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An Epistle of Sullivan

Dear Gilbert—your libretto is delightful!
A charming English-Japanese confection.
I now concede my words last week were spiteful
And truly earned your heated interjection.
Apologies. Your umbrage was quite rightful.
You’re guiding G&S to sheer perfection.
.
Japan’s Mikado! What a striking thought!
And set within “the Town of Titipu!”
Such fun! Yes, my imagination’s caught
For this is something clearly fresh and new
As are the charming characters you’ve brought
To life. Not one is real, yet all are true!
.
I now regret our late creative friction;
I rather thought you’d grown bereft of notions.
I could not set to music one more fiction
Involving dull cliches and magic potions
Or write more songs for patter-driven diction
With vapid dances crowned by clumsy motions.
.
In short, our plays of late seemed dull and tame.
True, London hummed our operettas’ airs;
Yes, Pinafore and Penzance brought us fame.
But in those triumphs there were hidden snares:
My tunes grew slack, your words devoid of flame.
It’s years since our shows filled the Savoy’s chairs!
.
But this new work will surely be a smash,
For The Mikado sparkles and entrances!
I’ll write a score with Japanese panache;
With English taste but oriental dances.
A fusion, yes, a new creative flash
Which shows that art must not fear taking chances!
.
Last night Lord Stanley stopped me on the Strand
To praise us with a personal ovation.
This moved me! Though our operas are not “Grand”
He said we give great honor to our nation.
So, Gilbert, let me now extend my hand
In thanks for our well-loved collaboration.
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Poet’s Note: Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado opened at D’Oyly Carte’s Savoy Theater in 1885 and was an immediate smash. It reversed a several-year artistic slump and became the team’s most successful opera both artistically and financially. It has been translated into dozens of languages and is one of the most frequently played musical theater pieces in history.
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The Art of Collaboration

Cole Porter and a friend were listening to the radio in 1949
when the new hit song “Some Enchanted Evening” from
“South Pacific” was played. The friend said, “That’s one
helluva song! Who wrote it?” Cole Porter answered: “Rodgers
and Hammerstein… if you can imagine it taking two men to
write one song.”
.
A friend said let’s write poetry together;
He’d write out metered lines and I’d compose
The rhymes. An ode, perhaps! If we can tether
The thoughts and phrases of two men in prose,
Like Addison & Steele, then why not verse?
So I’ll be Rodgers, you be Hammerstein
And we’ll write works both flowery and terse
Which dazzle as creative minds combine!
.
He got me thinking. How could this be so?
Of course on Broadway partnerships are strong:
George Kaufman and Moss Hart, Lerner and Lowe;
They toss ideas around, they tune a song.
Performers also work well as a pair:
Take Hope and Crosby, Abbott and Costello,
Or Ginger Rogers matched with Fred Astaire.
Or at the Concert Hall: harp joined by cello.
.
But poetry? I can’t see Keats and Blake
As partners on a lyric or an ode.
Or Rochester with Wordsworth on the lake,
Or Plath with Frost in woods where it has snowed.
I told my friend no thanks, I write alone.
While plays and songs work in collaboration
A poet must write poems on his own:
One muse, one soul, one flash of inspiration.
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Brian Yapko is a retired lawyer whose poetry has appeared in over fifty journals.  He is the winner of the 2023 SCP International Poetry Competition. Brian is also the author of several short stories, the science fiction novel El Nuevo Mundo and the gothic archaeological novel  Bleeding Stone.  He lives in Wimauma, Florida.

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27 Responses

  1. Bruce Phenix

    Thank you, Brian – your poems are delightful too! So much truth in what you’ve said, and so much skill – as well as thought and feeling – in the way you’ve expressed it.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Bruce! I had great fun writing them so I’m glad you found them enjoyable.

      Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    These fantastically written creative poems on musical collaboration played enchantingly on my own musically inclined mind. The quotes certainly set the scene for each providing me with highly relevant information. You have a superb gift of meter and rhyme than shines on in classical poetry.

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Brian,
      Thanks for two very imaginative and skillfully constructed celebrations of collaborations in words and music. Though there have been many prose collaborations (Naked Came the Stranger comes to mind), who has attempted a poem such as you envision here? Maybe you could at least work out an imaginary production, complete with commentary, from such an undertaking.
      Porter, admittedly a “go-it-alone” whiz almost without compare in popular song (despite the occasional lyric howler–“Night and day, under the hide of me …”), must have been responding tongue-in-cheek (or with envy?) on “Some enchanted evening”: he knew perfectly well that without Goethe there would have been no “Erlking,” and without a King James Paul no “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Sometimes one is enough, more often two, and sometimes even more.

      Reply
      • Brian A. Yapko

        Thank you for your kind words and your detailed thoughts about collaborations, Julian! It’s interesting to explore the “go-it-alone” writers versus those projects that have to be in collaboration. Porter was in good company with Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser and Meredith Willson, so songwriting seems to be one of those artforms that can successfully go either way. On the other hand, as you point, something really complex like the translation of the Bible would be impossible without a collaborative effort. Or (I know how musical you are) contemplate an opera in which the composer also wrote the libretto and lyrics. It’s almost inconceivable! Mozart needed his Schikaneder.

