Author’s Note: As a child I took piano lessons, but they left me only with a life-long aversion to the piano. When I retired from full-time teaching, I decided to see if I could get over that aversion. My introduction to “Chopin for Beginners” in 2020 led me to reading a biography of Chopin (whose times were filled with war, pestilence, and discord, like our own), and from there—inevitably, for me—to writing a series of poems about the composer, pianos, and music.
Chopin’s Ghost
“The joy of reading appears to be the reflection of the joy
of writing, as though the reader were the writer’s ghost.”
—Gaston Bachelard
I’m reading Chopin’s letters from 1830.
He’s in Paris and, homesick for Poland, goes into a library
and finds a book titled, Chopin,
“a pretty large volume, elegantly bound.”
It’s a book about his music,
with copies of his variations in his own hand.
“This is an absurdity worth remembering,”
he writes home. I have a sense
of my own absurdity, reading Chopin
reading Chopin, with a strange awareness
of him, as if he stood at my shoulder.
It’s October and the light has turned sideways,
so thin as it slivers through the blinds.
The piano of my childhood was an upright
of mahogany. Once I opened the lid
and found a doll resting on top of the strings
and hammers. I left it there
and played my scales and little songs
with a frisson of something akin to terror,
as if a ghost accompanied me.
♦
Bethany Reid’s stories, essays, and poems have recently appeared in One Art, Poetry East, Quartet, Passengers, Adelaide, Kithe, Descant, Peregrine, and Catamaran. Her fourth full-length collection of poems, The Pear Tree: elegy for a farm, won the 2023 Sally Albiso Award from MoonPath Press. Reid, from Washington state, blogs about writing, reading, and life at http://www.bethanyareid.com.
The Delmarva Review, published in St. Michaels, MD, selects the most compelling new poetry. fiction, and nonfiction from thousands of submissions nationwide (and beyond) for publication in print, with an electronic version. It is produced at a time when many commercial publications (and literary magazines) have closed their doors or are reducing literary content in print. Selection is based on writing quality, and almost half of the writers have come from the Chesapeake region. The review is available worldwide from Amazon.com, other major online booksellers, and specialty regional bookstores. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org
