Poetry
James DePreist, one of the first African American conductors to achieve international renown, was also an accomplished poet, publishing two volumes of poetry: This Precipice Garden (1989) and The Distant Siren (1986). Read selected poems here, as well as Maya Angelou’s and William Stafford’s praise for Jimmy’s resonant verse.
Foreword from The Distant Siren
by Maya Angelou
❦
There is obviously poetry in the orchestral conducting of James DePreist and audible musicality in the poetry of James DePreist. His second collection of poetry has the tautness of a perfectly pitched viola and much of its resonance.
DePreist’s eye of poesy leads him into sanctums which might appear at first glance unexciting, but he enters and finds depths and shades and melodies and promise.
“August
jealous of September’s prize
drips its resentment
like a
too-full sponge
exacting tolls bitter
and exorbitant
for the annual right of passage home”
There is a Haiku-like brevity in many of the poems and it is obvious the poet is capable of condensing lifetimes and relationships into powerful images. His four desolate, but non-pitying lines
“In loneliness lamented
those absent loves
in surfeit
spurned”
are perfect in their density and irreducible language.
Here the cosmos is filled with delusion and despair. Yet, strangely the poems are testament of faith.
DePreist, as poet conductor, directs the reader away from cynicism. The reader is encouraged to look softly toward the closing of a circle, and to be unafraid of its center.
The title poem reveals to the reader the potent threat of the external influences. Yet, we are assured that love protects all, and even redeems all.
“My grandmother brought
the distant siren’s tension among
the peace of our unaffected home
with
words that spoke the compass of
her soul and never let us, untouched,
hear
a
siren’s song
again.
‘Poor somebody,’ she said.”
We are made rich by this contribution.
Maya Angelou
July 1989