Serendipity from the Angela Hewitt's Recital

The Angela Hewitt recital turned out to be such a treat! (Chinchih exchanged the ticket for me so I had no idea what program I was attending till tonight.) The best part, to me, was Miss Hewitt's 10 minute pre-performance lecture on how to listen to "the Art of Fugue". (I confess without that I would definitely fall asleep during the recital.)

While listening to Miss Hewitt explaining how Bach used mirroring and inversion in each piece (she even did a little demo), I suddenly had an epiphany. Not on Bach, but on Bishop's poetry. There are a lot of mirroring and inversion in Bishop's poetry (from her early work "The Gentleman of Shalott" to the love poem "Insomnia") through her unique way of using images. In her villanelle "One Art", repeating sounds (words like master/disaster) appear like recurring musical subjects. I suddenly remembered when Bishop went to Vassar, she was to study music (then changed to English Literature due to her terrible stage fright). She actually studied Baroque music and counterpoint for a year. All that knowledge, she carried into her poetry. (After all, poetry can be considered a form of music.)

With that insight, I felt like Columbus discovering the new world. 2014 is really a breakthrough year for me as a reader. Life is really "awful but cheerful", and full of serendipities.

Looks like I am not the only one who identifies the relationship of music and Bishop's work.