Ars Poetica

Ars Poetica is a collaborative work, developed with poet Marlanda Dekine, resulting in a hybrid collection of text and music drawing from the poet's cultural and biological roots as a Gullah-Geechee person, juxtaposed with the shifting textures, dense harmonies, and rhythmic energy of the North Atlantic Modernist concert tradition. Here we see a paratactic resolution to the tension of text and music; the congruences here in affect and in structure are both enriched by the delicacy of their interplay Written for violin, guitar, cello, and spoken word, the piece surfaces insights into the powers of being itself: into the gift of heritage, and spiritual technologies which defy any terrifying ‘thrown-ness’ of subjugation, technologies that speak to us through myth and history and the world-transforming action of art. Ars Poetica consists of a long poem in five parts, with four substantial, sometimes virtuosic intermezzi between each. Speech, music, and poetry from different traditions are braided together, an endeavor to resuscitate dormant artistic traditions predating modern musical or literary categories, reconstituting a multi-dimensional “ars poetica” for the Now.