♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Major support for Poetry in America provided by the Dalio Foundation.

Additional support provided by the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine and an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.

And by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

And from Deborah Hayes Stone, and Max Stone.

♪ ♪ RAÚÚL ESPARZA: ♪ Yes, she looks for me ♪ Good.

♪ Let her look for me ♪ ♪ To tell me why she left me ♪ ♪ As I always knew she would ♪ ♪ I had thought she understood ♪ ♪ They have never understood ♪ ♪ And no reason that they should ♪ ♪ What if anybody could?

♪ ♪ ♪ ELISA NEW: "Finishing the Hat" is a song from Stephen Sondheim's musical, Sunday in the Park with George.

The show tells the story of how French artist Georges Seurat creates his most celebrated work, "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," out of thousands of brilliant and irregular dots.

It's a song about making and about how an artist goes about making art.

He was able to create a poem that brings to life that sublime sensation of being lost in creativity.

♪ ♪ NEW: Stephen Sondheim is widely hailed as the greatest American musical theater composer and lyricist, and Sondheim has always distinguished sharply between poetry for the page and lyrics for the stage.

ESPARZA: ♪ To finish the hat... ♪ NEW: But the craft of Sondheim's "Finishing the Hat" inspired me to think about the classic question, Aristotle's question, of poetry's relationship to the other arts, and especially to the theater, where music, movement, visual spectacle, and an audience raise written language to another level.

ESPARZA: ♪ Until they distance and die... ♪ Since we're talking about the artist as creator, as godlike creator... (voiceover): To explore the poetry of "Finishing the Hat," I spoke with several of Sondheim's collaborators-- five actors from the Broadway stage, two of whom starred in the Kennedy Center production of Sunday in the Park with George, and with writer Adam Gopnik.

- ...simplicity, seeming simplicity, to "Finishing the Hat," we should never overlook the technical expertise of Sondheim, I think.

ESPARZA: ♪ How the kind of woman willing to wait's ♪ ♪ Not the kind that you want to find waiting ♪ ♪ To return you to the night.

♪ GOPNIK: To match, syllable by syllable, note by note, an idea to a song is probably the hardest single work there is to do in the world of literature.

♪ ♪ NEW: In this musical, Sondheim imagines that the central figure in the painting is Georges Seurat's girlfriend, Dot.

George sings "Finishing the Hat" when Dot has left him.

ESPARZA: There's one particular woman called Dot who he's completely connected to, but he's more connected to his work.

♪ Mademoiselles ♪ ♪ You and me, pal... ♪ ♪ ♪ In the very beginning, "Mademoiselles, you and me pal, second bottle," these are all fragments of events that have occurred before, that George has drawn.

♪ Second bottle, ah, she looks for me... ♪ KERRY O'MALLEY: He doesn't sing a song about his broken heart.

He goes immediately back to his work.

He has his sketch pad.

♪ Ruff ♪ ♪ Chicken ♪ ♪ Pastry.

♪ (smacks lips) O'MALLEY: He's seen her looking for him and then he starts going, ♪ Oh, Mademoiselle ♪ ♪ You and me, pal ♪ Right?

He's looking at his own work.

He's back to his own work.

He's not looking at her.

He's not even looking at pictures of her.

He's looking at, "Oh, there's the dog.

"There's the... oh, yeah, a chicken, I remember when I painted that," right?

So he's... you feel that pull of her, 'cause he goes, ♪ Yes, she looks for me ♪ Good.

And it's just that one word, "Good."

ESPARZA: ♪ Yes, she looks for me ♪ Good.

♪ Let her look for me to tell me why she left me ♪ ♪ As I always knew she would.

♪ And then this churning comes in.

♪ As I always knew she would ♪ ♪ I had thought she understood ♪ ♪ They have never understood ♪ ♪ And no reason that they should.

♪ The music begins to move and swell just slightly.

