REVIEW POTPOURRI – Poet: Leo Connellan; Composer: Anton Bruckner

Leo Connellan

by Peter Cates

Poet Leo Connellan

Poet Leo Connellan (1928-2001) was born in Portland, grew up in Rockland, lived in Greenwich Village, New York City, during the late ‘50s as part of the generation of beat poets and, upon moving to Connecticut during his later years as a college professor, became recognized as a poet laureate .

He saw the encouragement of young poets showing talent in his classes as his mission in life.

His own poems achieved renown for their simplicity of theme and celebration of daily life among regular folks.

Blueberry Boy draws on his own childhood memories and his Aunt Madge who was a beloved maternal figure after the death of his mother when he was 8 years old, and who made the best blueberry muffins this side of Heaven. The poem also conveys his own goal as a writer to take the special moments of the life experience that suddenly happen and then disappear and give them some permanence on paper:

“I only wish I could have it just once more, you go back and the place looks dull and small in its mosquito biting green.
I was a Blueberry boy in that childhood,
the sun would flush my freckles out
from where winter hid them in the
sallow pale color of snow and I would
run the meadow for blueberries that
my aunt Madge would turn into muffins
I have longed for down the tripup of manhood.
Just a minute again, on my knees, picking
frantically with expectant watered tongue,
ignorant of what lay out of the woods.”

Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner

Wilhelm Furtwangler

A masterful Symphony that celebrates nature is the 4th of German composer Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) and numerous performances of it abound on YouTube.

One in particular is an October 22, 1951, broadcast of the Vienna Philhar­monic under Wilhelm Furtwangler (1886-1954).

Despite the primitive sound, it is a performance that breathes with life as only Furtwangler’s interpretive genius could convey. Somebody commented that the piece sounded as if it were sung by voices instead of played by instruments.