EATING WEEK IN POETRY

APPETIZER:

It’s thirty minutes before the performance and the devourers and devout are already trickling in. They populate the pews: gunmetal hair; earth-toned scarves and hats; puffer jackets, L.L. Bean; the occasional cane and vest; two berets. From the pew in front of me, I hear people asking each other’s names; I gather that some of them have been coming to these performances for twenty years. Almost 70 people have arrived before Turner takes a deep breath and jubilantly releases, “From the doorsill of heaven comes the word: WELCOME!”

“Welcome!” the performers repeat one by one. Then Turner launches into a fervid, passionately seasoned solo, wielding his harmonica with an expertise I have never witnessed. The harmony shakes and trembles; notes pop like onions in a pan. His hands contort like he’s producing complicated bird calls, and despite the dangerous freedom that improvisation provides, his refrains repeat, unwinding and zipping back up. Loud as a trumpet, warbling like a jazz solo, the piece climbs up and back down, at times squawking like a golden-beaked duck, at others, lowering and warping into an alien echo that calls to mind underground raves. Better than any EDM DJ, Turner expands and suffocates his sound, stretching the last harmonic echoes into the air like a note bellowed through a horn. Then, without hesitation, Turner inhales once deeply and turns to his first reading: “Why did they shut me out of heaven? Did I play too loud?” Candor and reflection reign in his kingdom of poetic delivery.

FIRST COURSE:

But as Sherba tells me, “it’s not a funny program, necessarily…it’s about life, basically. It does have a trajectory; I feel it makes sense. You hear the words repeating. You’ll hear something repeat later in a different poem, in a different guise.” Into the soaring harmonica improvisations and reverberating string pieces, notes of red, of longing and stillness, of ink bleeding joyfully from mouths, seep like syrup into a sponge. As Turner reads, we see a daughter become a night woman of sharp taste. Life evaporates like an essence. The afternoon arrives mournful and dusty. When Gore picks up the poetry, Turner returns to his instrument, harmonica blooming and retreating back into silence beneath the voice imploring, “Don’t gossip about my dreams! Without them, how could I admire you?” Rather than rendering them cliché, the sincerity and viscerality of the readings establish a connection between art and sustenance, consumption and emotion, the immersion that “eating poetry” entails. Gore reads from How to Cut a Pomegranate by Imtiaz Dharker: “Never cut a pomegranate through the heart / it will weep blood. / Treat it delicately with respect.” And in exquisite mourning, Sherba plucks notes on the viola in Danzas Latino Americanas. These singular globes of sound echo like knocks on doors, steps pattering up dark stairs, drops of lemon essence detonating on a wooden tabletop.

SECOND COURSE:

The harmonica improvisations of Turner have sizzled with the attitude of spices. The tender spoken word poetry constituted the meat of the performance. Now, the string duet and trio provide the thick-cut bread of this meal. Traditional and spongy, the melodies of Mozart and José Elizondo rise under the strings of Sherba, Alexey Shabalin on the violin, and Emmanuel Feldman on the cello. In Serenade in C major, Op. 10, the high violin of Shabalin stands out, skipping along golden scales, leading the piece to climaxes and then dissolving them into small cubes of notes that melt in the mouth. The cello plucks a steady march as violin and viola twine together. Fingers dart over strings with streamlined, oiled dexterity; heads tilt in tandem with the saw of bows. The music ripples in the air like a ribbon undulating. As a previous participant in a quartet whose performances had the quality of a slow-motion landslide, I am impressed. Both duet and trio are a soothing picture of mastery on the altar, tapestry-framed, tableau of intelligent and liquid movements.

DESSERT:

The last note shivers triumphantly; we drink it up until the bowl of the arched ceiling is emptied of sound. Parishioners rise in applause. Next to me, a woman in an orange jacket moves to speak with the cellist. A violist herself, she has been coming for years, she tells me, which seems to be the norm. Was her appetite for poetry satisfied tonight? She shares: “I love the way the literature and the music was woven together. And it was with music that came from so many deep sources.” And about the harmonica? “I’ve heard [Turner] play for a number of years,” she says, smiling. “Every time I hear him play I just feel so hopeful, and so happy, like there’s hope for the future.”

Cue immediate seizure of harmonica, frenzied and jumping, launching us from our place in the church back out into the night. Strung together like a necklace of pomegranate seeds, we reenter the world, glazed in melodies, sated with words.