Prelude and Fugue (of the Knight of Cups)

[A friend dared me to try writing a poem in a fugue-form. Below is the result. Some comments are in order first, though.

The Knight of Cups is a card from the Tarot deck. For those of you who've never seen or played with Tarot cards, they are quite fascinating, even if you don't believe in divinations (and I don't). The symbology is intricate and in many ways psychologically relevant. (I think that the way a person interprets a spread can tell you a lot about what issues are going on for that person.) The suit of Cups—the four suits are Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles—is a suit dealing with feelings and emotions, including, of course, love. The Knight (a rank that disappeared in our playing cards) card in each suit in a spread often represents an unmarried man. The Knight of Cups card is the card of a dreaming youth. Another card, the High Priestess, is alluded to and this card (not surprisingly) often symbolizes an Ideal-Woman figure in a spread.

The form of the piece is intended to parallel (in some sense) the form of a Bach prelude and fugue. In music, a prelude can assume pretty-much any arbitrary form, but fugues have a definite structure. (For a better commentary than here on this structure, you might consult Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach book, or any textbook on musical form.) A fugue consists of some number of voices (parts), usually between 2 and 4. The first voice begins with the primary theme, the subject, of the fugue. The second voice then enters playing the subject (maybe transposed) while the first voice moves into a secondary theme, the counter-subject. In a three-part fugue, the third voice then enters with subject (in the key of the piece, usually) while the second voice moves to the counter-subject and the first voice goes off on its own merry way. After a while, all of the voices are doing their own thing, although what they do typically is related to the subject and counter-subject. Eventually, the voices return to a (typically more emphatic) statement of the subject before the piece ends.

I have yet to present this piece at any reading, but it might be done as follows. The main reader (who we'll call the Narrator) would read the prelude and would begin reading PART ONE's first four lines, finishing the "subject" of the piece which is contained in the first stanza. The Narrator would continue by reading the fifth line, and then, a second reader would enter reading the first line of PART TWO. Then, the Narrator would read line 6 and the second reader would read the second line of PART TWO, and this pattern would continue until the Narrator gets to the third stanza of PART ONE. Then, the Narrator reads line 9, the second reader reads line 5 of PART TWO, and a third reader enters reading the first line of PART THREE. This reading of the "rows" by turns would continue until the end of the poem where the three speakers will recite the final line in unison. A listener has the option of following one of the voices or in trying to listen to the interlocked sequence of voices (which has a semi-coherent meaning as well).

G.C., May 2000]

Prelude

Your voice
But a brief allegro,
A few seconds of light phone conversation,
Yet somehow it has enticed me.
It isn't quite what you said
But the way you said it:
The life, the spirit,
That make me so eager to know you.
I've never met you,
But I know I want to...
Behold the face behind the name,
Hear the delicate counterpoint of your questions,
Offer up my vaulted dreams and musings,
Bask in the scent of your perfume,
Seek the answer to my life's deepest riddle
In the portentous waters of your hair.

Fugue in Three Parts

ALL PARTS IN UNISON

O priestess, high priestess of Life!

George Chadderdon © 1996