September 23, 2024The ConcertAustin Alexis

“I was a member of St. George’s Choral Society, one of the oldest choral societies in the United States. Being involved with music in such an intimate way has influenced my choice of subject matter. Musicians such as Bach, Prince, Leontyne Price, and Beethoven appear in my poetry. My vocabulary has been impacted by my involvement with music, with words such as harmony, pace, melody, and rhythm frequently used by me in technical and non-technical ways. My sense of structure is heightened as a result of studying music, especially in the way I see stanzas as a series of episodes, which is similar to the way modern composers structure work, with loosely related intervals united in a work as ‘episodes’ rather than movements. The direct emotive appeal that music offers has caused me to work in a more emotional way. Lastly, music has taught me to listen to the absence of noise and/or what lurks beyond words, and to attempt to capture those fleeting sensations in language.”