“Music has infiltrated my writing in all manner of ways—most recently I’ve drawn on the ballad tradition
(“Lamkin” Child No. 93, and “The Three Ravens” Child Ballad No. 26), troubadour songs (Guillaume de Machaut’s “Douce Dame”), and German lieder. Something about the rhythms of refrains, their returns with a difference, has proven to be a powerful resource for thinking about memory, repetition, and transformation. Perhaps this is linked with other rhythmic practices I find incredibly mind-clearing and mind-focusing—walking and swimming. Wordsworth and Coleridge composed many of their poems while walking; I find a steady stride really does move the mind along, and the work-in-progress forward.”
—Maureen N. McLane, author of World Enough (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)