    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Roy. Gilbert & Sullivan and Rodgers & Hammerstein are tough acts to follow!

      Reply
      • Julian D. Woodruff

        Maybe I can sneak in a reply to your comment above on collaborations, Brian. While writing my response, Mozart’s & Schikaneder’s Magic Flute came to mind. We think of S as small potatoes compared to M, but M was among the more discriminating composers when it came to librettists, so though he was no Goethe we shouldn’t sneeze at S.
        There are a few go-it-aloners in opera, too, where 1st place belongs to Wagner. Berg and Schoenberg both come to mind, also Boito and Menotti (the latter 2 also librettists for others).

  3. Mark Stellinga

    Two of your very best, Brian. Talk about jamming a thousand images into one poem, and doing it twice!! For all but a VERY few poets, both of these pieces would have been virtually impossible to compose. Not that it’ll ‘butter your parsnips’, young man, but I, a strictly perfect-rhyme-n-meter-fanatic, am extremely impressed with these 2 works. Great job –

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you for this very generous comment, Mark! A thousand images! Not exactly, but I appreciate the compliment! And your culinary expression intrigued me: I’ve never had buttered parsnips! I must try them.

      Reply
      • Mark Stellinga

        This is merely a reference to: ‘There is a kind of success called of esteem’, Robert Frost wrote in a letter early in his career, ‘and it butters no parsnips’, arguing that a poet’s credentials often has little to do with their achieving success. I agree – 🙂

  4. Joshua C. Frank

    Brian, these are great!

    I can’t imagine collaborating with someone on a poem, either. I could see myself writing a poem as part of someone else’s project, or someone else composing some kind of art to go with one of my poems. But poetry has always been a one-man operation: bands and musical writers have specialized lyricists and melodists, which is probably why they don’t do as well apart as together.

    As for “An Epistle of Sullivan,” it shows all the beauty of their musicals, and I’m thinking I may want to be more familiar with them as a result.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Josh. It just would be too strange to sit down with someone and write a poem together. Perhaps as a party game where I write line one and you write line two. But not as a serious artistic endeavor!

      I think you would very much enjoy the Gilbert & Sullivan plays. The three mentioned in my poem are the “big three”: H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado. I personally favor the dark comedy of The Mikado — and apparently am not alone. They all have beautiful music but more patter songs and comedy songs because these operettas are — above all — Victorian satire.

      Reply
  5. Shamik Banerjee

    Your creativity shines through these pieces, Brian. Unique concepts, fantastically delivered. I was especially enthralled by The Art of Collaboration: it’s greatly relatable and I believe such a feeling has gripped every poet once in a while. Plus, the rhyme pairs, cello-costello and pair-astaire are new and intriguing. Over-all, two satisfying pieces. Thanks for these!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you very much indeed, Shamik! When one brings unexpected cultural references into a poem (contemporary as well as historical) it can offer all sorts of fresh variety in rhymes. Plus it’s fun to write.

      Reply
  6. Rachel

    Fun, humor, and profound insights at once. The last stanza is spot on with the contrasts between the poets. “Plath with Frost in woods where it has snowed” indeed! Somehow, it takes only five lines to get from that lighthearted note to something profound:

    “A poet must write poems on his own:
    One muse, one soul, one flash of inspiration.”

    I hadn’t noticed this contrast before, but it seems right. Even the few counterexamples honor it in the breach. For instance, the middle French poem “The Romance of the Rose” has two parts by two different authors, but that’s due to the death of the earlier author, and the parts are radically different.

    Quick question for any visual artists here. Are you also solitary creators? I can’t recall any single great painting or statue that was a collaboration. This seems to be different from glass-making, cabinetry, and architecture. But perhaps I don’t know enough about those arts (despite being duly envious!).

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you very much for this kind and thoughful comment, Rachel. Obviously those contrasts were a sort of reductio ad absurdum and a product of my imaginary time machine. Could any two poets be different from the Earl of Rochester and William Wordsworth? Of course, Sylvia Plath and Robert Frost did have some temporal overlap but they could not be more different. Here’s a weird bit of trivia that I just realized — Plath and Frost both died in 1963!

      I wish I could answer your question about visual artists. I can imagine completing another’s work due to death but its harder to see a collaboration. It’s more like a succession. I think the great artists did have assistants, but I don’t quite count that. From a musical standpoint, I’m reminded that Mozart died during the creation of his Requiem and it had to be completed by his pupil Franz Sussmayr.

      Reply
  7. Joseph S. Salemi

    George and Ira Gershwin worked well as a pair, but they composed a lyric that casts doubt on the ability of two opposing temperaments to be in harmony:

    You say to-MAY-to, I say to-MAH-to;
    You say po-TAY-to, I say po-TAH-to.
    To-MAY-to, to-MAH-to, po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to —
    Let’s call the whole thing off!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you for commenting, Joe, and for the fun lyric of “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” The irony is that they made a good song out of a couple’s supposed inability to speak with the same pronunciation (and, presumably, sense of good taste.)

