Ricker Choi - Poem: Ariel
Ariel, composed and performed by Ricker Choi (http://www.rickerchoi.com)
This work is inspired by two literary sources. First, by Sylvia Plath's poem of the same name. In the poem, she describes a horse ride experience during her student years. Ted Hughes, Plath's husband, commented that once, "her horse bolted, the stirrups fell off, and she came all the way home to the stables, about two miles, at full gallop, hanging around the horse’s neck." In the poem, she describes the ride in dark metaphors, of which I give a few excerpts here:
1 Stasis in darkness
11 Berries cast dark
12 Hooks --
13 Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
14 Shadows
and a sense of being out of control:
8 The brown arc
9 Of the neck I cannot catch,
15 Something else
16 Hauls me through air—
At the end of the poem, she flew suicidal, like an arrow / dew, into the sun.
The second literary inspiration is William Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Ariel is an airy spirit who created the storm in the first act of the play. I am inspired by the tempestuous and magical elements, and attempt to capture these in my composition.
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