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by David Hollander

David Hollander, a writer and musician residing in Brooklyn, received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in 1997. His fiction has appeared in the Black Warrior Review and the Alaska Quarterly, and his non-fiction has appeared in the New Journal of Greek Philosophy. He is the winner of the Barbara Schoen Prize for excellence in fiction writing and was a two-time finalist for the Henfield-Transatlantic Review Prize. Hollander is the author of the novel L.I.E.,

The Imaginary Piano

For several years, I was involved in this really interesting project at PS 107 in Queens. It was a T&W residency conducted in conjunction with Carnegie Hall, designed to integrate classical music and poetry writing. I’m not a music teacher, but as someone with a background in music, I try to treat the classical compositions (which, I should mention, are chosen by a representative from Carnegie Hall—two selections per residency) as a legitimate formal element of the residency, and not simply as background noise. The following is a lesson that I recently added to my repertoire with a class of sixth graders.

The Review

We begin each day by reviewing our prior sessions. There are certain “staples” of writing that we try to keep in mind whenever we begin a new poem, and together the students and I list them on the board. We also keep a tally of different connections we have made between formal elements of music and poetic verse. The “Imaginary Piano” lesson comes late in my residency, after some of these links have already been established. The list on the board ends up looking something like this:

• The 5 Senses
• Colors
• Experience and Imagination
• Metaphor/Simile
• Emotions
• Rhythms (staccato, legato)
• Repetition (melody, theme)
• Dynamics (forte, piano)

The last three items on this list are the result of other lessons that have (hopefully!) examined associations between musical rhythms and their poetic counterparts. Sometimes we’ll stop along the way and do some further review, but classes are only 45 minutes long, so the general list is always the same, expanding slightly with each lesson.

The Set Up

I like to play the music twice during a class session, hoping to familiarize the students with some of its nuances over the course of the residency. (The last time I used this poem, Beethoven’s 5th Symphony was our selection.) Before the first of these musical accompaniments, I ask a series of questions. “We’ve talked a lot,” I tell the students, “about sounds. So tell me: Does the color red have a sound? Yellow? Blue?”

I try to coax descriptive language from them, of course, and scribble responses on the board as I go. One student told me that red sounded “evil” (connotations of blood and the devil, no doubt). When I pushed him (after all, what does evil sound like?) a friend came to his aid and said it sounded “evil, like a beating heart.” “Well,” I asked, “whose heartbeat is evil?” The reply: “A criminal’s.” So that we ended up writing the phrase:

Red sounds evil
like the beating of a criminal heart.

This is all en route to another place, but it’s always really exciting for me to pass these signposts on the way. A few more questions:

• Does brightness have a sound?
• Does Anger?
• Does Peace?

This discussion usually generates a good deal of excitement, and a number of striking metaphors. And it also leads us into the first short musical excerpt.

The Music: Part One

In an unexplainably reversed logic, I now tell the students to imagine that when I press the play button on Beethoven’s 5th, no music will come out. I ask them to imagine that all sound will momentarily disappear from the world, but that it will be replaced by something else. Before pressing the play button, I tell them to imagine that the room is filling up with things other than sound, things that the sound contains, colors and shades, textures, objects, emotions, flavors…anything goes!

Since the assignment is pretty conceptual, this first run-through is important, because it gets them thinking about this odd job of translating music into other senses and experiences. I tell them that there is no need to write a poem at this point, but just to make a list of ideas. Circulating around the room during this brief time (about five minutes), I try to encourage the students to make as many “translations” as possible. If a student has suggested that “sadness” is coming from the CD player, I’ll ask her if it has a particular color to her. For most students, sadness means “blue,” but when pushed further, some of my students give wonderful responses. One girl told me that it was the blue of a rainstorm that she saw, that the sky itself was issuing from the radio.

The Handout

Now I stop the music, and ask the students to volunteer some of their ideas, which get listed on the board. Then I distribute copies of the following poem by Michael Fulop, which I was lucky to stumble across some months ago in a copy of the literary magazine, Press.

IMAGINARY PIANO

It is a piano that gives off light
instead of sound.

At one end of the scale, the light represents
what is normally visible in summer.
It is so bright that whoever touches
one of those keys has to shut his eyes.
Anyone who is near the piano
becomes aware of the heat.
In the middle keys, the light represents
what is normally visible in winter.
It is a weak and diffuse light which barely
allows the existence of shadows.
If it goes on more than a few minutes
people think they have lost something precious.

Starlight is the opposite end
of the scale from summer.
If the room is almost completely dark
the piano slowly becomes visible.

We discuss the poem for a few moments. I like to be sure that they understand the content, so I’ll usually ask them, “What’s different about this piano? What happens when you play it?” I love the end of the third stanza (“If it goes on for more than a few minutes / people think they have lost something precious”), and I’ll ask them what the poet might mean by this. I try to point out words like “heat,” and “winter,” and “weak,” and “shadows,” and “precious,” and make connections between light and its emotional consequences in the poem. I’ll also define the word “diffuse,” which is really the only term outside their vocabulary.

The Assignment

Finally! We’re ready to write a poem of our own! The assignment is simple: Write a poem about your own imaginary instrument. It can play anything you want, except for sound. For today, there’s no sound in the world. I also remind the students that if they’re having trouble thinking of something, they can refer to their initial list of ideas, from our first musical interlude.

I turn on Beethoven’s 5th, and circulate around the room, cajoling and pushing for descriptiveness. Below are some of the responses. Using music in the classroom has taught me a lot. It’s a wonderful way to get students to make connections that would ordinarily lie outside their conceptual frameworks.

IMAGINARY SAXOPHONE (excerpt)

It is a saxophone that blows happiness
instead of sound

But it can also make you feel blue
and scared,
can make you want to live in a trash can
or live in a castle…

It makes visible the life you had
before it ruins it
and when you’re about to be lucky,
it makes visible the things in life
you are not going to have anymore

So whether your life turns out bad
or good
you’ll still have the imaginary saxophone
to keep you alive
to keep you alive
to keep you alive

—Alex Lora, Grade 6

DRUM

You never hear a sound, only a feeling.
That feeling is sadness.
Every time you bang on the drum
sadness overcomes everyone.
They droop and tears roll
down their cheeks.
They feel as though they are dying and
no one can help them.
When you bang on the drum
you see the vibrations, but no one knows
what it is
until the sadness is with everyone.
The drum has patterns carved
in the shapes of tears
almost as if it were crying.
When people first see it,
they fall in love with it.
They fall in love with it, but
when it is too late sadness has hypnotized everyone,
and all because of the drum:
The drum with no sound.

—Vanessa Gomez Grade 6

THE FLOODE

The floode is an instrument
like the flute.
The only differences are,
what the floode plays,
and its length.
It’s much longer than a flute,
and it plays food.
The higher you play,
the lighter the meal.
The lower you play,
the larger the meal.
If you’re good,
you can play your favorite food
in just 2 minutes!
The floode.

—Jim Ballin, Grade 6