Ekphrasis 15: Marja-Leena Rathje + Karen d’Amico + Tom Montag + Erika Rathje
April 29, 2007
Silent Messengers: Connecting with D’Amico #2
by Marja-Leena Rathje, printmaker and Karen d’Amico, photographer
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In Its Four Voices – Silent Messengers: Connecting with D’Amico #2
Download poem (MP3, 2.18 MB)
text by Tom Montag, audio editing by Erika Rathje, vocal performance by all four
Categories: Ekphrasis
Erika Rathje, Karen d'Amico, Marja-Leena Rathje, Tom Montag
qarrtsiluni 
You know, this is a thing of beauty: the words and the performance. I love the feel afforded by all of those “and”s, the early “that”s and “which”es, and the later prepositions. The wonderful fragments and repetition give the poem a primitive, fundamental feel. The voices emphasize a community feeling, as if they speak for all of us.
I love the evolution from sex to prayer, and their unity or commonalities (“entrance”). Even the readers’ styles seem to fit their respective general subject matter: reader one (woman, man), reader two (stone), reader three (marker), and reader four (reader). The voices seem to grow more sophisticated as the poem unfolds. The last voice seems to speak through a machine (I doubt it was intentional, but it does add to the effect) and seems most removed from the first speaker, at least until the final phrase.
Each play gives more. Delightful.