In this performance piece, Ed Atkins recites Gilbert Sorrentino's poem "The Morning Roundup" (1971), interspersed with songs. "The Morning Roundup" is a poem frustrated by the finitude of all things and the promise and failure of language to provide comfort or reparation. The poem's brevity reinforces this experience, so that each time Atkins recites it, it moves further away from his failed attempt to communicate sentiment: the weather, love, the past; that which is gone forever. There is the poem and then there are songs.
For this performance, Atkins has worked with Musarc, and Musarc Associate Director Sam Belinfante.