There's a phrasing that begins to go, (imitating repeating rhythm) And that repetition begins to suggest an emotional, almost a cascade that begins in him.

He's caught in that churning, but then he starts saying, "I do this because I have to finish the hat."

ESPARZA: ♪ Finishing the hat ♪ ♪ How you have to finish the hat ♪ ♪ How you watch the rest of the world from a window ♪ ♪ While you... ♪ NEW: Like other late-19th century French painters, Georges Seurat wanted to show us not only what the world looks like, but how we see the world.

ANDREW ARROW: Some of the most famous artists are not the ones that make it look exactly like it looks.

It's that they-they have their technique.

It's filtered through them to almost augment its beauty.

NEW: Seurat's Impressionist peers used loose brushwork and abstract forms to capture a world changing every second.

Seurat also wanted to show how the artist's eye and the viewer's eye draw dissociated images and impressions into a whole.

DONNA LYNNE CHAMPLIN: The art that Georges does is that dot-dot-dot, red-red-red-red-red-red-orange, you know, the pointillism.

ESPARZA: When you look at his canvas, what you're really looking at is a series of unconnected splotches of color.

They're tiny, and they're spread all over the canvas, but the connection is happening here.

And so, therefore, it kind of vibrates.

♪ ♪ GOPNIK: What's astonishing is when you look at Seurat's technique, you simply aren't prepared for the intensity of its embroidery.

This astonishing kind of skein of marks that he's woven together.

ESPARZA: And Steve Sondheim does exactly the same thing with music and with the words in "Finishing the Hat."

CHAMPLIN: This song, in my opinion, is brush strokes, as far as the music, you know, ♪ Finishing the hat... ♪ (imitating song's rhythm) ♪ Pointillism, pointillism, brush stroke ♪ ERRICO: The actor is always... his hand is always there.

So there has to be something same, but the same.

I underline, as I was singing, I underlined every time the note is the same.

♪ Finishing the hat, how you... ♪ It's always the same note.

Sing, sing that.

- ♪ Finishing the hat ♪ ♪ How you have to finish the hat ♪ ♪ How you watch the rest of the world from a window.

♪ - Absolutely.

- It's the same note.

I'm not... - A twinkle in the way that Seurat's dots.

Exactly, it's, it's, it's the musical realization of his process.

O'MALLEY: You've got this very short word, "hat."

You're never going to go, ♪ Finishing the hat... ♪ (extending last note) It's... ♪ Finishing the hat.

♪ (cutting last note short) He didn't say, ♪ Finishing the sky ♪ ♪ How you have to finish the sky.

♪ He's talking about a very specific, small thing.

But by finishing each little, small thing, then you get the big thing.

ERRICO: ♪ Finishing the hat ♪ ♪ How you have to finish the hat ♪ ♪ How you watch the rest of the world from a window.

♪ You know, I-I've, I sing a lot of Sondheim, and usually his sentences all are complete thoughts, complete sentences.

This is a poem with fragmented thoughts.

It's... finishing a hat, studying a hat.

He's throwing out imagery.

"Finishing the hat, "How you have to finish the hat, comma, How you watch the rest of the world from a window."

That's not a sentence, that's a, that's an evocative part of a sentence.

The component parts are being assembled from out of a mind and a memory, and not simply by a photographic eye that is taking a picture.

- Right.

- You know, where, there's an argument for abstraction - Yes, yes.

- For modernist abstraction here.

♪ ♪ ESPARZA: ♪ Mademoiselles ♪ The whole of the play is one giant modernist poem.

♪ You and me, pal ♪ It gives you different fragments of people's lives that he's sort of overhearing and watching, and he joins them for a moment.

And that's a very, very sort of... - Absolutely.

- ...modernist technique.

♪ Studying the hat ♪ ♪ Entering the world of the hat ♪ ♪ Reaching through the world of the hat like a window ♪ ♪ Back to this one from that ♪ ♪ Studying a face ♪ ♪ Stepping back to look at a face ♪ ♪ Leaves a little space in the way like a window.

