Bartok and the Geranium

My friend Michael Steinberg died this morning. When you first met Michael, he could seem a bit formidable. His knowledge, especially of classical music, went deep and his opinions were strong. For years I worked in classical music, but without any of the knowledge that comes from musicianship or even scholarship, and it was easy to feel intimidated around him.

But I soon learned that that intimidation was my problem. If I could get over it, I found in Michael a soul who was always curious, always passionate about helping musicians, especially young musicians and ever receptive to the always changing beauty of a classical work played in performance. He was truly generous and lived by his values.

We were at the inaugural weekend at Music at Menlo in 1992 together (with his wife Jorja Fleezanis, who has just retired as concertmaster of the Minnnesota Orchestra) and he was a regular there for six years after that. The festival has published a lovely tribute to him on their web site with special attention to the Poetry Reading Workshops he led there..workshops which were entirely unique to him.

These workshops were quite informal...a gathering of people in a semi-circle around Michael who had spread a number of photocopied poems across a closed grand piano. He would read one or two and then invite Menlo students, musicians, audience members or (in my case) radio producers to come up and choose a poem to read out loud. After we finished reading, we'd get a little gentle coaching about the text, our physical stance or the cadence in our voice...and then a chance to read again. His wife Jorja said about these workshops: "he believed that "rhythm, the gait, and the expression required to read poetry well are intimately linked to what is required to play music well." As a non-musician it was a chance for me to engage in the famous dynamic of coach and student which so many students at Menlo enjoyed with Michael.

So with great gratitude to Michael and love to his own beloved Jorja, I dedicate this poem by Dorothy Livesay, a poem that I picked up off of the grand piano at Menlo one day and learned to read out loud, thanks to Michael.

Bartok and Geranium

She lifts her green umbrellas
Towards the pane
Seeking her fill of sunlight
Or of rain;
Whatever falls
She has no commentary
Accepts, extends,
Blows out her furbelows,
Her bustling boughs;

And all the while he whirls
Explodes in space,
Never content with this small room:
Not even can he be
Confined to sky
But must speed high and higher still
From galaxy to galaxy,
Wrench from the stars their momentary notes
Steal music from the moon.

She's daylight
He is dark
She's heaven-half breath
He storms and crackles
Spits with hell's own spark.

Yet in this room this moment now
These together breathe and be:
She, essence of serenity,
He in a mad intensity
Soared beyond sight
Then hurls, lost Lucifer
From heaven's height.

And when he's done, he's out:
She leans a lip against the glass
And preens herself in light.