From Music to Poetry, by Way of Connecticut
In her first career, as a concert singer, a soloist with Noah Greenberg's New York Pro Musica, Ruth Daigon led what to most will seem a storybook existence. She sang at Dylan Thomas's funeral. She worked with W. H. Auden on a recording of Elizabethan verse and music for Columbia Records. The poetry move was bound to happen. You just can't escape poetry once you've been a part of such events--that it will affect you is inevitable.
Calling her concert experience "a busy musical life," Ms. Daigon says a move to Connecticut produced a move to poetry that helped "fulfill all my needs." It's a good idea to glance at what she means by "a busy musical life." Ms. Daigon specialized in the concert repertoire, recitals, orchestral appearances, oratorio, and music covering several centuries, including French, German, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, Russian, and international folk music as well. With the New York Pro Musica, she says she "specialized in Renaissance music for several years as a soloist. "
The New England move-her husband was a faculty member at the University of Connecticut-enabled Ms. Daigon to do music programs and solo with the Hartford Symphony. She also had two small sons. But for music, there's nowhere like New York, and she says, "the music scene naturally shrank." Music's loss is poetry's gain.
Her husband suggested that she try poetry, Ms. Daigon says, "because I had always written diaries, letters, accounts of all my activities. And, after all, I had been singing poetry for years." She says she knew she would be starting from scratch, and that meant turning herself into a "real student" again. Without a formal background in writing, Ms. Daigon approached her new challenge with gusto. "I attached myself to anyone who knew more than I did about poetry," she says, adding, "and there were plenty of those on a college campus." Recalling that she listened to the do-and-don't advice, Ms. Daigon says, "I emptied the poetry library shelves; I attended every poetry reading."
The singer-turned-poet knew what she was doing. Ruth Daigon's poetry awards include The Eve of St. Agnes Award (Negative Capability), 1993, 1994, and The Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, 1997. She has published widely in top literary magazines like Kansas Quarterly, Poetry Society of Ameria's Review, Southern Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly, MacGuffin,, and The Atlanta Review. Most major zines on the Net also feature her poetry.
