Non-Mando Content: "How to Build a Stradivarius"

[Amanda Gregg]

"How to Build a Stradivarius," by Ilyse Kunetz, published in the New Yorker on June 19, 2017:

The masters wrote—to yield the best result,
harvest after a cold winter

the wood condensed by ice and storms
in whose gales the highest notes are born.

From summits of Balkan maple, red spruce
gathered in a valley off the Italian Dolomites,

they carved each instrument’s alluvial curves.
Then came the varnish—one coat

of painter’s oil, another of plain resin.
Only the thinnest of layers to obtain

that satin chatoyancy, that liminal reflet.
It’s said Stradivari, playing to the trees,

first noticed the straight pines
like strings on a vast, divine violin

absorbing Heaven’s vibrations.
The truth could be found in the song itself—

how it was impossible to tell where
the wood ceased and the song began—notes pure

as a mathematical equation. Transposing mountain.
Valley. Mountain again.

[Jim Franey]

Great 👏👏👏👏👏