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Column 263

Music Is Time

Intro by Ted Kooser
04.04.2010

Music lessons, well, maybe 80 out of every 100 of us had them, once, and a few of us went on to play our cho­sen instru­ments all our lives. But the rest of us? I still own a set of red John Thomp­son piano books that haven’t been opened since about 1950. Here Jill Bialosky, who lives in New York City, cap­tures the atmos­phere of one of those lessons. 

Music Is Time

Music is time, said the violin master.
You can’t miss the stop or you’ll miss the train.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four.

 
She clapped her hands together
as the boy moved the bow across the strings.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four,
the violin master shouted,
 
louder and more shrill so that her voice
traveled through the house like a metronome,
guiding him, commanding him to translate the beat,
to trust his own internal rhythm.
 
Good boy, she said.
See how hard you have to be on yourself?
How will your violin know who you are
unless you make it speak?

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Jill Bialosky, from her most recent book of poems, Intruder, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, by permission of Jill Bialosky and the publisher.
Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.

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