BIG WOODS VOICES
Poetry in Harmony
Original Compositions by Will Danforth
Sung by Amanda Witman, Becky Graber, Will Danforth, and Alan Blood
1. Mother, Hear Me Calling
Will Danforth
This song came to me in a vision quest several years ago. Immersed in nature, I aspired to open to the Divine Spirit of Life in all its darkness and light; to listen and receive. One of the gifts was this song.
2. Sea-Fever
John Masefield
As a child, I had to memorize this poem. When it re-entered my adult life, it came weighted with poetic treasure: the sea spoke to me of one’s passion, which is so often lost amid routine adult responsibilities. Follow your bliss!
3. I Hear My Song at Last
Wendell Berry
This is the opening poem from Berry’s collection, A Timbered Choir. The sentiment feels universal, and it begs to be sung. The “fugue” form, wherein the voices are offset, is often used in shape note pieces, and this is the first of several of mine that employ it.
4. Into the Heart of the Serengit
Will Danforth
My wife, Laurie, and I were in Africa on a birding trip, and we drove out onto what the native Maasai call the Serengit—the endless plain. We found ourselves in an endless herd of calving wildebeests that stretched from horizon to horizon. That night I calved this poem.
5. The House of Belonging
David Whyte
From David Whyte’s collection, River Flow, comes this poem, which asks for more space, more quiet. So it emerged as a trio, one of several in this collection.
6. Sometimes a Man
Rainer Maria Rilke; translation, Robert Bly
This poem generated an “Aha!” moment when I realized it was about my father. He stayed behind with the dishes and the glasses. Thanks to Balkan music for the rhythm: 11/8.
7. The Song of Wandering Aengus
William Butler Yeats
In a poetry group I attend, we noted that this poem—one of Yeats’ most famous—had seen a surprising number of unconvincing musical settings. I sensed a challenge and went for it.
8. Night Journey
Theodore Roethke
Roethke’s poem is an explosive exultation of rollicking sensory euphoria. I try to bring the train to rhythmic life and thus do justice to the poem.
9. Don’t Go, Don’t Go
Mirabai; translation, Robert Bly
Mirabai was a legendary Hindu mystic and a devotee of Krishna who lived in India from roughly 1498-1546. Like Rumi and others of that region, she addresses Krishna as her ‘beloved.’
10. A Vermont Pasture
Daniel Leavens Cady
This poem was published in Rutland, Vermont in 1922. To my great delight, I found it on the back cover of Northern Woodlands magazine. It turns out that Cady—scholar, attorney, and poet—was once known far and wide for his “sentimental dialect verse” of rural Vermont and was dubbed ‘The Unique Poet of New England’ as well as Vermont Poet Laureate.
11. Old Path
Leath Tonino
Tonino’s Orion Magazine article, “20 Things Ancient Chinese Poets Taught Me,” inspired this piece. Three in particular spoke to me, and together they make up this song. I originally wrote it as a practice piece to stretch our group technique with some challenging key changes, melodic jumps, and difficult tuning moments.
12. A Short Story of Falling
Alice Oswald
I went looking for poems about nature and actually found a modern poem with rhymed couplets—so suited for music. And fun! The water cycle is reflected in the musical circle of fifths.
13. Strummed
Will Danforth
This is a meditation upon hiking up to a long view on a still winter morning and feeling overcome with a simultaneous sense of connection with the microcosm and the macrocosm.
14. Workin’ on a Building
Traditional
This is a traditional song, and I’ve heard many versions, but the arrangement by the Swan Silvertones, a male African American sextet from the 1940’s & 50’s, totally grabbed me. I echoed their rhythms and updated the lyrics to espouse a more environmentally conscious approach to building.
15. Big Woods: A Prayer on the Eve of Logging
Will Danforth
In the shape note tradition, songs are often named after the place in which they were written. “Big Woods” is the name my wife, Laurie, and I gave to our property in Vermont when we talked to our young grandchildren about where we live. Big Woods is in Vermont’s Current Use program, which offers tax breaks in return for periodic logging. The day before the logging, I went into the woods and found this song.