‘Piano’ Each night I return to this discipline: a straight-back on a hard bench in an unheated room, sometimes uncooled, embarked on Czerny without end or pun, an unsmiling bondage. The piano is the heaviest thing I own: heavier than a set of weights or a complicated exercise machine, heavier than a small car and travelling further. Allowed inside it will not be ignored. It expands to fill the biggest room. A planet, it draws me past armchairs, past cooling meals, past better versions by better people reproduced. Yet it contains no music. Nor are there images to be had inside: no moonlight or sunken churches, no picturesque exhibitions. If I push back the lid I find only notes: black and white, loud and soft, sharp and flat. The wrong alone are of interest: as long as there is error there is hope, there is a day’s hard work, there is perfection to be again disproved. As for hands: a kind of mob which must be broken. This delinquent right index, that lazy little left. Even you, thumbs – yes, you, in the middle – have whittled toothpicks on demand, have moved holes from here to here as I sit upright, nightly: stern-faced, rod-backed, posed as if before a mirror or on a starting-block, facing the music, aiming to break the minute waltz. Peter Goldsworthy This goes with that– selected Poems 1970-1990. A&R Modern Poets 1991.
Questions for Group Discussion Task 1 Read the poem again carefully and then discuss the following questions. When you have have decided on an answer, one member from your group should record a summary of your discussion in order to report it to the class. Be prepared to justify your answers! • What does the poem suggest about the self-discipline needed to make music? • What does the poem suggest about the attractions/reasons for playing the piano? • Why does Goldsworthy say he prefers his own versions ‘past better versions by other people’? • Do you think Goldsworthy would want to be able to play perfectly? • What do you think he means by saying that the piano ‘contains no music’? Task 2 This section is to be completed after you have read the novel Maestro and studied it in class. You should be in the same group as you were for Task 1. • What phrases, ideas and expressions does the poem have in common with the novel? How are they being used there? • What major concerns of the novel are reflected in this poem? • What are the differences between Goldsworthy’s and the fictional Paul’s attitude to music? • What similarities in style can you detect between the poem and the novel? • What would you say are the main differences in the demands of writing poetry and fiction? After your group has finished, report your findings to the class.