      Whenever I think of the Gershwins, I think of the apocraphyl story of the 1950s radio disk jockey. When playing a piece written by the Gershwin brothers, he attributed the song to “George Gershwin and his lovely wife, Ira.” !

      Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Joseph,
      Your comment puts me in mind of the brothers’ respective self-portraits. Ira, at least, saw a broad difference between their personalities, and after George’s death went on to other successful collaborations.

      Reply
  8. Margaret Coats

    Brian, you are on stage at your entertaining-entertainer best with these works. I can imagine you running through your large stock of music-and-movie fun to come up with poetic words that will be the cleverest rhymes on the subject. And like any superlative showman, you refuse to be limited by repertoire, stepping beyond to discover a crazy concerto for harp and cello–showing you will indeed find a perfect rhyme for whatever you like. It is jocular as Jupiter that your supposed proposal for collaboration in the second poem has you doing the rhymes for someone else’s meter.

    These represent a crafty selection, of course. You may not have wanted to tell the sad tale of Lennon and McCartney, collaborators most cruelly robbed of the profits of their creativity in youth and thereafter. And you left out another pair who both composed and performed together, but by contrast may have made the most moolah, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. I am confident it wasn’t due to difficult names.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Margaret! I’m delighted that you find my work entertaining — I do aim to please! I’m tickled that you zeroed in on that Abbott and Costello rhyme of “Harp joined by cello.” It is indeed an unusual combination, but before I submitted the poem I found this Johann Strauss II piece:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bIKYSb0DBk

      I believe there’s also a Schubert piece. So it’s not quite as a bizarre as a Wordsworth-Rochester collaboration.

      “Jocular as Jupiter”! Ah, now we’re looking at Holst. But yes, I would gladly pair Bing Crosby with Yo Yo Ma if it could make for an entertaining rhyme!

      I actually did try to get McCartney and Lennon into this poem but couldn’t find a way to make it work. Plus, they don’t make me happy so I didn’t try very hard. As for the ABBA composers, they never even occurred to me. Perhaps a sequel is called for!

      Reply
  9. Russel Winick

    Brian – I loved both of these extraordinarily creative poems! As a former Lieutenant The Duke of Dunstable in Patience (Grinnell College, Iowa, 1975), An Epistle of Sullivan even brought back some fun old memories. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you for this wonderful comment, Russel! I have seen “Patience” on DVD and, although it’s not one of the Big Three, it’s thoroughly engaging. You must have sung “The Soldiers of Our Queen.” My favorite song in the show is “When I Go Out of Doors.” This is a quality show which should be revived more.

      Reply
  10. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    What a delightful pair of beautiful lyric creations. I love the smooth eloquence and sing-song charm of their rhythm and would love to hear them set to music.

    For me, “An Epistle of Sullivan” is a huge smile of a poem that captures a moment of realization that shines a spotlight on that creative path to future glory. It also reminds this poet to keep an open mind and try new things… I am always very aware that I’m only as good as my last poem.

    I am utterly intrigued by the ideas put forth in “The Art of Collaboration”. I have always thought along the lines of, “A poet must write poems on his own: / One muse, one soul, one flash of inspiration.” … but, after many years of writing poems separately, I believe I could write one with my nearest and dearest… if he is willing. Brian, thank you for your talent and for your constant inspiration!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Susan! I’m grateful for your insights on G&S and that moment of realization when one realizes that one simply needs to look at something (whether art or an idea or an insight) with different eyes. Always try new things!

      If you and Mike can collaborate on a poem I bet it will be amazing! I’d love to read it! I don’t think poetic collaboration is impossible. It just seems quite rare. And I know quite confidently that it’s not for me.

      Reply
  11. Daniel Kemper

    Though I thoroughly enjoyed the poem on Gilbert and Sullivan, and thoroughly enjoyed them, the poem about imagined duos got my mind running the most. I wonder what sort of intern Keats would have made for WCW? I’ll not hijack the thread with possible duos, but it set me to dreaming for a while. Had Eliot met Shakespeare instead of Pound…

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Daniel, thank you for this generous comment and, even more, for taking the idea in my poem one step further. It would be huge fun to imagine various historical poets (and others too, perhaps) interacting. An Eliot who was mentored by Shakespeare would probably have been a lot less uptight. Prufrock would have devoured that peach no questions asked. But the imaginative possibilities are endless. Imagine a meeting between Young Abe Lincoln the lawyer and Cicero. Or Emily Dickinson and Joan of Arc. These thoughts remind me of a play by (most improbably) Steve Martin: Picasso at the Lapine Agile. This play depicts a historical fantasy meeting between Picasso and Einstein in 1904 (immedately before their big breakthroughs in art and physics) along with a visitor from the future who turns out to be Elvis Presley.

      Reply

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