vol. 25: fleurs de lavande

This morning my voice teacher, Tracy, sent me a morning Mary Oliver poem to give me a bit of wind under my sails during a tough emotional week. It got me looking through the few poems I’ve been loving lately & specifically, those that mention lavender.

It’s no secret that lavender has healing properties. It’s used in herbal medicine & by aromatherapists to treat wounds, stress, headaches and other ailments. One of the most magical things about southern France are its fields of lavender.

luxuriating in Provence a few years ago

I’m currently learning Lili Boulanger’s epic song cycle Clairières dans le ciel with poetry by Francis Jammes. Coincidentally, my duo partner, Tony, comes from the same town in southern France as Jammes. Naturally, I asked him upon learning the first song if his town smelled of lavender.

Elle était descendue au bas de la prairie
et, comme la prairie était toute fleurie
de plantes dont la tige aime à pousser dans l’eau,
ces plantes inondées je les avais cueillies.
Bientôt, s’étant mouillée, elle gagna le haut
de cette prairie-là qui était toute fleurie.
Elle riait et s’ébrouait avec la grâce
dégingandée qu’ont les jeunes filles trop grandes.
Elle avait le regard qu’ont les fleurs de lavande.

English:

She had reached the low-lying meadow,
and, since the meadow was all a-blossom
with plants that like to grow in water,
I had picked these flooded flowers.
Soon, soaking wet, she reached the top
of that blossoming meadow.
She was laughing and gasping with the gawky
grace of girls who are too tall.
Her eyes looked like lavender flowers.

For those unfamiliar with Lili Boulanger, she was the sister of the renowned composition teacher Nadia Boulanger (who taught an entire generation of composers including Copland, Piazzola, Philip Glass, Virgil Thomson…. even my grandfather Ezra for a summer, though she didn’t think much of his compositions!). Lili was a real wunderkind of a composer. She and her sister studied with Gabriel Fauré and Lili won the prestigious Prix du Rome; something her sister never achieved. Some have suggested that had she lived longer (she died tragically at 25), she would have been the third point of the triangle of glorious 20th century French composers that includes Debussy & Ravel (my favourites).

Apparently Lili liked Francis Jammes’ Tristesses (the collection from which Clairiéres dans le ciel is taken) because she identified with the gawky, dreamy love interest for whom the protagonist longs. I love Jammes’ Symbolist, abstract sensibilities. Suggesting so much yet also saying very little. Highly recommend listening to Heidi Grant & Kevin Murphy’s recording below:

the sisters in 1902

More lavender poems…

James Schuyler:

John Ashbery, “Darlene’s Hospital“:

Mary Oliver, “Tides”:

Every day the sea
    blue gray green lavender
pulls away leaving the harbor's
dark-cobbled undercoat

slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls
walk there among old whalebones, the white
     spines of fish blink from the strandy stew
as the hours tick over; and then

far out the faint, sheer
     line turns, rustling over the slack,
the outer bars, over the green-furled flats, over
the clam beds, slippery logs,

barnacle-studded stones, dragging
the shining sheets forward, deepening,
     pushing, wreathing together
wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures

spilling over themselves, lapping
     blue gray green lavender, never
resting, not ever but fashioning shore,
continent, everything.

And here you may find me
on almost any morning
walking along the shore so
     light-footed so casual.

& of course, there’s my (almost) birthday twin (year, day, everything), and her take on lavender.

Wishing everyone a dreamy morning.