Poem in Honor of Vermont Arts Council's 50th Year

                                                    

 As it happens, my passing the torch as Vermont Poet Laureate to the gifted Chard deNiord is contemporaneous with the celebration of the VAC's existence for half a century. I will read the following poem on November 2, when, at the Vermont College of the Fine Arts in Montpelier, Chard is invested and a variety of governor's awards for excellence in the arts are presented. The Council has, of course, been deeply involved in all these matters.

It's been a joy and a privilege.

                                    Mixed Figures:

           A Salute to the Vermont Arts Council in its 50^th year

A certain girl once longed

                                                to dance, and likewise a boy.

She does, he does. There were women

                                                and men who ached to sing

or play or compose. They do.

                                                Writers and painters and sculptors

and actors all follow old urges.

                                                With every step or word 

or note or dab of color,

                                                each tap of a mallet, each weld,

our mountains record a thrill

                                                along their spines, a throb

that thrums as far to the east

                                                as the long tidal river and westward

to great Petonbowk, the lake

                                                we call Champlain. Our slopes

and intervals arrange

                                                themselves as a series of circles, 

each wider than one before,

                                                and at length as a single circle

around Derby Line and Dorset,

                                                Bondville, Bloomfield, Barre,

Cabot, Cuttingsville.

                                                St. Albans, Saxton’s River.

The rest.  How I mix my figures!

                                                I’m a man at greater loss

for persuasive words than ever ,

                                                seeking to render a force

beyond his skills at depiction.

                                                I jumble our commonwealth’s map,

muddle even the simplest forms,

                                                all that I yearn to capture

so vast and varied– the sounds,

                                                the phrasings, the light, the movement.

Yet my failings don’t really matter.

                                                As King Lear’s blind Duke said,

“I see it feelingly.”

                                                Don’t all of us feel and see it

in this room, this town, this state,

                                                that ineffable amalgam

of Vermonters’ multifold spirits,

                                                which surge through the artist’s existence?

And those who honor that artist–

                                                it’s every bit as alive 

in them. They come from every

                                                walk– every flight of life.

They glide silent into the voices

                                                of horn and string; they shine,

however unnoticed, in brilliance

                                                of marble or metal or pigment; 

their indiscernible steps

                                                enliven the steps of the dancers;

they mutely charge an author’s

                                                forays into expression,

all of us fired and braced

                                                by this crucial collaboration.