Music of the Living World
The Poetry of Thoreau Lovell and Aldric Ulep
Listen closely. Earth and water pulse and hum. The inhabitants sing, bark, and rev their motors. Dissonance, but somehow blended, contrapuntal. Cacaphony, but with a rhythmic undertone. A drumbeat old as time, maybe even defining time—tick, tock, thump, click.
Thoreau Lovell and Aldric Ulep have listened. They listened, and they wrote. Their poems capture the wild harmonics of the world.
Lovell has an ear for the harmonics of people, sometimes alone, but never wholly from the group. The five poems presented here, excerpted from the book Anecdotes from the Western Bubble, collect and curate images of fallible humanity, our constant undulation between concord and discord. People mutter and whisper, crank up Holiday and Sinatra, while "the songs you play...become ambiance for the revival of archived emotions." John Cage even makes an appearance, his voice "quiet like the meandering wind," giving Lovell the chance to link our words to the music of humankind and the music of wider nature.
Ulep hears this wider nature full force. The pod-fruits of the murungai (Moringa oleifera) clang like chimes. This plant, also called the drumstick tree, embodies a "hallowed rhythm" and inspires the poet's to invoke other plants that are, in their naming, instruments of sound—passion flute, angel's trumpet, and fiddlehead. For Ulep, the whole world—of wolf and birdsong, radio and raga—can be translated into a rich idiom, the lyrics set to a score. All things sing: Light groans; birds make "musics built around five tones"; the earth "has sung before us," its cries transmitted "land to sea, throat to air, breath to breath."
These two poets serve a banquet of sound—delicate notes, vital cadences. Feast your ears!
Thoreau Lovell and Aldric Ulep have listened. They listened, and they wrote. Their poems capture the wild harmonics of the world.
Lovell has an ear for the harmonics of people, sometimes alone, but never wholly from the group. The five poems presented here, excerpted from the book Anecdotes from the Western Bubble, collect and curate images of fallible humanity, our constant undulation between concord and discord. People mutter and whisper, crank up Holiday and Sinatra, while "the songs you play...become ambiance for the revival of archived emotions." John Cage even makes an appearance, his voice "quiet like the meandering wind," giving Lovell the chance to link our words to the music of humankind and the music of wider nature.
Ulep hears this wider nature full force. The pod-fruits of the murungai (Moringa oleifera) clang like chimes. This plant, also called the drumstick tree, embodies a "hallowed rhythm" and inspires the poet's to invoke other plants that are, in their naming, instruments of sound—passion flute, angel's trumpet, and fiddlehead. For Ulep, the whole world—of wolf and birdsong, radio and raga—can be translated into a rich idiom, the lyrics set to a score. All things sing: Light groans; birds make "musics built around five tones"; the earth "has sung before us," its cries transmitted "land to sea, throat to air, breath to breath."
These two poets serve a banquet of sound—delicate notes, vital cadences. Feast your ears!