An Annotated Listening Poem: Peer Gynt on Plastic

INTRO:
I first heard Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt lying on the floor of a shared apartment, a cheap plastic turntable between other people’s feet. Years later, I return to it not as story or program, but as it is felt—movement by movement, pause by pause. What follows is a poem written to be read alongside the music it names, in the order it was once heard, with attention given not only to sound, but to the silences it leaves behind.

And the silences are crucial.

By Vincent R. Pozon

In the only year I had of college,
I slept on the floor, as everyone did
in that flat, a jeepney ride from school—
a place of late nights and unfinished sleep,
where no one is unpacked completely,
the disheveled coming into or hieing
off toward rallies, libraries and loves.

Here, other people’s feet arrive first.
There is dust on the floor. With an ear
on the arm, and the arm as pillow,
we treat ourselves to the dour circus
of a turntable made of yellow plastic,
the cheapest stylus allowances allowed,
mono speakers behind plastic slats.

Ungovernable, leftist, and in love, we sought
the dour, the classical, and the vodka.

The fuzz is blown off the needle— traces
of the past gone with a few strong breaths.
Lying on the floor, we watch the stylus
land on the record, singing static; the circus
comes alive as neighbors begin to complain.

In the only year I had of college,
a badly attended year, I lay on the floor,
ear on arm, arm as pillow, eye on touchdown—
it was Peer Gynt, in the order of good drama.

⸻

Morning Mood

This music opens its eyes before we do.
The day is untroubled, newly washed.
It does not promise happiness—only
that the day has begun.

Åse’s Death

The room grows smaller.
Breath slows.
What is being said matters less
than what is being allowed.
This is tenderness without rescue—
the sound of staying
when nothing can be fixed.

The Abduction of the Bride / Ingrid’s Lament

First, motion without restraint.
Then the stillness that follows harm.
The music does not raise its voice;
it lets the weight settle.
Something has happened,
and the world cannot return
to its earlier balance.

Solveig’s Song

A voice that has learned
the shape of waiting.
No urgency, no demand—
only presence extended over time.
What remains is not hope,
but fidelity to feeling.
It ends without closing the wound,
and that is its mercy.

The record does not age—
not by a day since last played,
last grieved by Grieg.

The breath is the same breath.
The hesitation, the same hesitation.

The voice is not remembered; it reoccurs.

It is fruit still on the branch.

Music heard here: Edvard Grieg, Peer Gynt (various recordings)