The Ten-Year-Old World

ENS.2014.2 | 12′
Poems by Patricia Lockwood
Soprano & Contrabass

Score

1. He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit

2. When the World Was Ten Years Old


The Ten-Year-Old-World sets two poems by Patricia Lockwood, a young poet best known for her astonishing Rape Joke. However setting that famous work seemed both impossible and foolhardy, so instead I chose to set two contrasting texts: He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit is a brutally sad lyric clothed in tattered wonder, while its companion When the World Was Ten Years Old wears its wonder more lightly, though looking forward toward a darkness mirrored in the instrumentation of soprano and contrabass. The Ten-Year-Old World was composed in 2014, rewritten in 2016, and is dedicated to Pat Swoboda and Eliza Bagg.