A book of late life, of a writer’s returning to his sources in wildernesses, the untamed places of the heart, of solitude and passion and love, and in the deep pasts of myths and ancient history as he continues his lifelong search for meaning, for what stays, the essential things of which, no matter the hour, we still have so much to say, so much there’s left to tell. It is a song of the earth that, like Mahler’s, as it approaches the end, listens for the profound call, like a summons from within the world, of what endures, of what sustains and consoles us, as if forever.
The three videos below are a collaborative creation: Peter Weltner, poems / Galen Garwood, visuals
A THREE-MOVEMENT SONATA
#1 Snowy Plovers, #2 Ringed Scales of a Snake, and #3 Tractatus
The first movement, an andante, is sunset; Ringed Scales of a Snake, the second, an adagio, is night;
Tractatus, the third and last, an allegro moderation, is sunrise and day.
Peter Weltner was raised in suburban New Jersey and piedmont North Carolina, received his A.B. from Hamilton College and his Ph.D. from Indiana University, taught in the English Department from San Francisco State for thirty-seven year, and has published three novels, four collections of short stories, and twenty or so books of poetry, most recently Sleeper, Waking (Marrowstone Press, Seattle) and Crow-Black Stones and a Flock of Crows (Agenda Editions, UK. He lives in the Outerlands of San Francisco by the Pacific with his husband of thirty-seven years, Atticus Carr.