
The Weight Of The World Is Love (2017)
SSATTBB
Text by Allen Ginsberg
Total duration ca. 5'15"
Single movement work
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Ginsberg’s poem “Song” unconventionally begins its paean to love with the premise that love is a universal weight, an almost onerous motivation underlying all action. In illustrating the omnipresent quality of love, Ginsberg leads us through our dreams “to the center of the flesh,” and ends with a juxtaposition of death and life, posing that “the final wish is love,” while the wish of love is a kind of return to the purity of birth, through a love that is not simply emotional or spiritual, not simply carnal, but both.
Extract from “Howl” written by Allen Ginsberg used by permission of the Allen Ginsberg Trust and May King Poetry Music.