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Carol Barnett
Carol Barnett (Beady Eyes)
A Letter to Marianne Moore (from Longing for Home)
An entreaty to fellow poet Marianne Moore to return to her beloved New York City with its boats, bridges, gargoyles and library lions.
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Longing for Home
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Jerusalem
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Mother
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Voyager Dust
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Dancing Toward the Promised Land
baritone, piano
from the cycle Longing for Home
Eugene McCarthy’s fanciful invitation to Marianne Moore, who died in 1972, references several familiar landmarks of the city of which she was a long-time resident. The boats, the piers, the ferry, the bridges, the gargoyles and the lions at the library all afford opportunities for sonic pictures – horns, still waters or ripples, and those library lions processing down the street.
Composer’s Notes
Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005) was an American politician, poet, and long-time Congressman from Minnesota. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959, and the United States Senate from 1959 to 1971. He took up writing poetry in the 1960s, and his growing political prominence led to increased interest in his published works. “If any of you are secret poets, the best way to break into print is to run for the presidency”, he wrote in 1968.
“A Letter to Marianne Moore” is the fourth of five songs comprising Longing for Home, a cycle written to celebrate Source Song Festival’s fifth season. The texts all reference homecoming in various ways – the enduring wish to return to a place remembered with love and longing, as well as the uncertainty, the impossibility of doing so.
Text
Letter to Marianne Moore
(in tribute to Joseph Grucci)
Come quickly to your city.
All the boats at the piers
are quiet, waiting for you.
Only their flags and pennants move
and those gently as tongues whispering
you down from the sky.
The horns and whistles all are silent,
so that you can hear our softer call.
The Staten Island Ferry leaves no wake.
All the waters are still
mirrors waiting for your face.
If another looks, they erase
with quick ripples and regret.
The bridges are bowed,
waiting, and the tunnels call.
The gargoyles hold their stern faces,
but like children waiting to open
presents, threaten to smile.
The lions at the library, one can see
in peripheral vision, twitch their tails,
eager to follow you down the street.
We have promised them your coming
to quiet them.
Everyone knows that there are brown butter-
flies in your hair, and agates
and small mirrors in your purse
and words.
Come quickly to your city.
– Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005)
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