Goldberg-Variations

Walter Pater's famous maxim that all art aspires to the condition of music is given rapturous embodiment in Charles Wyatt s Goldberg-Variations. Ekphrastic poetry might be enjoying a surprising renaissance, but Wyatt is the inheritor of an even rarer practice, call it auresis, or aural mimesis, that is poetry which imitates the pitch, rhythm and dynamics of music. Listen closely, for enthralling the ear and stimulating the mind, Goldberg-Variations is a major concerto of a book, demonstrating the proximity of our art forms and the sheer universe of delight they can provoke within us. --Ravi Shankar, 2014 contest judge