Vox Populi
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Alison Luterman: What I Learned
Back when I had my nose pressed
against the glass window of singing
as if it were a palace I could enter
only through the servants’ entrance, I’d thought
to be able to do that, to open
my mouth and have melody pour out,
shimmering, perfect, would be the key
to perfect happiness.. And of course I wanted to be
anyone but myself, clumsy and eager
as a shelter mutt. Even as I learned
how it gutted Billie Holliday to sing Strange Fruit,
(yet still she sang it, over and over),
and reckoned what Aretha’s childhood cost,
and studied up on Ella’s loneliness,
I clung to my young dream, I missed the point.
They’ll blast the top off a mountain
to get at a vein of coal.
Scar the earth with mines, dam rivers sifting for gold.
Did I say “they”? Make that us.
So well trained to search for the gleam
of brilliance inside anything
and dig out a seam. Put like that,
singing becomes just another shiny thing
and the lives of girl singers (for the most part)
cautionary tales. It wasn’t until I stood
by the piano myself, and quavered and croaked
and reached for high notes that weren’t there,
and stumbled my way to beauty
that I learned: singing’s made of sweat and spittle,
tears and snot, hot breath,
and the soggy crumb of a potato chip left
in a back corner of your unflossed tooth.
They can extract salt from seawater
and alcohol from beer, but a song can’t live
without the human body–
lungs, ribcage, naked heart–
or the panting hound dog
of a life that cries inside it.
~~~~
Alison Luterman is a poet, playwright and teacher who lives in Oakland, California. Her books include In the Time of Great Fires (Catamaran, 2020).
Copyright 2025 Alison Luterman
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I love this poem and its wonderful “panting hound dog” ending.
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but a song can’t live
without the human body–
oh yes, yes. Sing it, sister …
xoxoxo
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Oliver Sacks wrote that “Music touches every part of the brain.” I learned to use it, after only a couple of decades, to kick heroin. I played the guitar for five years and went to every live show I could (a run which included Prince, Bowie, Steely Dan, Roger Waters, Leon Russell, The Tubes, Dave Mason, Santana, Mountain, BB King, Jeff Beck, and Zappa plays Zappa) including bar bands. The difficult involved in making music forges new pathways in the brain: “Music possesses a remarkable capacity to induce transformative changes in the brain, fostering neuroplasticity and reshaping neural networks.”
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Music, in short, can be a savior, in many more ways than one.
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Profound and well said, Matt. Thanks.
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If you want a treat, google Sandra Boynton’s video of BBKing doing a kids’ song, One Shoe Blues
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Thanks, everyone! Thank you, Michael! ❤
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Beautiful poem, Alison!
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A true and powerful poem, also rather beautiful. And one of life’s synchronicities: just two days ago I listened to jubilant organ music, you know, the Bach kind, and when I wanted to belt out the song, old age had stolen my voice. I knew that, of course, but forgot it for a moment. Just wrote a poem about that painful moment.
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Yes, we lose a lot of ourselves as we get older, but we become better people, if we choose to…
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Yes. I remember the day I played some of my old folky songs and heard my froggy voice.
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Sometimes I feel like I meld with the poet. In this case the longing that comes with the voice not quite good enough. I was the one who sang for coffee between sets of the real folksingers at the Palmier House by UW with my clumsy guitar picking, singing their songs with voice not at clear as Baez or as gravelly as Buffy, or VanRonk. Then again with our 50s band in the 80s, not a good drummer, naive ( our gear was stolen by another band) feeling groovy. Now I feel like the old gal on the porch, a word or poem setting me off in memory. I apologize for the many times Vox Populi sends me spinning a “me” tale, but oh the memories.
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I enjoy reading your anecdotes. Your “me” tales add some gravy to the potatoes Vox Populi provides. Great potatoes, but your gravy makes the comment section more like a convivial dinner table. Keep it up. And bless the banquet.
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Yes, bless the banquet.
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Thanks, Barbara. I think open mics are an important cultural exercise in which everyone, not just the headliner, gets to share their art.
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A brilliant singing poem– so enjoyable to follow the seams of its imagery. ah, to think of the singing life, also to remember to floss the wisdom teeth (haha), while still seeking those elusive highnotes.
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Perfectly said, Jim. Thank you.
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What a poem! Thank you so much VP. ‘…a song can’t live
without the human body…’ and neither can a poem.
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yes…
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What a lovely poem! I understand that desire the poet exudes for singing and how its so much about coming forth out of the state of one’s being. I’ve sung in the choir of our church and been through the stages and ecstasies of learning the music with the ensemble until we become greater than the sum of our parts, become the music and its quite an extraordinary thing and this poem wonderfully says it all. I once heard a little Mennonite woman who did shaped-note singing in a group say “God listens when I pray, but he loves me when I sing.”
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Thanks, Sean. I love Alison’s poems. They are songs that explore the conflicts within her…
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Wow! Fabulous poem. Sent from my iPhone
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Just so.
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Donna: I’m bereft of another place to say this to you so quickly, but your two poems today in One Art are superb!
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Sean Sext
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