Poet Spotlight: Dan Beachy-Quick

August 15th's Rush Hour Concert features poems inspired by Bach's Two-Part Inventions. As a special treat, we are posting some of the poems that will be read during the concert. For insight into the process that led to this groundbreaking concert in partnership with The Poetry Foundation, please read our Artistic Director's earlier post.

Dan Beachy-Quick received his MFA at the University of Iowa, and currently teaches in the Writing Program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of two books, North True South Bright, named one of Fence magazine’s Best Books by Emerging Writers in the fall, 2003; and Spell, a book-length reverie on Moby-Dick. His poems and essays have appeared in such periodicals as Poetry, Ploughshares, and Parnassus. He made his literary debut at 20 in The Paris Review.

Cello Suite, for Invention 4

The wasp in series the wasp
In cello notes the wasp wing
Nerved in echo with the drone
How late the light prisms
To lull and lend a bare slant
Curves the bowstring on the wall

On the wall the star divides white
In rainbow now the night will curl
Home into the wasp’s dark flight
My headache shallow in silver bowl
Rings the wasp inside my ear
Curls the cello into our home

A red tone lashed to white is white
The bow must bend rosin so rose
Flowers in the silver bowl
Unpetal my ear in wasp’s drone
To sing deny the cello sings
As light divides when prism sleeps

And dusk informs what glow to go
Low my headache rings Low
A last note stings below the nerve
Other times there is no pain in series
The wasp in tune the wasp allowed
The cello string stops at evening’s gasp