| My daughter Diana introduced me to the work of
Thomas Lux, one of her favorite poets. When I first read "Men with
Small Heads" I thought the text might be impossible to set to music.
However, as I delved further into Mr. Lux's poems I came to
appreciate their incredible structure, and my imagination ran wild.
Several musical motifs dominate and unify Men with Small Heads. (The
piano quotation of America The Beautiful at the end is intentional.)
Refrigerator, 1957 is a musical fantasy. Reminiscent of French
songs, the opening veers into a 3/4 section as the subject,
"maraschino cherries," is introduced. A parody of Italian opera
(combined with other humorous tidbits) leads to a lyric and touching
close. Imitation figures prominently in A Small Tin Parrot Pin as
the piano punctuates the singer's offbeat observations. Snake Lake
uses hissing to emphasize the recurring "s" sound in the poem. The
"squiggly" musical figures employed in both voice and piano
symbolize swimming and water, and the accented notes are meant to
portray the lurking danger-and sting-of a snake bite.
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| Men With Small Heads
poems by Thomas Lux Men with Small Heads and women with small heads were everywhere in my hometown when I was six. Two men standing on the corner: small heads. Small head: a woman leans to look in her mailbox. Then there'd be some normal bodies, normal heads. Not everyone, in other words, in my hometown had small heads but many did, enough that I'd say to my mother, father: why does that man have a small head? I was glad my parents' heads were normal-size. They were glad I (mostly) didn't ask why a person with a small head had a small head within earshot of that person. Apparently these small heads did not appear so small to them. They had my eyes checked first. They took some x-rays of my skull. Did I have migraines? Did I have pinhead fears, dreams? Perhaps it was the angle through the windshield glass? The local Dr. leaning over me with his penlight probing my retina - his head was huge and the hairs on the back of his hand were crossed like swords. Nothing wrong with my eyes or my brain that he could tell but the heads I swore were small were not, they were just your average heads, circa 1953, just your average heads, in America. |
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| Refrigerator, 1957 More like a vault - you pull the handle out and on the shelves: not a lot, and what there is (a boiled potato in a bag, a chicken carcass under foil) looking dispirited, drained, mugged. This is not a place to go in hope or hunger. But, just to the right of the middle of the middle door shelf, on fire, a lit-from-within red, heart red, sexual red, wet neon red, shining red in their liquid, exotic, aloof, slumming in such company: a jar of maraschino cherries. Three-quarters full, fiery globes, like strippers at a church social. Maraschino cherries, maraschino, the only foreign word I knew. Not once did I see these cherries employed: not in a drink, nor on top of a glob of ice cream, or just pop one in your mouth. Not once. The same jar there through an entire childhood of dull dinners - bald meat, pocked peas and see above, boiled potatoes. Maybe they came over from the old country, family heirlooms, or were status symbols bought with a piece of the first paycheck from a sweatshop, which beat the pig farm in Bohemia, handed down from my grandparents to my parents to be someday mine, then my child's? They were beautiful and, if I never ate one, it was because I knew it might be missed or because I knew it would not be replaced and because you do not eat that which rips your heart with joy. |
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| A Small Tin Parrot Pin Next to the tiny bladeless windmill of a salt shaker on the black tablecloth is my small tin parrot pin, bought from a bin, 75 cents, cheap, not pure tin - an alloy, some plastic toy tin? The actual pin, the pin that pins the pin, will fall off soon and thus the parrot, if I wear it, which I will, on my lapel. I'll look down and it'll be gone. Let it be found by a child, or someone sad, eyes on the sidewalk, or what a prize it would be for a pack rat's nest. My parrot's paint is vivid: his head's red, bright yellow of breast and belly, a strip of green, then purple, a soft creamy purple, then bright - you know the color - parrot green wing feathers. Tomorrow I think I'll wear it on my blue coat. Tonight, someone whom I love sleeps in the next room, the room next to the room with the black tablecloth, the salt shaker, the parrot pin. She was very sleepy and less impressed than I with my parrot with whom, with which I am very pleased. |
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| Snake Lake My friends, I hope you will not swim here: this lake isn't named for what it lacks. This is not just another vacant scare. They're in there - knotted, cruel, and thick with poison, some of them. Others bite you just for fun - they love that curve along the white soft side of your foot, or your lower calf, or to pierce the nerves with their needles behind your knees. Just born, the babies bite you all the same. They don't care how big you are - please do not swim here. There is no shame in avoiding what will kill you: cool pleasure of this water. Do not even dip your toes in because they'll hurt you, or worse, carry you away on their backs - no, not in homage, but to bite you as you sink. Do not, my friends, swim here: I like you living: this is what I believe, what I think. Do not swim here - lest the many turn to few. |
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Poems for Men with Small Heads used by permission of Thomas Lux and Houghton
Mifflin Company from NEW & SELECTED POEMS, 1975-1995 by Thomas Lux. ©1997 by
Thomas Lux. All rights reserved. |
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