Combining Muses

One of the earliest painted figurative scenes ever found appears in what is now called "The Tomb of the Diver" (illustrated below), about 480-470 BCE, discovered about a mile south of Paestum, Italy, a settlement with many extant Greek temples. Other tombs with images of human figures only appear towards the late fifth century BCE. Moreover, the scene on the tomb's lid, portraying a young man diving from a high wall or column into water, is unique. This image can probably be interpreted as a metaphor of the transition from life into the afterlife.

The arts offer opportunities for us to explore meanings from the past as well as the present. They stimulate our thinking and expansion of our perspective, a lifelong journey. In particular the visual arts have engendered poets and writers, such as John Keats, W.H. Auden, and many more, in the way that dance and musicians have inspired such artists as Matisse, Picasso, and Chagall. The former are often called "ekphrastic," meaning (from Greek) that words can expand the meaning of a work of art — we have many of these "ekphrastic poems" in this section. But there is more intertwining.

The nine Greek muses served to encourage creativity, enhance imagination, and inspire artists. In the fictions associated with the Muses, the arts were combined. For example, the Muse Terpsichore was the protector of dance; she invented dances, but also the harp and education. Her domain was not limited to dance. Similarly, the Muse Thalia was the protector of comedy; she discovered comedy, geometry, architectural science and agriculture.

The richness of combining the arts reflects a universal perspective, expanding circles of understanding how the arts illuminate one another. The poems in this section create a global and timeless tapestry of words about music, dance, art, and more. Enjoy.

[River of Stars: Poets of the Vineyard, Ed. Judy H. Cheung (Artists Embassy International, 2022), p. 144-5.]
Photo by Mary K. Lindberg.

MUSIC AND POETRY? WRITING INSPIRED BY CLASSICAL MUSIC: PART I

The nine Greek muses of the arts served to encourage creativity, enhance imagination, and inspire artists. The Greeks also named “Ekphrasis,” a process in which descriptive words can expand the meaning of a work of art. For poetry, such works are known as “ekphrastic poems,” and literary journals exist that specialise in them. In most, if not all cases, the works of art are visual.

As a pianist and aspiring poet, I wanted to know if a similar association exists for poetry and music. For example, can classical music inspire poetic thoughts, even poetry itself? What would the process involve? Is the stimulus the music itself, the composer, an instrument, the situation around the listening event? Or something else, outside of but connected to the music, like a violin teacher, a conductor, a piano tuner? Or what if the poet simply uses music as a metaphor, like Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing”?

There is no easy answer, in part because the question prods the creative process. For my own poems, the answer is “Yes, and….” It’s important to move carefully from one’s subjective experience to a generalisation. Some of my poems about music, for example, have been inspired during a conducting class, a chamber concert, and listening to human voices. Two focus on the composer, while the third uses music as a metaphor.

1) In an evening music school class, as one or two students were having difficulty learning how to conduct Beethoven’s Third Symphony, I wondered what the composer would have thought of the endeavour. It was the contrast of the music to the attempts to move the baton that made me think of Beethoven himself. What would he think? I imagined him stomping through the halls, angry that his work was not being interpreted correctly. The result is the poem “Beethoven Eavesdropping”.

2) While listening to a concert of Mozart chamber music in Salzburg, my thoughts wandered to a Mozart concerto I had once played as a young student. That memory in turn called forth others over time as I looked back, which came together in “Mozart Unravels Time’s Tight Curtain.”

3) On a trip to Dubrovnik, Croatia, after an early evening music performance, I watched crowds on the wide main street below the walled city. The sounds of people — talking, laughing, whispering, etc. filled the silence that had followed the concert. Since the wide street had once been a canal when the Venetians ruled Dubrovnik, I thought of time passing. All this resulted in “The Music of Place.”

In a further exploration of the links between music and poetry, I tried an experiment at several poetry workshops in collaboration with the leader. Each time I played a Chopin Nocturne on the piano as a “writing prompt” for participants to develop and write poems. They could write while I played, and/or in the half hour afterward. The results will appear in a subsequent article. [Mary K. Lindberg. This article first appeared in Serenade 2021.]

Beethoven Eavesdrops
(The Juilliard School, New York City)

Ludwig von Beethoven eavesdrops, peers
through the glass window of our conducting
class at Juilliard, eyes bright, wavy hair
askew, lips moving, ear trumpet in hand.

A beat-up grand piano mimics
orchestra sounds of his Third Symphony.
Sharp eyes under his crevice frown attend
a student’s clueless conducting.

Holding the downbeat up, the baton flails,
an aimless motion causing molecular
commotion, as the pianist weaves a miracle:
a two-handed out-of-tune Eroica.

The composer follows the student’s
jittery baton leading the Funeral March.
He shakes a salt-and-pepper mane,
shouts,“Die Klasse ist 

The words ricochet off the wall
like the first four notes of his Fifth.
Distracted by the “Ode to Joy”
and melodies only he can hear,

the maestro of music drama can no longer
watch a left-handed clarinetist conduct
with his right hand, nor hear a piano
untuned since it arrived a century ago.

Beethoven strides majestically over
scores of his symphonies, trios, quartets
lining the brightly lit hall, escaping,
footsteps faultless in rhythm.

Mary K. Lindberg, Dance of Atoms, 2025

The Music of Place: Dubrovnik, Croatia

Often the silence, where harmonies
and melodies once sounded,
gives a place its true music.

