News & Thoughts

Check out the details about the Cardboard Opera in Broadway World!

Jessica Rudman‘s just posted our latest team news, but I’ll sum up here, too. Voices of Concinnity, a chamber choir affiliated with the Consonare Choral Community, will be recording our “Shadow Reel to Last Breath.” “Shadow Reel” is part of a three-song set I wrote for Jessica called A Forest that is a Desert; the other two movements–“In the Stony Mountains” and “Hospice”–were premiered by the Choral Arts Initiative in 2019. The texts are about the death of my mother in October 2018. During her last week, I sat by her in her bedroom in the little house she loved in the mountains of North Carolina. I read to her, mostly from Lord of the Rings, her greatest book love, and sometimes we talked. Hospice nurses came and went through the days and nights.

Here is the text:

“Shadow Reel to Last Breath”

There is no revelation
in her vexed words, lost sleep,
the catch in her throat.

Shadows reel about the room
where a lamp is always on,
a little sun.

We turn her body,
turn her sheets,
take turns around her bed.
We walk,
with anarchy and darkness
on the clock,
an arc.

Rock, and step, and circle.

Listen, listen,
her speech is rough
and loose.
We keep our tears silent
and our gazes blank.

The hour comes round at last.

Here’s the first review of Protectress, by Jamileh Alexandra for Interstellar Flight Press Magazine, complete with awesome punny title. One pull quote:

 It was a joy to have a book reach between my ribs and get into my lungs. These immortal gods are characterized by modern proclivities that provide humor, lightness, and new interpretations of the mythic. They also ground the story in a familiar human world, which is a stable foundation when the magic starts to fly. Yet, you never forget that you are reading an ancient story, honoring its original Bardic storytelling while resolving in a very satisfying and modern revelation of Medusa’s true power.