♪ O'MALLEY: I think anybody who creates, be it software or a performance, particularly the people who create in solitude, that anybody knows what that feeling is like, where the hours disappear, the time just goes away, you look at the clock, and you're like, "Where did that go?

Because I was lost in creation."

ARROW: George is constantly creating, which is why it's impossible to have a relationship with him, because everything disappears.

NEW: As George's dots begin to fill his canvas, his relationship with a woman named Dot dissolves.

GOPNIK: Sondheim says someplace that this is the one song that he's willing to admit is a personal testament, is about himself, because, obviously, like any artist who does work, the work creates a barrier between yourself and the world.

And at the same time that barrier is where you live.

It's the place where you're most at home.

So you're... - And most alive.

Most fully alive when you're not fully alive, when in fact you're apart from the world.

ESPARZA: Studying a face, stepping back to look at a face Leaves a little space in the way like a window-- again, the sense of both separation and clarity.

"I see you, I can't reach you.

"There's something between us.

"You're both disappearing but also present for just a moment."

"Leaves a space in the way like a window."

NEW: Yes.

- He can't see anyone, he can't even see the work he's creating until he has space.

You make something, you represent something, um, and you have to spend time, of course, making it.

And that... let's say, if you were painting or even your case, writing about your children, you have to not be with your children in order to represent your children.

And so, it's the losses.

♪ And how you're always turning back too late ♪ ♪ From the grass or the stick ♪ ♪ Or the dog or the light ♪ ♪ How the king of woman willing to wait's ♪ ♪ Not the kind that you want to find waiting ♪ ♪ To return you to the night.

♪ He's pulled into this thing he's drawing-- a blade of grass, a stick, a dog, light, and then remembers, "Oh, wait, "there's something else pulling me.

There's somewhere, someone else who needs me."

GOPNIK: All art manages somehow to keep two opposed ideas or emotions in permanent tension, and that's certainly true about what Georges is doing in this piece, because he's simultaneously absorbed in this action and at the same time, he's weighing, item by item, the cost of what he's going to lose by the reality that this is the thing that he's addicted to.

So, that the grass or the stick or the dog or the light, both refer, I think, to the objects in the picture that he's trying to realize.

But they also refer simultaneously to all the things outside his studio that he, uh, that he never will have.

♪ But to see ♪ ♪ It's the only way to see ♪ ♪ And when the woman that you wanted goes ♪ ♪ You can say to yourself, "Well, I give what I give" ♪ ♪ But the woman who won't wait for you knows ♪ ♪ That however you live ♪ ♪ There's a part of you always standing by ♪ ♪ Mapping out the sky.

♪ GOPNIK: We should never forget that Steve is a lyricist.

He's an incredibly poetic lyricist, but he's a lyricist in the great tradition of the American song.

Part of the magic about Sondheim is the 50-50 of the lyrics and the music.

It's a, it's two parts of a map that you have to put together to get the complete poetry.

The sound of the vowel has to fit on the note.

So a great lyricist won't put a really tight sound on a high note.

You know, that's what you get all these great "Ohs" and, you know, "Ahs" on the big notes, right?

That level of self-conscious articulation is very much the level at which Sondheim works Syllable by syllable, they repay your attention.

There's never an accidental syllable anywhere in a Sondheim song.

O'MALLEY: I love all these Ws in the last stanza.

So, "When the woman that you wanted goes you say to yourself "'Well, I give what I give,' But the woman who won't wait for you knows."

All these Ws, which are very forward in the mouth, you know, and it's like the most soaring part of the music, you know, ♪ The woman that you wanted goes ♪ And then, "Well, I give what I give"-- that's very muscular language, you know?

It's, it's, that, the Gs and the Vs are stingy, you know?

It's not, "I love what I love," its, "I give what I give."

Oh, and you're saying they're, they're thin letter... - Yes.

- That there, there's a stinginess of the short I.

