waveforms: a short course in piano tuning

“The first thing to understand is movement: the instrument’s magic is motion and nothing more.” So begins Andrea L. Hackbarth’s Waveforms, and from there the reader harmonizes into the various, ranging, beautiful music of this book, which is part philosophical investigation harmony, part familial bewilderment, part detailed explication of a piano-tuner’s work. To observe to a poet share the details of an old craft such as piano tuning by one skilled in both it and poetry is a gift beyond measure. What does it mean to listen, to tune? What are the tools used? What drifts through the mind of the tuner as she uses her tines, felt, and rubber? Andrea L. Hackbarth gives us all this, and more.” – Elizabeth Bradfield, author of Toward Antarctica, editor of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry