What Rustles My Bustle Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Five foot three, with bad skin, and ‘artistic temperament'
Beethoven, with his Graf piano
His ear trumpet, his chamber pot covered with music to smother the smell
This eccentric often dipped his head in cold water
Before composing…creating a work
To be performed with building tools
The ‘Hammer-Klavier Sonata'

Paganini… Did he sell his soul to the devil?
Or did he have Marfan syndrome, a strange, genetic disorder?
His fingers achievedmiracles; was he demonic?
He was tall, thin, pale. He dressed in black
Arrived at concerts in a black carriage, pulled by four black horses
Berlioz, with his Grande Messe des Morts
800 singers,4 offstage brass ensembles
Nothing miniscule about his

Tchaikovsky, who conducted with one hand
On his skull, fearing that otherwise
His head would fall off. What man of genius
Isn't a little peculiar?

John Cage with his 3 movements in silence, with the windows open:
Imaginary Landscape No.1,
Forever and Sun smell, Totem Ancestor,
The City Wears a Slouch Hat, And the Earth Shall Bear Again,
The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs,
A Room, She Is Asleep, Tossed As It Is Untroubled,
The Perilous Night,
A Valentine Out of Season, Daughters of the Lonesome Isle,
Music for Marcel Duchamp, In a Landscape for piano or harp
Happenings, Sounds of Venice,
Water Walk, for one performer with a variety of objects
Bird Cage, Etcetera,
Child of Tree
Lecture on the Weather, A Dip in the Lake:
Litany for the Whale, Instances of Silence,
How I salivate over his titles!