A PROSE POEM ‒ GEORGE GERSHWIN’S RHAPSODY IN BLUE

 

A PROSE POEM - GEORGE GERSHWIN’S RHAPSODY IN BLUE

 

Rhapsody suggests joy, bliss, enthusiasm, ecstasy, New York City’s quintessential music that director Woody Allen chose to open his 1979 film, Manhattan with a montage of time-lapse photos that depict the architectural magic of the Big Apple that weaves its way into one’s spirit, a merging of jazz and the classical with cross-cultural allure, like NYC itself, the sophisticated and brash rubbing shoulders, a melting pot for America’s greatest city, its skyscrapers carving compliant air with an intoxication that sprouts themes and melodies inspired from a standard poetic structure �' a, a, b, a, simplistic yet deceptively pliable with just the right amount of repetition and variety in the middle before the comforting return home to the familiar such that we are grounded in its core despite its five themes, the first, the ritornello that features the famed clarinet glissando, robustly sexual in its mesmerizing magnetism, followed by the train that races like a subway car across the city, then the lengthy stride in which one struts like a mob boss amidst playful streets that give way to the shuffle, appropriate for big city haste and finally ending with the compelling theme of love, the composer’s deep affection, Gershwin repeating fragments yet constantly changing key for diversity and connection such that we are persistently in flux yet anchored to a firm base of resilient, reassuring emotion with unexpected diversions, improvisations and sequences that dissolve into new directions, lusty, exciting foreplay that provides delicious momentum as one covets completion with an euphoric shout - Jesus Christ, it’s great to be alive!  

 

 

 

Reviews

[Unspoken poet]

Excellent film, my grandpa and I watched this together, nicely written

[jacob erin-cilberto]

it is great to be alive...so true...and what an excellent film that was....one of the few of his that I liked...
those early scenes reminded me of my childhood in NY.
j.

[Mike Keenan]

I grew up in Toronto; I think you enjoyed a decided edge, Jacob!