What does the concept of “body” mean to you? This question is explored in Joyce Sutphen’s poem “Living in the Body,” and in this art song by the same name. The text consists of three stanzas, each beginning with the words “Body is.” The first two stanzas speak critically of Body, describing it as something that “will pull you down into a sleepy swamp” or “a thing that you have to carry from one day into the next,” but the last stanza more existential, discussing how we all must leave our bodies one day. The music in the art song reflects this, with each stanza becoming more and more lethargic in the phrasing of the vocal line and the texture of the piano part. The stanzas are also separated by “disembodied” passages where the vocalist sings and hums with no words and the piano plays a free and flowing line. Overall, the piece has moments of humor and wit, and moments of etherealness and spirit. I invite you to think about where you hear these moments and to ponder the question: “What does ‘body’ mean to you?”

Living in the Body

Body is something you need in order to stay
on this planet and you only get one.
And no matter which one you get, it will not
be satisfactory. It will not be beautiful
enough, it will not be fast enough, it will
not keep on for days at a time, but will
pull you down into a sleepy swamp and
demand apples and coffee and chocolate cake.

 Body is a thing you have to carry
from one day into the next. Always the
same eyebrows over the same eyes in the same
skin when you look in the mirror, and the
same creaky knee when you get up from the
floor and the same wrist under the watchband.
The changes you can make are small and
costly—better to leave it as it is.

 Body is a thing that you have to leave
eventually. You know that because you have
seen others do it, others who were once like you,
living inside their pile of bones and
flesh, smiling at you, loving you,
leaning in the doorway, talking to you
for hours and then one day they
are gone. No forwarding address.

-Joyce Sutphen
used with permission by the author 

Living in the Body was composed and premiered as part of the 2021 Source Song Festival. It was written for and premiered by Samantha Martin, soprano and Yihao Zhou, pianist, and distributed via online broadcast on August 2, 2021.

Nicholas Slaughter (21 y/o) has been playing piano for eleven years and writing music for five. In 2022, he will graduate from University of Redlands (CA) with a Bachelor’s in Music Composition and Piano Performance. He has written works for a variety of settings, including solo piano, piano and voice, string quartet, pierrot ensemble, and wind ensemble. He is also an avid performer, having performed in the premieres of several of his own works. He is a member of the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity, and currently the Vice President of the Delta Pi chapter.

Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm in Stearns County, Minnesota. She is a professor emeritus of English at Gustavus Adolphus College and is Minnesota’s poet laureate.

She is the author of seven poetry collections, including Straight Out of View, Coming Back to the Body, and Naming the Stars, and is a coeditor of To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present.

Joyce Sutphen serves as the first Poet-In-Residence at Source Song Festival for our 2021 Festival.