At midnight in Dubrovnik’s Old Town
I watch summer Music Festival lights shine
on ancient walls rising from the sea.

Worn stone steps lead to houses
not far from Vivaldi’s school.
Musical history lives here.

After a recital of classical, modern
works in the ramparts, the concert
plays in my head, sounds that linger
like motes in late afternoon sun.

A bright full moon and graceful quiet
reign over this walled, often besieged town
until concertgoers emerge, strolling.
They keep voices low, flood the space
with gentle notes, hushed exclamations.

I hear the music of this place:
not electric guitars with flashing lights,
nor sighs of strings or drums of fanfare,
but intonations riding on polished air,
the muted hum of human voices rising,
falling over a bridge of centuries.

Mary K. Lindberg, Dance of Atoms, 2025

Mozart Unravels Time’s Tight Curtain
(Salzburg, Austria, and Albany, New York)

Notes rise from the past, like old intimacies,
trailing memories of musical sensibility,
bond with a piano teacher, TV appearances
used to strive for perfection.

At this Salzburg chamber concert, musicians wear
18th century white wigs, stockings, lace cuffs,
sing excerpts from Don Giovanni. I listen but don’t hear …
I’m back in Albany, eagerly focused on practicing.

I’m studying to be a concert pianist. Mrs. O. accompanies me
on a beat-up studio piano in the Women’s Club,
where we play Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major,
part of my prep for a successful solo recital.

With her sharp eyes, shoes molded to walk straight,
Mrs. O. nods the downbeat — and in lessons explains
life’s meaning — while here in Salzburg, years later, operatic
melodies, strung like pearls, weave Austrian air velvet.

Mozart unravels time’s tight curtain: “We want to hear
music. Sit down and play for us, Mary Frances.”
My mother’s voice, silent for decades, sings.
I would play forever to hear it again.

You too are gone, Mrs. O., and cannot bring back
those measured moments — my mother happily
answers calls about my TV show, a boyfriend
warms my hands, I rehearse how to bow —
before recitals of dreams performed on that stage.

Mary K. Lindberg, Dance of Atoms, 2025

MUSIC AND POETRY? WRITING INSPIRED BY CLASSICAL MUSIC: PART II

This continues the discussion exploring the association of music and poetry, comparable to the “ekphrastic” relationship of poetry and art, and various ways music can appear in poems. How do other poets respond to classical music?

I attended a few weekend poetry retreats in Chester, Connecticut led by Dr. June Gould. There were usually 16 participants, most experienced writers and published poets. Each day, the leader prepared “prompts” for writers to respond to encourage creativity. They could be titles or lines from poems, for whole poems, for example. Afterwards, we would write in silence.

The retreat facility had a grand piano and an adjacent lobby area. I suggested to Dr. Gould, that for one of the writing cycles, I could play the piano and the writers could respond with a poem, in effect, making the music a writing “prompt.” She was enthusiastic; we decided to try it. We conducted this exercise for two years — before Covid precluded the retreats.

On both occasions, writers were seated near the piano and could write as I played, or in the silent period afterwards. I played the Nocturne in e minor (Opus 72, No 1), by Frederic Chopin. One writer stated she felt she was “describing the music itself, when it rose, quieted, became lyrical.” The second time, the experience was “transcribed into a visual setting — a beach with the moon rising, . . .” Another was stimulated by the “room vibrating from the sound of the music” before she wrote. Yet another observed that poetry and music “accompany each other” as one. One poet recalled her own experience trying to learn the same Nocturne.

I asked about the quiet that followed the music. “The silence after music makes a loud sound,” said one writer. “There’s an afterglow in music that holds a listener captive. That silence filled with the memory of the music — it’s what a poet engages in conversation as she writes. I tried to make my own night poem replicate the sounds of the night music into words.”

Many of these “Nocturne poems” were published in two volumes: Gould Writers at the Guest House (2017), and A Measured Sense of Outrage: Poems by the Gould Writers (2018).

From this small sample, it appears that listening to classical music can inspire poets to write about music as a subject, and/or suggest ideas and images to use in a poem. However, since any such claim is based on a limited amount of data, it cannot claim to be definitive. Further research might offer a more substantial conclusion. It suggests, however, that writing about music, like writing about art in ekphrastic poems, can expand the meaning of the experience.

Of her poem, Water’s Nocturne, June Gould says she wrote it while listening, as a “kind of stream of consciousness,” and the poem “just flowed with the music.”

Water’s Nocturne

Darkness begins, stars –
I long to live outside my window.
Maybe my dream will be like
your dark hair, all flow and gleam.
Remember going down
to the river in your boat? You
rested your head in my lap?

Water drifted so clear, so quiet,
I can see the last time we made love.
I had to go to Prague and you
to Berlin, now you come back to me
when the night ends and dreams begin.

We drifted on a river of sound,
your fingers in the dark water,
my face in shadow, yours in delight.
Women on the bank gossiped in
the language of fireflies.

One star, ours, stayed
still in the night sky.
We didn’t know it was the
last evening we would have
before you went to Warsaw
and I to Paris.

Nothing happened that night,
everything terrible has since.
A world war, death, injury.
But I tell myself, If the world goes
as it innocently has; moon in the sky,
stars in their place, water speaking
in the whispered language of love,
then how can I complain? But I do. 

When now, I see fireflies,
I see my life as an unlit glass house,    
for I have lost the romantic
flood of your song.

June Gould (F. Chopin, Nocturne Opus 72, No. 1 in e minor)