Most Wednesday afternoons, I can be found sitting in the Performance Hall at Eastfield College. Here I have been blessed to listen to a variety of music played by virtuosos and students most of whom have delighted and enchanted me. One day, I found myself scribbling verses in the blank spaces of my program, and I have kept the habit for several years. This book contains untitled poems composed during recitals I attended between 2005 and 2012, most of them drafted on those programs or some paper I brought with me. Some poems are about the music I listened to. Some are about what came to mind as I listened to that music. For many readers, the thread connecting these pieces to music will be invisible. The voices in this collection vary. What remains is at least an attempt to connect art forms and honor the wonder and grace of the performances and the composers who first imagined them.
Michael Neal Morris if the author of Based on Imaginary Events, Is It I, Rabbi, In Domestic News and Music for Arguments. He has published online and in print in a number of venues. He lives with his family outside the Dallas area, and teaches at the Eastfield campus of Dallas College. He posts at This Blue Monk and Two Cents On.