The Obligations of the Harp
Essays
Arthur Saltzman
Parlor Press
West Lafayette, Indiana
www.parlorpress.com
Parlor Press LLC, West Lafayette, Indiana 47906
© 2009 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Some essays in Obligations of the Harp originally appeared in the following journals and magazines: "Castaways" (Drunken Boat); "Clique Song"(Under the Sun); "Falling with Style" (Lake Effect); "From the Notebook of the Human Cannonball" (Asphodel); "Get Up and Get Away" (nidus); "On Reading with a Pen" (Gihon River Review); "Reason Not the Need" (Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art); "The Table on the Planet" (Delmar); "Taking Pains" (Prague Literary Review); "Time Out" (Slow Trains); "Watch This Space" (Mid-American Review); "What All the Fuss Is For" (Center: A Journal of Literary Arts).
Printed in the United States of America
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Saltzman, Arthur M. (Arthur Michael), 1953-
The obligations of the harp : essays / Arthur Saltzman.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-60235-115-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-116-5 (adobe ebook)
I. Title.
AC8.S227 2009
081--dc22
2009021504
Cover image: "MASS Ensemble with Earth Harps in the Utah Salt Flats." Used by permission of MASS Ensemble.
Cover design by David Blakesley.
Thanks to Susan Bales for providing editorial assistance on this project.
Printed on acid-free paper.
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paper, cloth and Adobe eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 816 Robinson St., West Lafayette, Indiana, 47906, or e-mail [email protected].
Contents
8 From the Notebook of the Human Cannonball
12 Chapter Thirty-Four, in Which Our Hero Cuts to the Chase
17 A First Course in Aperture Therapy
1 The Table on the Planet
The arrangement contains the desire of
The artist. But one confides in what has no
Concealed creator.
—Wallace Stevens, “So-and-So Reclining on Her Couch”
It may never have happened, or it may not have happened precisely as the theory would have us believe, but if evolution happened, it apparently happened according to one of three models, for they are the models that have endured.
One is the racetrack, along whose color-coded lanes the earliest
