Jane Brenner's Elected Silence

In a Presidential Election Year, Jane Brenner Elects Silence for a Change at Kalligraphia 13



Jane Brenner Elected Silence



Jane Brenner is former Editor of the journal Alphabet & she likes Literature as well as calligraphy.

Her piece contains as she describes the verbal eccentricities and the "Sprung Rhythm" of
Gerald Manley Hopkins and  music written by Francois Couperin, French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist

ELECTED Silence, sing to me 
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.”
  - Gerard Manley Hopkins

Although I compose music, I'm not familiar with Francois Couperin works. Thanks Jane for introducing  the  Couperin's music.

The first poem I'd read by Hopkins  years years ago was  "Spring_Fall Margaret Are you
Grieving?"
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Hopkins poetic structure is known as "Running Rhythm" based on repeating group of two to three syllables, with the stressed syllable falling in the same place on each repetition. Hopkins called this structure "running rhythm" or "sprung rhythm"

Don't despair if you are a writer or a poet who is not published or doesn't get known during your lifetime. Like Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins was an obscure poet during his lifetime with only a few poems that were published but both Dickinson and Hopkins  were "ahead of their time."  Hopkins friends were responsible for publishing poems and making them  known to a wider audience.

This question has been asked often:  does one hear a tree fall when nobody is in the forest? Does one  hear one hand clapping? This is silence. Does one think beauty is wasted if a gorgeous flower blooms alone in a desert?

Even when no one reads your poems or writings ,are you still a poet or an author? If  you leave your thoughts behind in a manuscript, eventually your silence will be heard like Gerard Manley Hopkins.
"When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”
― Ansel Adams

One of my favorite songs that has silence in it is "I loved you once in Silence" in Camelot expressing  hidden love.