Today we are joined by guest blogger Matthew Svoboda, Director of Choral Activities at Lane Community College. As part of a project called "The Room Upstairs," Matthew has been scoring original music inspired by the poetry of Hazel Hall. Together with photographer Laura Glazer, he recently visited the Northwest Portland home of Hazel Hall, where she spent much of her life confined to a wheelchair. Tag along, and peek inside...
________________________
Finding the Room Upstairs: A Visit to Hazel Hall's Home
By Matthew Svoboda,
Director of Choral Activities, Lane Community College
This summer my friend Laura Glazer and I had the
chan
ce to visit with Neale and Trish Langman who have made their home at the
Hazel Hall house in Portland. I had long been curious to see where Hazel Hall
had lived and written and was so pleased that Neale and Trish were open to a
visit. Our visit was prompted by a sabbatical project I am currently working on
with Laura and several other collaborators. The project, entitled The Room
Upstairs: Uncovering the Life and Poetry of Hazel Hall, will result in new,
original music composed for dance and will premiere during Collaborations
2019* at Lane Community College in March 2019. The music and dance unfold
in three movements titled after Hall's three books of poetry: Curtains, Walkers,
and Cry of Time.
I scored the piece for cello, violin, and piano and mapped it to
the larger themes of each volume of poetry. Curtai
ns includes an entire
section of poems devoted to the subject of sewing and needlework and to the
physical attributes of her interior space. The music unfolds slowly and
introspectively. I specifically chose cello to be the featured voice of this
movement because its melancholy timbre recalls the elegiac feeling of Hall’s
poetry and the bowing motion suggests the motion of sewing. Walkers is
largely addressed to the various people whom Hall viewed from her second story
window as they walked by her house. Here the music picks up tempo and becomes
more interactive, with themes being traded between instruments that also shift
roles as the music unfolds. And Cry of Time, published posthumously,
speaks to transcendental themes, with poems that touch on Hall's reckoning with
her own mortality, the limits of her art, and the solidarity she felt with
other women. The music for this movement begins in anguish but progressively
moves to resolution. The initial theme from Curtains returns but in a
transformed state. After its presentation, it gradually ascends in a dance-like
interplay that brings the work to its final close.
Many years earlier, I became
intensely interested in the poet Hazel Hall when I came across a poem of hers, Maker
of Songs, in Cracking
the Earth, the 
25th Anniversary edition from Calyx, published in 2001. The
poem attracted me immediately because of its use of musical metaphor. A short
bit in the back told me a little about her--that she was "confined to a
wheelchair for most of her life" and that she “spent her days doing
needlework, viewing the physical world through a window and a small mirror
propped on her windowsill, and writing poetry that transcended her
circumstance.” As I was curious to learn more, I reached out to John Witte who
had edited The Collected Poems of Hazel Hall and included his own fine
introduction about her life and work. John and I talked about Hazel Hall over a
nice meal together, which furthered my interest and curiosity. I began to
research whatever I could find about Hazel Hall at the University of Oregon
library and later paid a visit to her former home in Portland, but only to the
outside. This was all many years ago, before life got busy with a new child, a
new job, and the responsibilities of home ownership.
Seeing Hazel Hall’s former home first hand several years later
was an illuminating experience. As might be expected, the house has changed
since she lived in it up until her death in 1924. It is now divided into two
separate residences, with Neale and Trish living in the part where Hazel had
spent most of her days. There has also been some remodeling and updating to the
entrance and kitchen, and carpet now covers the floor in the main room that
faces the street. Yet, even so, artifacts and features of the house remain from
her time--light fixtures, the lattice window, a room upstairs. Standing in the
main room and looking through the lattice window, I could get a clearer sense
of how Hazel might have done her needlework or gazed around her house or to the
street below to find inspiration for her poems.
The four of us conversed on many topics while visiting together
and seeing their home. I came to learn that Neale and Trish, both artists, had
moved into Hazel's home from New York City a decade earlier, sight unseen. Only
later did they learn about Hazel Hall and her interest and background in sewing
as a means to a livelihood. This was particularly intriguing because Trish, a
textile artist, has made her studio in the room upstairs, which Hazel
references in her poetry as a place she couldn’t visit. This room upstairs in
turn became the inspiration for the title of our collaboration—a tribute to a
remarkable poet who was also unseen as she gazed out at the world from her
window.
For more information on The Room Upstairs: Uncovering the
Life and Poetry of Hazel Hall, visit the project website: www.hazelhall.net.
*Upcoming Events:
The Room Upstairs: Uncovering the Life and Poetry of Hazel Hall
An evening devoted to celebrating the life and work of poet Hazel Hall through research, original music, and a new work for dance.
Thursday, February 28, 7:00 p.m.
Ragozzino Performance Hall (Building 6, Lane Community College, main campus)
Free admission
Collaborations 2019 is March 7-9 and highlights the original work of
dance faculty, guest artists, and dance groups in our community in
collaboration with musicians, videographers, and designers. Produced annually
in Ragozzino Hall on the main campus of Lane Community College, Collaborations
celebrates the many voices of dance in our community. More information will be
available in late 2018 via the Hazel Hall project newsletter; sign up for it here.
