Week 3

The Piano Speaks
by Sandra Beasley Sandra Beasley
After Erik Satie


For an hour I forgot my fat self,
my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment.

For an hour I forgot my fear of rain.

For an hour I was a salamander
shimmying through the kelp in search of shore,
and under his fingers the notes slid loose
from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs
that took root in the mud. And what

would hatch, I did not know—
a lie. A waltz. An apostle of glass.

For an hour I stood on two legs
and ran. For an hour I panted and galloped.

For an hour I was a maple tree,
and under the summer of his fingers
the notes seeded and winged away

in the clutch of small, elegant helicopters.


This poem was particularly interesting to me because I was fortunate enough to hear to poet herself actually read the poem to me and my creative writing class. This poem is so intriguing by the way Sandra Beasley gives life to the piano and makes it feel things and think things. It is such a unique concept that a particular piano player (Satie) can give this dull inanimate object so much life and purpose to it. This poem takes the piano and makes it seem so natural and pure. This really proves how she feels that music, especially by an expert like Satie, can make dull things have life and seem brilliant.

The thing that Sandra Beasley used in her poem that I tried to use in mine is the idea of breaking out of a cage and just being free. I lifted a line from her poem to begin mine and took off from there. In my poem the theme was how just unthinking things can help you enjoy life, and that sometimes people just think too much and are too up-tight. Her idea of breaking into primitive instincts, like how the piano did, helps show that life can be excellent if you just go and do what is fun and possibly childish. Another thing Beasley does so well is her imagary and word choice. The lines "under his fingers the notes slid loose/from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs/that took root in the mud." are, in my opinion, the best example from this poem of how smooth everything the piano was doing was. You can picture exactly what Beasley was intending, and you actually feel the kind of slimy "belly in a long jellyrope of eggs". It is amazing, and this along with many other of her techniques can be valuable to a writer.