But then you get a big open sound, ♪ Always standing by.

♪ And "by."

♪ Mapping out the sky ♪ Right, then you have these big, open sounds.

And that openness of the sky, of what he's painting, of what he's stepping back to see, is where he finds generosity.

Not in what he gives.

He says, "Mapping out a sky," and I have always loved this lyric, "Mapping out a sky, what you feel like planning a sky," which is so huge and beautiful, joyful.

So, the joy begins to express itself.

And then I always thought that was a great place to release a little bit of that, like, "Oh, wow, look what I'm doing.

Planning a sky, isn't that amazing?"

♪ Mapping out the sky ♪ ♪ What you feel like planning a sky... ♪ He is absolutely vibrating, atomically vibrating, just like those little dots in the painting, you know?

He is vibrating, he's mapping out a sky and finishing a hat and making something that has never been there before.

It's an act of total creation.

♪ ♪ NEW: In that moment of creation, George achieves what the Greeks called poesis, the essential act of bringing something into being that did not exist before.

It is poesis that underlies not only literal poetry on the page, but all of the visual, verbal, and performing arts.

♪ Mapping out a sky ♪ ♪ What you feel like planning a sky ♪ ♪ What you feel when voices that come through the window ♪ ♪ Go... ♪ NEW: The theater is where these all come together.

It's interesting to think of looking at lyrics like this as poetry.

Is there a way to read them without the performance, without the music?

- I believe, accurately, no.

It's only 50% with Sondheim, because the rhythm that you look at, if you just look at the words-- and the punctuation, where the period, the comma, wherever-- it's not accurate until you add the other 50% of the actual music.

Just in the very end, the last three lines, you've got, "Finishing a hat..." ellipses, right, which implies a pause.

And then, "Look, I made a hat"-- nothing, no period, no comma, no dash, no ellipses, no nothing.

"Where there never was a hat."

Now, to look at that, you'd think, "Look, I made a hat where there never was a hat."

But in reality, the longest pause between... in the whole song is, ♪ Look, I made a hat ♪ (imitating instrumental rhythm) ♪ Where there never was a hat.

♪ ♪ Look, I made a hat ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Where there never was a hat.

♪ CHAMPLIN: That is the thing that takes George the longest to land on.

And Sondheim has given the actor the most time between "Look, I made a hat" to "Where there never was a hat," because that discovery and that realization is the largest.

I think I hear you saying something extremely important, which is that he's working, always thinking across art forms, and... - Yes, on all different levels.

"Look, I made a hat," but it's not, (legato): ♪ Look, I made a hat ♪ You know, I mean, it's not this big, like, ♪ I'm a creator, I made a beautiful thing.

♪ It's, "Look, I made a hat."

It's, it's almost spoken.

I just love that it's not huge.

It's not an aria at that point.

Like, a-a lesser writer would make this huge ending with a key change where the singer is, like, you know, screaming out a B flat about the hat he made.

And he's like, "No, look, I made a hat."

♪ Look, I made a hat ♪ ♪ Where there never was a hat.

♪ ♪ ♪ NEW: What does it mean to finish as an artist?

The fact that there, there are so many instances of the present progressive verb, the I-N-G.

The I-N-G tells us we... we don't finish.

- Well, there's also that problem where, you know, when do you know that you're finished?

And when do you stop before you start to ruin it?

There's always... that's the artist's conundrum, 'cause you're never quite sure when you're done.

The numerous teachers that I've had have always said, "If you're not on the growing edge, you're, you're not doing anything."

CHAMPLIN: When we did Sweeney, Sondheim kept changing things.

Sweeney Todd, which is, I mean, you know, an established, brilliant work of art, perfect, in many people's opinions.

And he kept fussing with it, and we kept getting, like, instrumental changes.

And we were all amazed because... and then we realized, "Holy cow, Sondheim"-- aka George, aka a brilliant, prolific artist-- "Always has that feeling of, 'It could be better.'"

