The poetry of Steve Schoonmaker and the music of Jim Maloney go hand in hand – literally, with help from an instrument called a hand pan.
Maloney is a carpenter from Homer who plays the hand pan to accompany Schoonmaker at poetry readings. Schoonmaker is a fisherman from Kasilof, known as Alaska’s Fisher Poet.
“It’s truly a unique sound,” Maloney said. “I try to tell Steve, you are forging new ground. You are blazing a trail no other poet has.”
Schoonmaker said it adds dimension to his poems that explore what he calls the intelligence and inclusiveness of nature.
The hand pan is an instrument with five notes on the pentatonic scale. To hear what it sounds like, just play the black keys on the piano. Its tones are as old as mankind, heard in music from cultures all over the world and increasingly used for healing and spirituality.
Maloney said it’s a perfect fit for his friend’s poetry.
The hand pan has a gritty history. It’s a cousin to the steel pans of Trinidad and Tobago, which were made from oil drums rescued from the trash.
About 25 years ago, European instrument makers took the design to the next level and created the hand pan. The precise tunings of the notes, which are difficult for instrument makers to achieve, is what first caught Maloney’s attention.
“Every time I play the hand pan, it sounds like something from outer space,” Maloney said.
The hand pan also looks like it comes from outer space, like a mini flying saucer with bumps that produce the five Pentatonic tones, which you can play in any combination and compose a melody. It’s a simple instrument, but very hard to make from a single sheet of metal, a paradox that resonates with this carpenter from Homer.
“It’s bent in a way that every single bend creates a certain note. It’s pretty amazing,” Maloney said. “It’s a very foreign sound, but it’s also very euphoric, and it captures your attention.”
Both Maloney and Schoonmaker are big fans of music festivals and gatherings of poets and storytellers. Finally, they crossed paths.
“It was impromptu,” Schoonmaker said. “A few summers ago, we were sitting in camp at Salmonfest, Jim started playing the hand pan,” he said, “and we thought, whoa, we have something here.”
“I think the most beautiful magic we’ve ever made is when we just show up,” Maloney said. “And we just feel it. Feel it out together.”
When the two performed in the Anchorage Folk Festival recently, they came prepared but hadn’t rehearsed a lot.
Schoonmaker said Maloney’s hand pan cuts a musical groove that he just rolls into.
One of the poems he performs is called “Snowflake,” about a tiny ice crystal’s journey through the water cycle, one that eventually sustains the salmon.
It begins and ends with the lines, “First I was a snowflake. Then I was a glacier, and then I was a stone.”
The ethereal sounds of the hand pan evoke images of the sky, the land and the water, as the snowflake transforms into different states of being.
Like the rest of his poems, Schoonmaker has committed "Snowflake" to memory.
In his line of work, he has lots of downtime on a fishing boat to compose and memorize his poems.
“But then once I memorize it,” he said, “after a while I work at it — the words kind of disappear, and it becomes the imagery.”
“He’s reading from the heart, all his words that he memorized and wrote, beautifully,” Maloney said, “and I’m just going off the feel of his words, his emotions, watching his hands. It’s one of the most beautiful things about him as a poet, the way he physically describes things on stage.”
For Schoonmaker, it’s important that his poetry exists as more than just words but takes on a life of its own. He says salmon face so many threats in today’s world yet can’t cry out for help. They desperately need to have a voice, and they can — through his voice.
“I feel sometimes I have a responsibility as a human to communicate, at least my sincere feelings about our place in nature,” Schoonmaker said.
He hopes a fisher poet and a carpenter musician can help people contemplate mankind’s place in nature.
Together, with words, a hand pan and a passion for life, they create a sense of wonder.
“There’s a certain magic to the moment,” Schoonmaker said.
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