Scarecrow Listens
These silences I hear, are they not
music? Interspersed with sunlight and
air flowing through fragrant grasses,
insects ticking in the leaves or burrowing
towards moist darkness, and my friends
cawing from their perches, if I arrange
their presence in sequence, perhaps
around the day’s bones, will you
know my spirit? And when I interweave
these tunes, independent and unrelated,
shaping them into one separate melody,
will you recognize its heart and shiver
to the beat? Ornette Coleman freed
his playing, celebrating the territories
of the unmeasurable, the unnamed. The
real is, no matter what you call it. Take
this leaf and place it atop three others.
What have you? And what am I if not
a gathering of the unwanted, scraps
melded to serve a thought-free purpose,
another’s need. Fleshless, boneless,
breathless, bloodless, I know only
that I am; having no ears, still I listen.
“Scarecrow Listens” first appeared with two companion pieces in Eclectica in summer 2016.
O at the Edges 
John Cage’s 4 minutes 33 seconds according to a scarecrow.
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Ha! But yes!
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You do a lot of good work personifying scarecrows. If I were writing a school paper about it, I might say that they are a good stand in for a narrator because they watch without interacting. But of course, I am not writing a school paper.
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Persona poems offer a buffering element that allows me to present personal and/or philosophical views without sounding too preachy (I hope). Also, trying to assume another personality helps me “see” a bit more, widens the horizon, so to speak.
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To me your poems feel introspective not preachy. And even when you write in a persona, it reads to me like it is personal to you as the author persona.
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Thanks for letting me know. Most of my persona poems contain a bit (ok, a lot) of my personality, though I have written a poem from the perspective of a serial killer, and several other poems with view points that bear little direct resemblance to mine.
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True. The art and the artist both come from the same experiences but are not the same thing. Before I started writing, I liked to draw and paint. From time to time, people would ask me what a drawing or a painting meant. I never had a good answer because I chose my subjects for their visual qualities. And my writing is similar.
It is harder to ignore meaning and messaging in the written word. And it is even harder to ignore how much my writing is shaped by my own experiences, but even when I am writing autobiographically, what ends up on the page is only a simulacrum of my experience. It is my interpretation of what happened. And when others read what I have written about myself, what they get is their interpretation of my interpretation of myself.
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Dear Robert,
I concur with the general sentiment and tenet of your poem with respect to the sanctity of being a listening scarecrow. I also concur with other commenters, including those of Richard Braxton.
Have you ever read John Cage’s “Silence: Lectures and Writings, Calder and Boyars, 1968”. His chance music is indeed quite different from Schoenberg’s serialism and Xenakis’ stochastic music.
Having study music and composition academically, I have come to know John Cage’s music and philosophy quite well. His composition “4:33” or “Four Minutes, Thirty Three Seconds” belongs to a type of concept music. Another kind of music that Cage composed quite regularly is called aleatoric music, which I am keen and curious to see how you relate it to Buddhism, Taoism and other eastern philosophies or religions, and also to psychology, psychotherapy and cognitive science.
I happened to have published a post discussing various substantive issues about music, sound, noise, art, science and philosophy, and would like to welcome your perusal and critique of my said post. In particular, I would like to introduce you to paramusic, which can go much further than concept music and aleatoric music in what it can accommodate or encompass, as discussed in my post entitled “🦅 SoundEagle in Art, Aphorism and Paramusic 🏝” published at
https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/soundeagle-in-art-aphorism-and-paramusic/
A new season has just arrived. Wishing you and your family a productive week and a wonderful March doing or enjoying whatever that satisfies you the most, whether aesthetically, physically, intellectually or spiritually!
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
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Thanks so much for your engagement! I’ve not read the Cage book, but it sounds like something I should pick up. Ah, so many books, so little time. I’m a bit familiar with concept and aleatoric music (attended a concert once during which musicians improvised sounds using keys, shoes, etc). Quite interesting. Paramusic sounds interesting. I’ll read your post. Thank you again!
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Dear Robert,
Thank you for visiting and liking my post entitled “🦅 SoundEagle in Art, Aphorism and Paramusic 🏝“. You are welcome to leave any feedback there.
I have enjoyed reading your highly imaginative post entitled “Scarecrow Listens”. Perhaps you will indeed find additional or even radically new inspirations after reading John Cage’s writings, which can impart further or deeper dimensions to your own poetry.
Speaking of visual imagery and poetic impression, you are cordially invited to come and fly alongside SoundEagle in the following special post that can resonate with the (embodied, corporeal and/or transcendental) Imagery and Impression as well as Being and Feeling of soaring like an eagle, whether symbolically, intellectually, aesthetically or spiritually:
https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2021/11/08/soundeagle-guided-imagery/
This post is a very good example of cross-disciplinary fertilization and experimentation involving the following domains: Animation, Art, Creative Writing, Graphics, Meditation, Music, Music Animation, Musical Composition, Poetry, Psychology, Spirituality and Video. Please enjoy!
Whenever you visit my blog, I would like to recommend using a desktop or laptop computer with a large screen to view the rich multimedia contents available for heightening your multisensory enjoyment at my blog, which could be too powerful and feature-rich for iPad, iPhone, tablet or other portable devices to handle properly or adequately.
In addition, please turn on your finest speakers or headphones, as the said post will be playing music to you automatically for about two minutes.
May you find 2022 very much to your liking and highly conducive to your writing, reading, thinking and blogging whatever topics that take your intellectual fancy and creative whim!
Take care and prosper!
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
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Your poem, “Scarecrow Listens” inspired these two short poems of mine. https://therichardbraxton.wordpress.com/2022/03/01/play-the-music-of/ And https://therichardbraxton.wordpress.com/2022/03/01/from-last-nights-freeze/
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Dear Robert,
Hello! I am resubmitting this comment to address a few typos. I concur with the general sentiment and tenet of your poem with respect to the sanctity of being a listening scarecrow. I also concur with the comments of your other readers, including those of Richard Braxton.
Have you ever read John Cage’s “Silence: Lectures and Writings, Calder and Boyars, 1968”? His chance music is indeed quite different from Schoenberg’s serialism and Xenakis’ stochastic music.
Having study music and composition academically, I have come to know John Cage’s music and philosophy quite well. His composition “4:33” or “Four Minutes, Thirty Three Seconds” belongs to a type of concept music. Another kind of music that Cage composed quite regularly is called aleatoric music, which I am keen and curious to see how you relate it to Buddhism, Taoism and other eastern philosophies or religions, and also to psychology, psychotherapy and cognitive science.
I happened to have published a post discussing various substantive issues about music, sound, noise, art, science and philosophy, and would like to welcome your perusal and critique of my said post. In particular, I would like to introduce you to paramusic, which can go much further than concept music and aleatoric music in what it can accommodate or encompass, as discussed in my post entitled “🦅 SoundEagle in Art, Aphorism and Paramusic 🏝” published at
https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/soundeagle-in-art-aphorism-and-paramusic/
A new season has just arrived. Wishing you and Richard Braxton a productive week and a wonderful March doing or enjoying whatever that satisfies you the most, whether aesthetically, physically, intellectually or spiritually!
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
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Scarecrow asks intriguing questions … he clearly is observant, interpretive … why NOT listening even w/o ears? One hardly needs ears to pick up vibrations, piece them together, respond.
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Scarecrow definitely LISTENS (as opposed to simply hears). If only I had his ears, nonexistent though they may be.
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