♪ ♪ ESPARZA: Georges Seurat wanted to create a work of art that is, in a sense, unfinished except by the viewer.

As an actor, your performance is never complete, except in relationship to the people there that evening.

O'MALLEY: When is a piece of work finished?

Never.

He's the work.

The work will always exist.

This piece, this painting might finally be shown or, you know, hung in a gallery, but the work doesn't end because there's another hat to be made.

♪ Finishing the hat ♪ ♪ How you have to finish the hat ♪ ♪ How you watch the rest of the world from a window ♪ ♪ While you finish the hat.

♪ In the beginning, it's one hat, it's the hat on this canvas that he has to paint.

That's why he can't go to the follies with Dot.

It's finishing the hat, the hat, this hat, and in the end... ♪ Finishing a hat.

♪ "Finishing a hat."

So, it's the idea of a hat, all hats.

♪ Starting on a hat ♪ ♪ Finishing a hat... ♪ There was "the hat," in the beginning, it's "this painting."

But at the end, it's, "This is my work.

It's a series of hats."

And-and universalizes the metaphor in that way.

Finishing the hat isn't about Seurat, it's about anybody who's absorbing their work to the degree that they pay a price.

Ultimately, this is, "Finishing the Hat" is an attempt to describe the indescribable act of creation.

- Absolutely.

And at-at the end of the song is an utter triumph, even in his loneliness.

"Look at this, I made this "where there never was a hat.

It lived."

- Yes.

- You know, "I'm alive in this."

♪ ♪ ♪ Mademoiselles ♪ ♪ You and me, pal... ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Second bottle... ♪ ♪ Ah, she looks for me ♪ ♪ Bonnet flapping... ♪ ♪ Yapping... ♪ ♪ Ruff... ♪ ♪ Chicken... ♪ ♪ Pastry... ♪ (lips smacking) ♪ ♪ ♪ Yes, she looks for me ♪ Good.

♪ Let her look for me to tell me why she left me ♪ ♪ As I always knew she would ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I had thought she understood ♪ ♪ They have never understood ♪ ♪ And no reason that they should ♪ ♪ But if anybody could ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Finishing the hat ♪ ♪ How you have to finish the hat ♪ ♪ How you watch the rest of the world from a window ♪ ♪ While you finish the hat ♪ ♪ Mapping out a sky ♪ ♪ What you feel like planning a sky ♪ ♪ What you feel when voices that come through the window ♪ ♪ Go ♪ ♪ Until they distance and die ♪ ♪ Until there's nothing but sky ♪ ♪ And how you're always turning back too late ♪ ♪ From the grass or the stick or the dog or the light ♪ ♪ How the kind of woman willing to wait's ♪ ♪ Not the kind that you want to find waiting ♪ ♪ To return you to the night ♪ ♪ Dizzy from the height ♪ ♪ Coming from the hat ♪ ♪ Studying the hat ♪ ♪ Entering the world of the hat ♪ ♪ Reaching through the world of the hat like a window ♪ ♪ Back to this one from that ♪ ♪ Studying a face ♪ ♪ Stepping back to look at a face ♪ ♪ Leaves a little space in the way like a window ♪ ♪ But to see... ♪ ♪ It's the only way to see ♪ ♪ And when the woman that you wanted goes ♪ ♪ You can say to yourself, "Well, I give what I give" ♪ ♪ But the woman who won't wait for you knows ♪ ♪ That, however you live, ♪ ♪ There's a part of you always standing by ♪ ♪ Mapping out the sky ♪ ♪ Finishing a hat ♪ ♪ Starting on a hat ♪ ♪ Finishing a hat... ♪ ♪ Look, I made a hat ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Where there never was a hat.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Major support for Poetry in America provided by the Dalio Foundation.

Additional support provided by the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine and an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.

And by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

And from Deborah Hayes Stone and Max Stone.

For additional information and streaming content, please visit us at poetryinamerica.org.

♪ ♪