{"id":68268,"date":"2014-03-18T13:58:59","date_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=68268"},"modified":"2014-03-19T11:02:34","modified_gmt":"2014-03-19T15:02:34","slug":"john-ashbery-reads-a-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/18\/john-ashbery-reads-a-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"John Ashbery Reads \u201cA Boy\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/thunder-lay-down-in-the-heart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"thunder lay down in the heart\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/thunder-lay-down-in-the-heart-1024x720.jpg\" width=\"603\" height=\"424\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Today the composer Christopher Tignor releases a new record, <a href=\"http:\/\/westernvinyl.com\/WV113.THUND3R\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Thunder Lay Down in the Heart<\/em><\/a>, whose title track is a twenty-minute work for string orchestra, electronics, and drums. The composition is named after a line from John Ashbery\u2019s 1956 poem, \u201cA Boy,\u201d and it begins with a haunting new recording of Ashbery reading the poem in his Chelsea apartment, which Tignor has graciously allowed us to feature here.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/140006023%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-YVqE7&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;visual=true\" height=\"450\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Tignor says:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cA Boy\u201d rang out to me while I was writing \u201cThunder Lay Down in the Heart.\u201d My song titles usually come in response to the music, and I often find myself looking through books of poetry to turn my mind on in that way. When I was a student at Bard, I studied poetry with Ashbery\u2014he was my advisor\u2014and when I read this poem, I responded right away to the conflict between the protagonist and the visceral narrative tension of the storm: the sound, like thunder, of falling \u201cfrom shelf to shelf of someone\u2019s rage,\u201d the rain at night against the box cars, the inevitable flood.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It\u2019s precisely that kind of unfolding I hoped to embody in my musical work, with its own flooded lines, dry fields of lightning, and cabbage roses. A reviewer recently described the work as its own \u201cvast electrical disturbance.\u201d Hard to disagree.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today the composer Christopher Tignor releases a new record, Thunder Lay Down in the Heart, whose title track is a twenty-minute work for string orchestra, electronics, and drums. The composition is named after a line from John Ashbery\u2019s 1956 poem, \u201cA Boy,\u201d and it begins with a haunting new recording of Ashbery reading the poem [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7646],"tags":[13233,13232,13234,5234,46,165,605],"class_list":["post-68268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look-2","tag-bard","tag-christopher-tignor","tag-composers","tag-john-ashbery","tag-music","tag-poetry","tag-readings"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>John Ashbery reads \u201dA Boy\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"March 18, 2014 \u2013 Today the composer Christopher Tignor releases a new record, Thunder 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