, Christopher Jonathan Abraham Dunn. I was born and christened Christopher Dunn. At some time in grade school I asked my mom why I was the only one without a middle name and she said, “I thought your first name was long enough. But, if you want to, you can pick your own middle name.”

What she didn’t realize was that I was applying for my social security card—which I then signed Christopher Jonathan Dunn (and that is still the Social Security Card in my wallet). But for taxes, phone listings and legal contracts, I am ‘Christopher Dunn’, my Birth Certificate name.

Not long afterward I was Confirmed as a young Catholic, which sacrament requires the choosing of a saint’s name as my Confirmation Name. I was a big Lincoln fan and I said ‘Abraham’. The nun told me I was supposed to pick a saint from the New Testament, but I insisted he was in the Bible. She had a hurried conference with a priest and finally turned to me and said, “Abraham is acceptable.”]
Thus, in High School, when I was feeling fancy and eccentric, I would introduce myself as Christopher Jonathan Abraham Dunn and I would initial my poems and drawings with ‘CJAD’.]

Questions —Xper Dunn January 13th, 2013

Questions   —Xper Dunn   January 13th, 2013

 

 

 

This is my second attempt to match this poem to an illustration, using original artwork

 

Here are the original drawing and designs made from it:

original scan of felt-tip pen drawing

original scan of felt-tip pen drawing

photo-shopped image of original scan

photo-shopped image of original scan

Multiple 'flipped' images (4 in 1)

Multiple ‘flipped’ images (4 in 1)

Final iteration (This is the first 4-in-1 made a second 4-in-1)

Final iteration (This is the first 4-in-1 made a second 4-in-1)