String Figures by Joe Mills

A professor at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joseph Mills holds an endowed chair, the Susan Burress Wall Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities. He has published six collections of poetry, including This Miraculous Turning and Angels, Thieves, and Winemakers (2^nd edition), and most recently EXIT, Pursued By a Bear. Although he has achieved awards and acclaim for his work, no one, not even the most sympathetic and pitying, would praise the way he blunders through “Amazing Grace” or rudimentary piano pieces. Nonetheless, in his middle age, he has decided to learn piano, and he suspects that it has begun to change his life in unanticipated ways.

String Figures: Some Notes on Trying to Learn Piano in Middle-Age (and a few on parenting, passions, play, the passage of time . . .)

What happens when a middle-aged couple takes up the piano lessons their kids abandoned? Find out as author Joe Mills explores the joys, dreams, burdens, and surprises of one family’s decision to purchase a piano.

Read All Columns by Joe Mills

• Turning (Away from) the Page
• The Songs We Carry
• On the Laying on of Hands
• What’s in Front of Me
• The Presence of Others
• Classic Confession
• Benched
• The Right Hand, The Left Hand, and the Failure to Communicate
• Gifts
• Getting in Tune
• Start Pedaling
• Drill, Old Man, Drill
• The Magic Hour, The Lullabies of Mistakes
• On Top
• Old and Improved
• Banging on the Keyed Zither
• The Tyranny of Good
• Cuttings
• Buying a Piano
• The Decision
• Lessons

• Read More Work by this Author

  • “Practicing to be a Poet” in Issue 1.1