The composer Edvard Grieg�s life was short of dramatic incident someone wrote in the Glasgow Herald in 1966. Grieg was born in simple, humble surroundings and rose to become the toast of society especially in Rome. He was a Norwegian who wrote small piano pieces, often termed miniatures, subtlely nuanced, with enchanting melodies. His life in some ways could be seen as not devoid of dramatic incident. Grieg said that with the onset of old age he found life became more poetic, but also grotesque and surreal. He was born just ten months before the birth of the Babi Revelation and by the time he died in 1907 the Baha�i Faith had been in my homeland of Canada for nine years with some 18 Baha�is. South of the border in the USA there were 1280 Baha�is according to the census taken in that same year, 1907. Six rooms of the Shrine of the Bab were completed by that date. The Baha�i calendar began to be used; the first legally constituted Assembly was formed in Chicago and the first national Baha�i conference was also held in 1907. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, October 22, 2004.
I, too, found life more poetic;
indeed, poetic for the first time
about the age of fifty
in that Holy Year of �92
with middle age heading
down its home stretch.
I, too, saw life�s surreal
quality, but it had been
that way and deeply grotesque
with my heart heavy with lead......
....back in �62 and it got
more grotesque and surreal
until I was locked in a room
in a hospital with electricity
forced through my brain
to normalize the grain,
the main and release the pain.
So now, dear Edvard,
the grotesque and surreal
have softened their edges
and the heat of late middle age
with old age around the corner
is channelled into poetic,
subtlely nuanced melodies
that enchant, miniatures,
words that please mostly me.
Ron Price
October 22, 2004