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This summer, join me in Creating the Poetry Chapbook, where we’ll write, curate, and develop a collection of poems for publication! All poets working in all forms and genres are welcome.

Creating the Poetry Chapbook

Register at: https://www.writespacehouston.org/summer-2021-workshops.html

Composer Emily Doolittle has raised some interesting and important points about text-setting. Emily–an excellent, thoughtful composer and person–wrote: “Poets: how would you feel if a composer (thoughtfully) cut out a few words from your poem when setting it to music? (Let’s say you had been dead for 50 years, so no one could ask you?)”

I had to think about this for a while. Some of what I publish as poetry begins as lyrics for a composer or performer or project; sometimes my poems are poems first and then attract a composer to set them. When I’m creating new lyrics, I’m communicating frequently with the composer(s) and performer(s) about what they like and what works best for them. I’m thinking of words and mouth-shapes and vocal folds and consonants and vowels as I write. But during that process I am always, 100% open to suggestions and changes and critiques (this is why the word “roentgen” isn’t in the final libretto of Marie Curie Learns to Swim). I often substitute one word for another, or move phrases around to make the text fit a specific rhythmic pattern or musical gesture. With this process, there’s no need for a composer to need to cut anything. I suppose that once my works are in the public domain, someone might take a lyric that has already been set and re-set it, but I definitely wouldn’t want the text changed in that circumstance.

As for my poems that begin as poems but are (or might later be) set, hmm. Obviously if I’m dead when they’re set I won’t know and won’t care, but nonetheless, I hate to think of some very carefully chosen words or a line that took an entire day to craft being jettisoned. Some of my poems do have clear sections: for example, my Water Songs, texts set by Allyssa Jones, began as a vague idea to write about water rights and water in certain geographies and within geographical and political histories. So if Allyssa had only wanted to set one of the poems from that set, that would have been fine with me. I have a poem (as yet unpublished) called 16 Poems Inspired by Rebecca Solnit. If a composer wanted to set numbers 6, 9, 12, and 15 from the set, I’d probably be okay with that. But poems that are through-composed, so to speak–those I wouldn’t want edited if I was dead. For example, if you really liked my poem “Coyote Sits,” but  you wanted to take out the references to the Grand Tetons (lines 2-3), that would be changing my intent without my consent. If you want to set “Six Prickly Pears” but think that the last three words: “disappear despair dissolve” will be too hard for the singer  you’re writing for, that would also be changing the intent and integrity of the work.

TL;DR: want to set a poem by me and want to change it? Come ask me. Once I’m dead, though, no changes allowed.

On 27 June 2021, Opera Elect will premiere Sense of Self, a 10-minute opera for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and piano by Lisa Neher and me. The premiere is part of a three-work program also including composer Jessi Harvey’s The Anthropocene Vignettes, and Non Motus by composer Marc Hoffeditz and librettist Ilana Fogelson.

When we began collaborating, Lisa and I talked about our own identities and experiences, and it turns out that we have a lot of common ground. Two things came up immediately: we were both athletes, and both of us have family and friends who have had breast cancer. Lisa is a competitive runner and triathlete, and I have been a competitive equestrian and fencer and am now a swimmer, and we understand what deep knowledge of our bodies we have as athletes. Lisa found several articles about women athletes who had had to make very difficult decisions because of their breast cancer diagnoses; for professional athletes, whose bodies are their careers and who identify very strongly and deeply with their physical selves, the treatment choices available go beyond finding the best method for eradicating the disease from their bodies, but also influence their future abilities to continue as competitors.

In Sense of Self, we decided to write about a professional or very high-level amateur athlete–Maya–who is faced with a breast cancer diagnosis and is told she must have surgery, but–as is often the case–must make the final decisions about her treatment herself. We wanted to illustrate the difficulties of making these choices and how one woman examines her individual wants and needs and responsibilities in making her decision about treatment: Does she have reconstruction, which might mean removing muscle from her thigh or back to create a new breast? Does she have her lymph nodes removed, which can result in long-term complications? Does she have both breasts removed, even if only one currently shows signs of cancer? How will her choices affect her family? How does her desire to breast-feed possible future children influence the decision? She’s helped along the way by her trainer Naomi, who is initially all about the best diets! and the fastest ways to recondition an athlete’s body! and planning a return to competitive glory! but who has to realize the larger implications of a breast cancer diagnosis and surgical treatments before she can be of real support. Not all women in Maya’s situation would choose the same way: everyone must weight these decisions differently, and our opera depicts just one possible decision our of many equally valid choices.

Here’s the full info on Sense of Self, along with the program note. You can purchase the score here, and we would love to know if you perform it.