http://www.elsiedeeproject.com/Default.aspx The Elsie Dee Project is dedicated not only to the diffusion of poetry, but also to the exploration of the musical formulas which one could call the 'lowest common denominator'. Copyright 2007 - 2009 Pierre Voyer and Boyd Williams SOCAN http://www.elsiedeeproject.com/images/Arthur_Michault.jpg http://www.elsiedeeproject.com/Default.aspx en Song 21 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Jules Supervielle. Jules Supervielle (1889-1957) was born in Uruguay. Even though he moved back to Pau (France) and lived all his life in Paris, the mostly sweet memories of his South-American childhood kept nourishing his poetry as it evolved into a kind of everyday mysticism, a highly sophisticated vision shyly cocooned in a thoroughly "simple" and conventional poetic form. About his numerous publications he said something very dear to Elsie Dee?s own work: "I barely have known fear of commonplace (...) but most certainly fear of incomprehension". Song 22 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Emperor Yuraku. This first Japanese song by the Elsie Dee Project is made of six tankas (short poems of five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables) related by a common theme: the mono no aware or "feeling of things". They are sometimes attributed to the legendary emperor Yuraku, but as we know more about them since the German scholar H.J. Klaproth has translated them and made them available to the western world, we realize they originate from the ancient Japanese oral tradition kept in the Manyoshu. Song 23 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Rafael Alberti. Rafael Alberti, born in Cadiz in 1902, belongs to the generation of 1927 and is identified with the Spanish Renaissance literature and played an important role in their access to modernity. Song 24 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Henri Michaux. Elsie Dee here uses only the beginning of one of the most famous and most beautiful poems of this misfit of French speaking literature. Familiar with the morbidity and the suffocating lack of differentiation, Henri Michaux sometimes bursts into frenzies of abundant details and minute descriptions. Song 25 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Gabriela Mistral. Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) preceded Neruda in Chile poetic adventure. Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, she has also worked in the field of education. Elsie Dee has a kind of crush for this strong woman who was called at birth Lucila Godoy y Aclayaga. Her pseudonym reminds Elsie of one of her four grandmothers and the street where she lives. As one of our grandmothers was named Gabriela and we live on Mistral street here in Canada. Song 26 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman is another lover of simplicity, but of a fiercer kind of robust simplicity. No lace making, but sophisticated nakedness. People who prefer daylight to romantic moonshine, the early risers of happiness, will easily identify with this violent optimist and soon forgive him his naive narcissism. Moving awhile is a patchwork Elsie Dee made out of bits of much longer poems. Song 27 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare is too notorious to add anything new about him, but his sonnets and poems in general are certainly the least known part of his work. The single theme of the sonnets is the passage of time and its harm on the love that, as we have learned through experience, never doth runs smooth. A sentence from Marcel Proust illustrates, in concentrated, the two-mile fifty-six towards one hundred fifty-four sonnets trying to express: "And what would be the wrinkles and circles under the eyes if it wasn?t for the sufferings of the heart". Song 28 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Baudelaire. Elsie Dee insisted that this About "album" had to include a poem by Baudelaire, the master of French symbolism, for he is, among all the dead poets we pray on, one of the most faithful visitors. And she also wanted to bring out the "happy" side of a poet mostly known for his frequent displays of «spleen» and morbidity. Song 29 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Taliesin. The Song of Taliesin is to Welsh culture what the Kalevala is the Finnish culture or what Deuteronomy is to the Judeo-Christian culture: an alphabet which is also a calendar where each line is a step (moon) whose name is that of a tree. Elsie has added a few repetitions so to give this poem an air of sacred jingle. Song 30 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Luis de Góngora. Luis de Góngora y Agorte (1561-1627), born in Cordoba, is the artist of the Spanish Golden Age, whose name became forever attached to Baroque art, the stylistic convolutions of his verses are of equal to that gilded ornamental Byzantine art and draped lush Italian mannerist. In his two "Solitudes", he staged a pilgrim, cynical cruelty of the court and shipwrecked among simple peasants, who sings the beauty of rustic life. Song 11 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Gabriel Pariseau. Gabriel Pariseau was born at L'Île Ronde in 1949. This poem was inspired by a jogger in the midst of trafic down-town Montreal. The suffocating car-drivers take part in a dreamed explosion involving everything... and the jogger still runs. Song 12 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Pablo Neruda. Pablo Neruda was born in Parral, Chile, Naftali Reyes has published under the pseudonyme Neruda ( borrowed to a tchech poet Jan Neruda ) more than a hundred books of poetry. Socialist and patriot, he has worked mostly to reconciliate poetry and the people. He was given the Nobel prize for Literature in 1971. Oda al hombre sencillo is one of the Odas elementales, it is highly representative of this poet of transfigured everydayness. The film Il postino and the novel Une ardente patience by Sepulveda are evocations of the poet's retreat in Isla negra. Song 13 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Lewis Carroll. Lewis Carroll pseudonyme Charles L. Dodgson, was born in Daresbury in 1832. A celebrated intellectual, he is especially known for Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. He left many poems including the masterpiece The Hunting of the Snark. Song 14 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Oscar Wilde. The Ballad of the Redding Geole is certainly one of the sadest poem this witty man has written. It is full of gore and morbidity, but it is also a very touching look life gone by while one was dancing and frivolously enjoying the profound superficiality of life. A short extract of this long poem has become Elsie Dee's song "The Gallows". Song 15 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Pablo Neruda. Pablo Neruda was born in Parral, Chile, Naftali Reyes has published under the pseudonyme Neruda ( borrowed to a tchech poet Jan Neruda ) more than a hundred books of poetry. Socialist and patriot, he has worked mostly to reconciliate poetry and the people. He was given the Nobel prize for Literature in 1971. Oda al hombre sencillo is one of the Odas elementales, it is highly representative of this poet of transfigured everydayness. The film Il postino and the novel Une ardente patience by Sepulveda are evocations of the poet's retreat in Isla negra. Song 16 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Eugène Grindel. Paul Eluard has published under the pseudonyme Paul Eluard (name of his maternal grand-mother) numeours books of poetry. He was one of the most prolific amongst the frensh surrealists, and one of the most constant. A simple vocabulary at the service of a fertile imagination and an equalitarian ideology. Elsie Dee made up the song Lumière unique by putting together extracts from Poésie ininterrompue. Song 17 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by François Villon. Eventhough his life was not that of a role model (he robbed rich people and even killed a priest in a fight), his influence on other poets was huge and still lives on. He is the undeniable master of the ballad. Song 18 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Edward Elstin Cummings. E. E. Cummings was born in Cambridge (Massachusetts) in 1894. His travels to France in the early XXth century nurrished his appetite for modernism. Taking a defenite step away from symbolism, he created an innovative, playfull and nontheless strictly formal poetry. Song 19 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Rubén Darío. Rubén Darío traveled to Europe when symbolism was yielding to the fascination of modernism. In his own American way he succeeded to transplant the seed of modernism in Hispano-American poetry without breaking any bond with tradition. In these few verses taken from Rimas, he salutes the great Romantic G.A. Becquer. Song 20 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Sylvain Garneau. Sylvain Garneau was born in Montreal, this poet mixes modernism and romantic tradition. His verses recall Rimbaud and Nelligan. He comitted suicide at the age of 23. Song 1 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Charles d'Orléans. Charles d'Orléans was born in Paris in 1493. Taken prisoner by the English, he lived in England from 1415 to 1440. Back in his homeland, he had an elegant and refined court life in Blois. There he maried Marie de Clèves who gave him the future king of France Louis XII. Since then, this charming rondeau rolls without gathering any moss... Song 2 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Charles Algernon Swinburne. Charles Algernon Swinburne was born in London ( England) in 1837. Even if his victorian contemporaries were outraged by his mystical appraoch of morbidity and his unconventional use of sexual imagery, he remains an absolute master of the English meter. Taken from his Hymn to Proserpine Song 3 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Paul Verlaine. Paul Verlaine was born in Metz (France) in 1844. Master of the musical verse and of the speech-like tone, his work is as profound as it appears shallow to "seriously" realist critics. Song 4 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Gabriel Pariseau. Gabriel Pariseau was born at L'Île Ronde in 1949. His precocious neo-romantic poetry is still very much impregnated with post-modern irony. Something like the tragical fragrance of blue flowers . Song 5 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics byLewis Carroll. Lewis Carroll pseudonyme Charles L. Dodgson, was born in Daresbury in 1832. A celebrated intellectual, he is especially known for Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. He left many poems including the masterpiece The Hunting of the Snark. Song 6 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Arthur Michault. Arthur Michault was born in L'Ile Noire in 1922. Post-dada experimental poet, we tend to see nowadays in his voluntarily opacified "poèmes-machines" a prefiguratioin of punk. Song 7 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Gabriel Pariseau. Gabriel Pariseau was born at L'Île Ronde in 1949. His precocious neo-romantic poetry is still very much impregnated with post-modern irony. Something like the tragical fragrance of blue flowers . Song 8 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Edward Elstin Cummings. E. E. Cummings was born in Cambridge (Massachusetts) in 1894. His travels to France in the early XXth century nurrished his appetite for modernism. Taking a defenite step away from symbolism, he created an innovative, playfull and nontheless strictly formal poetry. Song 9 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Charles Algernon Swinburne. Charles Algernon Swinburne was born in London ( England) in 1837. Even if his victorian contemporaries were outraged by his mystical appraoch of morbidity and his unconventional use of sexual imagery, he remains an absolute master of the English meter. Taken from his tragedy Atalanta in Calydon Song 10 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Constantin Cavafy. Constantin Cavafy was born in Alexandria in 1863. Writing in Greek, he shows as much scholarly rigor as Mediterranean sensuality... This song was built starting from a translation in French by Marguerite Yourcenar of the poem entitled: Portrait of a young man of twenty-three years, painted by a comrade of his age, an amateur artist.