Composer Notes

I’m currently preparing a blog post/podcast episode that will include the upcoming composer note for this piece. In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from “Poetry Is ‘Concentrated Testimony’ of Being Human,” a profile of poet Gregory Orr published by PBS NewsHour on September 30, 2013:

“Poet Gregory Orr rhapsodizes on a theme he has explored for nearly a decade: the “beloved,” the things we love.

Of course, what we love can change over time, he says. “It can make you crazy by…shifting from one thing to another and yet, of course, that’s also dazzling,” he told the PBS NewsHour…

The “beloved” can be any object of affection: a person, a place, a pet. And it is within those targets of love — and our relationships to them — that Orr finds meaning for his life. “Without any sense [of] the beloved, it seems to me the world goes dead, or the world goes just to self, which is even worse,” Orr said.

The original inspiration was a phrase that sprung from his imagination: “the book that is the resurrection of the body of the beloved, which is the world.” Orr envisioned a collection of all the poems and songs ever written in the history of human existence. The invisible anthology’s purpose was to serve as human testimony about what it is like to be alive.”