Après Satie: For Two and Four Hands

By Dean Steadman

A man who might be Erik Satie floats, a la Magritte, above Paris rooftops, thinking of a newly-extinct species of songbirds, "contemplating grief in the absence of song." By turns tender, wry, playful and fierce, the poems in Dean Steadman’s second collection, Apres Satie -- For Two and Four Hands, use surreal imagery, recurring characters and cyclical themes to evoke the repetitive nature of much of Satie’s music, as well as the artistic and intellectual temperament of Paris during Satie's most creative years.

The prose poems in the collection borrow titles from Satie's piano compositions, and all of the poems are annotated in a manner similar to Satie's published scores, using a selection of his performance instructions (for example, "like a nightingale with a toothache").

From the affair of Satie and painter Suzanne Valadon to the glimpsed lives of a contortionist, a French cowboy, a Falling Man, and a Floating Woman in the Dada-inflected prose poems, to the musings in other poetic forms that draw us forward in time, to a present-day hospice, or back, to the gallop of a mounted huntress, Apres Satie involves us in the ongoing muddle of pain, sorrow, compassion, passion, joy and curiousness that is our human condition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Apr 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781771314374

Dean Steadman

Dean Steadman's work has been widely published in Canadian journals and e-zines, as well as in the anthology Pith and Wry: Canadian Poetry (Scrivener Press, 2010). He is the author of two chapbooks: Portrait w/tulips (Leaf Editions, 2013), and Worm’s Saving Day (AngelHousePress, 2015). He was a finalist in the 2011 Ottawa Book Awards for his poetry collection, their blue drowning (Frog Hollow Press, 2010). Though he was born in Montreal and studied in Halifax, he has lived in Ottawa for most of his life.

Book preview

Brick Books

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Steadman, Dean, 1950–, author

Après Satie : for two and four hands / Dean Steadman.

Poems.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77131-437-4 (epub)

I. Title.

PS8637.T38A77 2016              C811’.6              C2015-907890-3

Copyright © Dean Steadman, 2016

We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

The cover photograph is by Marijke Friesen.

Print design and layout by Marijke Friesen.

Brick Books

431 Boler Road, Box 20081

London, Ontario N6K 4G6

www.brickbooks.ca

ABOUT THIS BOOK

A man who might be Erik Satie floats, à la Magritte, above Paris rooftops, thinking of a newly-extinct species of songbirds, contemplating grief in the absence of song. By turns tender, wry, playful and fierce, the poems in Dean Steadman’s second collection, Après Satie – For Two and Four Hands, use surreal imagery, recurring characters and cyclical themes to evoke the repetitive nature of much of Satie’s music, as well as the artistic and intellectual temperament of Paris during Satie’s most creative years.

The prose poems in the collection borrow titles from Satie’s piano compositions, and all of the poems are annotated in a manner similar to Satie’s published scores, using a selection of his performance instructions (for example, like a nightingale with a toothache).

From the affair of Satie and painter Suzanne Valadon to the glimpsed lives of a contortionist, a French cowboy, a Falling Man, and a Floating Woman in the Dada-inflected prose poems, to the musings in other poetic forms that draw us forward in time, to a present-day hospice, or back, to the gallop of a mounted huntress, Après Satie involves us in the ongoing muddle of pain, sorrow, compassion, passion, joy and curiousness that is our human condition.

For Boone, who fell from a great height a long way down, through

my many hands and changing hearts, and disappeared. Disparu.

A work is created artistically so that its perception is impeded and the greatest possible effect is produced through the slowness of the perception. As a result of this lingering, the object is perceived not in its extension in space, but, so to speak, in its continuity.

—Viktor Shklovsky

J’aimerais jouer avec un piano qui aurait une grosse queue.

—Erik Satie

CONTENTS

Theme and Vexations

FANFARE FOR THE BIG FAT KING OF THE MONKEYS

Prélude de La Porte héroïque du ciel

Parable of Worms (Vers de terre)

En Habit de cheval

La Chasse

Poudre d’or

Mother’s Day

Parade

The Protocol of Curtsy in the Soviet d’Arcueil

Trois Morceaux en forme de poire

Dream Studies in Chinoiserie

Musiques intimes et secrètes

Sunday Visit

Avant-dernières pensées

Argument by Design

TRUE FLABBY PRELUDES (FOR A DOG)

Nouvelles Pièces froides

All Fall Down

Gymnopédie No. 1

Pages mystiques

Leaving Eden

Sonatine bureaucratique

On Formally Undecidable Propositions and the Arithmetic of Whole Numbers

Croquis et agaceries d’un gros bonhomme en bois

URs truly,

Trois Gnossiennes

Authentic Portrait

Gymnopédie No. 2

Sur une lanterne

Flight of the Luna Moth

Première pensée Rose + Croix

Sea Change

Un Dîner à l’élysée

La Diva de l’Empire

Morning Shades an Evening Hue

Gymnopédie No. 3

MEMOIRS OF AN AMNESIAC

Messe des pauvres

The Dismas Frescoes

A MAMMAL’S NOTEBOOK

Regret des Enfermés (Jonas and Latude)

Cumulonimbus in E Minor

Vieux sequins et vieilles cuirasses

Jeux de Gargantua (Coin de Polka)

The Wedding Singer

Fête donnée par des Chevaliers Normands en l’Honneur d’une jeune Demoiselle (XIe siècle)

Devotions of an American Beauty

Désespoir agréable

Sonnet Gestation

La Belle Excentrique, serious fantasy

Paradise Found

De l’enfance de Pantagruel (Rêverie)

A Brief History of Round-Trip Travel

Jack in the Box

Petit prélude de La Mort de Monsieur Mouche

Gris-gris

Véritables Préludes flasques (pour un chien)

Premier Menuet

Spirit Travel

Où il est question du pardon des injures reçues

Chasseur, et début de l’enterrement

TWO OPEN LETTERS

Prises d’air, jeux d’échecs et bateaux sur les toits

Crime Passionnel: A Mystery in Five Parts

Cheminées, ballons qui explosent

Morning at the Museum with Mr. Rux

FURNITURE MUSIC

Danses gothiques (Neuvaine pour le plus grand calme et la forte tranquillité de mon Âme)

Ce que dit la petite princesse des Tulipes

Gants de boxe et allumettes

Choses vues à droite et à gauche (sans lunettes)

Dans laquelle les Pères de la Très Véritable et Très Sainte Église sont invoqués

MEDUSA’S TRAP

Le Porteur de grosses pierres

After Charybdis

Après avoir obtenu la remise de ses fautes

Sur un arbre

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