SEPTEMBER 21 • 2023 | 55

ARTS&LIFE
POETRY

A

aron Dworkin, 
professor of Arts 
Leadership and 
Entrepreneurship in the 
School of Music, Theatre & 
Dance at the University of 
Michigan, takes pride in his 
many years of association 
with the Ann Arbor 
Symphony Orchestra.
His award-winning 
career was launched as 
a violinist founding the 
Sphinx Organization in 
Detroit, which promotes the 
professional experiences of 
young artists. He has brought 
that work together with the 
Ann Arbor orchestra in 
a career that includes the 
writing of nonfiction and 
poetry books. 
One book of poems, The 
Poetjournalist (Lenox Avenue 

Press), released just months 
ago, picks up on the title 
he has given himself while 
assuming the responsibilities 
of a word artist.
Dworkin, a MacArthur 
Fellow associated with the 
National Council on the 
Arts, has been asked to write 
and present a poem for this 
year’s opening concert of 
the symphony. It will be 
presented at 8 p.m. Saturday, 
Sept. 23, in Ann Arbor’s 
Hill Auditorium, where the 
musicians will play music by 
Joan Tower, Erich Wolfgang 
Korngold and Antonin 
Dvorák. Earl Lee is music 
director.
“They had wanted me to 
write a poem that captures 
this role that the symphony 
has in the community,” 

Dworkin explained. “I 
followed along the lines of 
the slogan of the Ann Arbor 
Symphony, which is ‘Hear 
Here.’” 
Dworkin, in giving a sense 
of the poem, excerpted two 
lines: “Hear each note, a 
raindrop in an endless storm 
of rhythm.” “Here in Ann 
Arbor, music is not merely 
heard. It is lived, tasted, felt 
in the pulse and sway of 
place.”
“I keep a regular refrain 
in every stanza of the poem 
that reflects either ‘hear’ 
or ‘here,’” said Dworkin, 
poet-in-residence for many 
organizations, including 
the Max M. and Marjorie 
S. Fisher Foundation, 
Wright Museum of 
African American History, 

Complexions Contemporary 
Ballet and Grantmakers in 
the Arts.
Dworkin has appeared 
before audiences at Carnegie 
Hall, Harvard University and 
Minneapolis Orchestra Hall 
among many other venues. 
“I’m regularly developing, 
authoring and creating 
poems that reflect my 
poetjournalist approach,” 
he said. “Most recently, a 
poem I performed was at the 
Winfield House in London. 
“The American 
ambassador to the United 
Kingdom asked me to write 
a poem about the connection 
between the United States 
and Britain. I drafted that 
poem and shared that at an 
event at the Winfield House, 
the official residence of 

Aaron Dworkin will help launch the new season 
of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra.

A Poetjournalist

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Aaron 
Dworkin

continued on page 57