New Piece

I am working on my latest piece now, it's a thing for soprano and ensemble, an ensemble made up of flute, string quartet and piano. I am using the poetry of Charles Alexander, a fine poet from Arizona, and you can find some of his stuff here and here and here and a nice bio here. He releases the poems in books that are "total" art works. For example, the poem I set, Aviary Corridor, was released as, part of the screen fold series, "Primal Format Screenfold Number Five", folded paper with Alexander's poem on one side and drawing on the other (created by Cynthia Miller). The poems imitate this "screenfold" by using overlapping phrases which can
be read in different sequences. Take for example part 8 of "Aviary corridor" -

no thing
attaches
he needs
a bowl of soup
Tuesday
watch the thermometer
for a time
something alters
or runs
around a river
wet

I have (for my music piece) divided it into patterns thusly:

no thing attaches
he needs a bowl of soup Tuesday
Tuesday watch the thermometer for a time
for a time something alters
something alters or runs around a river
wet

Of course, other patterns can be made, it is of course determined by how the words fit to the lilt of the spoken voice or to the sense of what one wants it to make. I would agree with what poet Robert Creely wrote about his works:


"[Alexander’s work]hears a complex literacy of literalizing words. By means of a fencing of statements, sense is found rather than determined. The real is as thought."