Poet’s Note
I don’t often write a poem as thoroughly autobiographical as this sonnet crown, but in honoring my devoted and fun-loving parents, I wanted to introduce them to the reader in all their true glory. My mother’s love of music and my father’s brilliance did shape much of my life, and they gave me (and my siblings) a richly happy and secure childhood. They supported my work as a poet just as enthusiastically as they supported my musical endeavors, and I’m grateful that Mom and Dad both lived to see my first book of poems published.
Note from Mary
We all know the Tolstoy quote from Anna Karenina: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It’s the kind of statement that seems true, unless you think about actual life and not just the needs of the novelist. Of course, happy families share similar attributes, but so do unhappy families. Either way, writers and artists often render the wicked and the weird in their art. Some might claim that this is because the wicked and the weird are more interesting, but I’m not so sure about that. I love dark and devastating work, but if that work is only dark and devastating then it is not reflecting the fullness of reality, and that gets old.
In some ways, goodness is the more perplexing and fascinating thing. It’s easy to be bad. Pretty much everything in modern culture propels us to be wicked, warped, selfish, stunted. That’s partly why I think Jean Kreiling has done something special here. In this crown of sonnets, she has rendered a happy family. It’s beautiful and believable. The meter is assured and orderly (like this diligent family), but not stunted or constrained (there are dreams, music, play, not just diligence). As Anthony noted, the “self-indulgence, hubris, showiness, and cleverness,”—I’d call it the snark of modern art—”which are all too often present in modern poems . . . are not to be found in this poem.” Instead, we get a quiet beauty, a steadiness, an assurance that, yes, there is good—good music, good work, good company—in this world. “Another Music” is the mature work of a woman who was blessed enough to grow up in a good family and wise enough to absorb that goodness and generous enough to share it. Deo gratias.
