happy thanksgiving (in french)

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm blogging from Shank Family HQ in Northfield, Minnesota. I woke up and ran the town's traditional Thanksgiving 5k, the Turkey Trot, this morning and even though my 51-year-old-father-with-a-bum-knee smoked me by 2 minutes I still had a blast (and even ran into another choral composer in the process).

After a bunch of reading and language research I finally started on the new French pieces for Chapman University. The entire thing will end up being a multi-movement set using some great texts by 19th-century French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Guillaume Apollinaire. In the spirit of my "language year" I decided to go way out of the box with regards to the type of poetry I set and, frankly, some of it is pretty out there.

If you've never heard of Rimbaud I highly suggest you look him up. He essentially changed the face of poetry and artistic expression with his works (two of his more high-profile, self-confessed fans are Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan...perhaps you've heard of them?). The kicker is that he wrote it all between the ages of 16 and 19 and then dropped off the proverbial map. Not exactly a lightweight.















One of my favorite Rimbaud quotes has to do with his method for writing poetry. He describes it as a "long, intimidating, immense and rational derangement of all the senses. The sufferings are enormous, but one must be strong, be born a poet, and I have recognized myself as a poet."

Shine on, brother.

And then there's Guillaume Apollinaire. Not only did this guy coin the term "surrealism" (you're welcome, Salvador Dali) but he was accused of and arrested for stealing the Mona Lisa. He was eventually exonerated after a week in jail (during which he wrote some great poems) but not after trying to implicate his friend, Pablo Picasso in the theft.

Yeah, so that's pretty awesome.




















One of the texts I'm using is his Poème lu au mariage d’André Salmon ("Poem for the Marriage of André Salmon") and it's got one of my favorite lines about the result of creativity.

"Ni parce que fondés en poésie nous avons des droits sur les paroles qui forment et défont l’Univers"

Translated it means, "Nor because rooted in poetry we have the power of words forming and deforming the universe." I know it's a little dramatic but it's still pretty awesome. Percy Bysshe Shelley called poets the "unacknowledged legislators of the world" and I think that's what GA is getting after here: the sliver of self-importance that inhabits every creative venture.

Speaking of creative ventures, my family has (as a last resort) entrusted their only vegetarian to cook the turkey this year. So...we'll see how that turns out. Wish me bonne chance.