"Gilded Tree" by John Liberatore, performed by flutist Molly Barth

Gilded Tree (2019) John Liberatore
I. dark inside secure
II. black twig tips
III. silence lost to echoes
IV. quivering with light
John Liberatore
*composer, pianist, and one of the world’s few glass harmonica players
*fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Tanglewood, Yaddo, the Brush Creek Arts Foundation, the I-Park Artist’s Enclave, and the Millay Colony
*commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation and the American Opera Initiative
*recipient of two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards and the Brian Israel Prize
*Through a 2012 Presser Music Award, he studied in Tokyo with Jo Kondo-a mentorship that made an indelible impression on his music.
*recordings on Ravello, Innova, Centaur, and Albany record labels
*degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Syracuse University
*teaches at the University of Notre Dame.
Fable
-for Esther Traugot
1.
I began innocently enough
Dressing the Apple tree in unmatched socks
To dissuade the Deer from grazing
To deter the Codling Moths from burrowing
To keep the Squirrels at bay-
After all, the fruit was mine.
2.
Socks made Tree's limbs look naked.
What if I clothed them too, used hooks & yarn?
I decided to crochet in gold.
Twigs too delicate for yarn, I stitched with string
Disguising every seam with tiny knots.
I gilded Tree, limb by limb-
Black twig tips I left unclothed, so light
And wind might fondle them.
3.
I couldn't stop stitching.
Seashell was empty, its silence lost
To echoes, exiled to noise.
What could I do but fill it? Go at it
With hooks & yarn. If a living Tree
Could be clothed, why not a Shell?
In Shell's blue spiral, I nested gold squares.
Shell was luminous, silent again.
4.
Then, oblong, unbalanced Egg
Fragile, alone, needed to be clothed.
I hooked a hood of thin gold thread.
I left a pale oval, where a face
Might appear. I never dropped a stitch.
My hooks sang only being or nothingness.
Egg pulsed gold light-
Its dark inside secure.
5.
Where my yarn lapsed, shadows
Began, extending every object out in time.
Fine gradated shadows of the Apples
The Tree, the Shell, the Egg-
Shadows articulating time, its
Ceaseless touching, prodding on.
There was no way to intervene, to save.
My hands lay folded in my lap.
The gold quivering with light.
From Trickster (University of Iowa, Kuhl House Poets, 2014). All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Poems used by permission of the University of Iowa Press.
"Fable" was a crucial poem for me because it was a literal drama of double binds between art and nature that was resolved paradoxically. "Fable" was commissioned for a reading to accompany an exhibition at the Chandra Cerrito Contemporary Gallery, featuring an installation of work by Bay Area artist Esther Traugot. Traugot meticulously crochets very fine gold thread around or inside a variety of natural objects ranging in size from a quail egg to a tree. The gold thread transforms natural objects into art, while simultaneously undermining their intended natural purpose; so it is possible to preserve, but not to save. "Fable" is also an analogy for our relationship to the natural world, now in the throes of a manmade mass extinction. Can we acknowledge our culpability and overcome our drive to dominate and control, and accept our limitations as animals? -Randall Potts
Randall Potts
*author of Trickster, published in 2014 by the University of Iowa Press, Kuhl House poetry series
*previous collection, Collision Center, was published by O Books in 1994
*Recant: (A Revision) also appeared in 1994 by Leave Books
*graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop
*taught creative writing at the graduate and undergraduate level at the University of San Francisco and the California College of the Arts
www.randallpottspoetry.com
Esther Traugot
*installations include crocheted wrappings around found natural objects with hand-dyed yarns, investigating a personal relationship with the natural world through enhancing their forms and the space they occupy
*BFA from the University of California Berkeley
*MFA from Mills College
*work has been exhibited in L.A., New York, Paris, Berkeley Art Center, the Bedford Gallery, the Palo Alto Art Center, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Irvine Fine Arts Center, the Samek Gallery at Bucknell University, and Elizbeth Jones Art Center
*installations for clients such as Neiman Marcus
*represented by Muriel Guepin Gallery in NY
Thank you:
Audio and Video Production: Continuous Motion Productions
Venue: Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music
Molly Barth is constantly in motion. This Grammy Award-winning flutist, professor and clinician moves effortlessly from concert hall to teaching studio to rehearsal room to orchestral section. Molly is a co-founder of the Zohn Collective and has toured the world, premiered hundreds of pieces, recorded a dozen albums, and with Eighth Blackbird won a Grammy Award. Molly is Associate Flute Professor at the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music. mollybarth.com