Their yearly trick of looking new
This post has in mind a brief, simply expressed, but complex poem.
The line quoted is the seventh of just twelve.
One could imagine – wrongly – that this post’s trees inspired the poem.
English poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) wrote The Trees in 1967.
The full poem is here.
Larkin travelled hardly at all, internationally, so it is safe to assume that he never saw this post’s forested hills, near Kyoto, Japan.
(photo copyright Doug Spencer, taken 10 May 2017 – early Spring, when local forests had just become all-green, again)
Most humans are walking contradictions, but Larkin was more so than most.
Both his expressed opinions and his actual behaviour make it very easy for anyone to find evidence to support their admiring view, or their reviling view of Larkin the person.
I am quietly confident that when all metaphorical dust has settled – and assuming that our species is still here – Larkin will be remembered as one of the finer 20th century poets.
(there are signs that this is starting to happen. In judging the worth of, say, Beethoven’s or Bach’s music, I would respectfully suggest that there are few more stupid/irrelevant questions than “was he a nice bloke?”)
Click here for a review of Clive James’ book on Larkin; it should give you some idea of why I hold that view.
For an uncommonly meticulous and evenhanded overview of Larkin’s life and work, click this.
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Another “walking contradiction” took credit for composing this post’s music – a piece you almost certainly already know, and probably first heard via “his” version.
Blue in Green debuted in 1959, on the landmark Miles Davis album, Kind of Blue.
Almost certainly, the tune’s composed notes were provided by its original pianist, Bill Evans.
Miles had huge “form” as a “repeat offender” in the “it is my album, so I get the royalties for any new tunes” department.
Evans had none.
Miles was a genius, but that does not mean that the rest of us ought accept his every false or dubious claim.
Bill Evans always maintained that Blue in Green was his.
In a 1979 radio interview Evans told Marian McPartland,”The truth is I did [write the music]… I don’t want to make a federal case out of it, the music exists, and Miles is getting the royalties….”
Evans remembered that when he suggested that he was entitled to a share of the royalties, Davis wrote him a check for $25.
Nobody is ever going to “top” the first recorded version, but several others are sublime in their own right.
Pianist Marc Copland (be warned – the entry to which link leads is out of date, and none too brilliant. I suggest you also check the pianist’s own site, but as I type, it is not working properly) and double bassist Gary Peacock have been making music together for more than three decades.
Their ongoing association has proved as musically fruitful as Peacock’s better-known one with Keith Jarrett, which ceased some years ago.
This Blue in Green is on their 2009 duo album Insight: