Roses

Roses, Griffin Candey (2023) 14'Five songs for soprano and piano 1. Dip Me In Him (1922) // Zanurzcie Mnie W Niego (1922)2. A Letter (1926) // List (1926)3. Ophelia (1926) // Ofelia  (1926)4. Love (1926) // Miłość (1926)5. Roses (1927) // Róże (1927) Roses is the second song cycle I wrote for my good friend, Alexandra Nowakowski, and my introduction to the poetry of the amazing twentieth-century Polish poet, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska. Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska’s poetry, like her trailblazing contemporaries (poets like Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sylvia Plath,) took on the assumptive gender roles codified into poetry and turned them on their head, rejecting the idea that women should only write blithe, lilting poetry about beauty or nature. When they did include these images or themes, they often utilized them to reconfigure the metaphor in a way that reflected their lived experiences. For instance, Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska approaches the titular image of the rose in this cyc