Walt Whitman Was Inspired by the Opera

Walt Whitman’s masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, was profoundly influenced by the Italian opera of his day. The conception and writing of his poetry owed much to the bel canto operas of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. He idolized divas such as Marietta Alboni, who he said “roused whirlwinds of feeling in me.” Leaves of Grass contains hundreds of musical terms as well as the names of composers and performers. The word “song” appears more than 150 times.   

n  (paraphrased from an article by Joshua Barone in The New York Times, 29 September 2017)

My own poetry has also been inspired by music. I grew up listening to traditional folk ballads and jazz, and both genres have left their mark on my early poetry (similar to the Beats). The opera too has had an influence on my writing. In college, I began listening every Saturday to the Metropolitan Opera’s radio broadcasts, and I suppose the drama of Verdi’s work and the subtle beauty of Puccini’s arias have in some way inspired the lyrical tendency of my verse. I should also mention that my lyricism was equally, if not more so, inspired by the poetry of Keats and Shelley, which I began reading in high school, as well as Yeats, whom I began reading in college. 

Why Read Poetry in Times of National Heartache?

Because I believe poetry can help to heal the wounds of natural disasters.

The Campesino's Lament by A. S. Maulucci

Mother Earth! Madre tierra!

Your quaking has tumbled our stones,

Our roofs have come down on our heads,

Our lives are shattered,

We are buried beneath the adobe walls

Like the bones of our ancestors.

We call to you from underground now,

But you have stifled our screams.

We are now like the seeds we planted for this year’s harvest.

We damn you! We curse you,

You devil of a madre!

Ay! But it does no good.

You are still the mother we love.

Why do you punish us?

Why are you angry with us?

Have we sinned against you with our mauling tractors?

Have we ravaged you with our great diggers?

How else will you pour forth your abundance

Unless we open you up with the plow?

How else will you feed us?

Have we overpopulated you with our hungry children?

Have we overcrowded you with our teeming millions?

Madre tierra!

We love you but you are killing us,

You are slaughtering us like cattle.

We want you to feed our children,

We need you for our graves.

Do not punish us like God punished Sodom and Gommorah.

Our sins are small and we are weak.

Do not cut us down like the grass.

We cannot come back next year like the cactus.

Have mercy on us!

No matter how fiercely you maim us

We will treat you

With all the tenderness you deserve.

For the Children Orphaned by an Earthquake in Mexico by A. S. Maulucci

Amidst the hell of ruptured streets,

of buildings tumbled

and houses crushed to rubble,

the sisters embrace.

Their fragile limbs

and delicate fingers intertwine.

The ribbons in their hair,

tied by the nimble but trembling hands

of an aunt or a grandmother,

the white and pink dresses

flowing from their vulnerability,

these remnants of innocence will soon fall away,

overpowered by the rare strength

and the raw hunger for survival

pulsing in their faces.

Orphaned by an earthquake,

childhood has vanished

for the surviving children of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Mexico City,

and the last flicker of purity

has been extinguished from their eyes.

Yet what remains is sacred.

After the pain has jolted through them,

their tenderest feelings have risen to the surface.

Horror has penetrated to the core of their lives,

but at eleven or ten or nine, they are too young

for tragedy to shatter their souls to bits.

They stand like trees splintered by lightning.

Love can heal them,

and life can make them strong again.

The Strength of Mexican Women by A. S. Maulucci (from The Land of Sun and Stone)

The women in Gauguin’s paintings

are earth-bound

and how natural they seem,

performing their daily tasks

with contentment and detachment.

In Mexico too

the women seem at peace with themselves

as they sit together pounding corn

or flattening tortillas with plump palms.

One wonders about their secret selves:

do they make their home life hell

with the cruelty of their discontent?

Are their husbands

pounded and flattened by cunning hands?

These women seem so barge-like and strong

like aged wood or leather or an open harbor,

their walk takes possession of the earth,

and in their eyes a look of ancient stars,

a spark of some dimly remembered ritual,

a time of worship that keeps them proud.

Though they seem to give no thought to heaven or hell,

they carry both within their hearts.