DANIEL DE TOGNI
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Iterations: 4 pieces for Narrator,
​Oboe and Piano

Click here for Interview regarding Iterations on NPR KUAR Arts & Letters with J. Bradley Minnick

Commissioned by Lorraine Duso-Kitts and Kazuo Murakami 


Author of text, Terry Wright writes, 

“I have pasted in six poems for consideration. They are taken from an ongoing series called "Google Poems." There are two series related books currently in progress: "Obama Iteration" and "Trump Iteration."
Here's the process. First, I create an original art work and title it. Then, I paste the title into the Google search engine and collage a poem from the prose fragments generated by the search.

There is initially a kind of natural heuristic and commonality of material in the first few generated pages. However, as you can imagine, the content of the potential text fields can vary greatly from what is found on page 10 versus what is found on page 100 or page 1000.”


These four pieces create atmospheres around the angular poetry that was created by Terry Wright.
The underlying emotion gluing each piece to the next is a subtle feeling of dread.
Each movement is a vignette, painting colors around the text and creating an overarching musical story. 
​

-De Togni


Artwork by Terry Wright
Terry Wright-Digital Gallery

Text by Terry Wright

​
I. At the Beach

Abusive algae bloom into a pasquinade.
Building industries nag and gnaw away horizons.

Floral umbrellas stuck in grit near a surf shop
wilt when plucked by an emergent cloudburst.

Bodies buffed to driftwood luster float by
as bagged cell phones buzz like sand flies.

Another loony family spends a week together
intimately stressed.

Bickering and intense freckling break out
before a lifelessness cloaks like sun screen 

then divorce gales blow in all Mediterranean.
Sand castles belatedly dilapidate.

Stingrays singing under air mattresses
size up the kids. 


II. Inside the Roche Limit

Material in ambit disperses and forms rings.
Outside the deduced limit matter amalgamates and
makes celestial bodies.
Hold it together You moon man.
Save blank space for leftovers banding.
The force will turn and turn again
particles grave and locked by gravity
and mass/density dependence.
Nobody cares. Accrete away
impenetrable in your satellite wisdom and sci-fi noir. You have rocks in your orbit trap.
Explode
void and blow up moonlets for artistic and scientific sport. 



III. Deconstructed Canary

Extraordinary how
postmodern political debate came back.
Icon vaudeville is over all.
You guys in old gangster movies regularly
get cut yet remain untroubled by failure. Rhinestones help frame you even when
the Justice Department says nothing.
What are you? Yellow?
Even with that microphone? You've given
the world sportswear and strangled parachutes.
You have a cable show and narrate away news
as private histories of lost love trifles as magical
realist ephemera.

Down in the reddest states
photos and videos of you are tagged
surveillance authorized.
Every uppity canary
not much used to being used must
be caged then crushed by magicians or gas. 



IV. Ripley
​

Get away from her you icon.
You don’t see them. I can handle myself
and pitch in manually. This little girl
survived longer and can drive that
loader. Not to study. Not to
show me everything and who’s
laying these eggs? No bad
dreams here. That’s a promise.
You can just kiss something
under the floor. That’s right
outside the door. Bad call? You’re not
gonna sleaze your way out of this.
I’m happy to disappoint you
and nuke the entire site. They can
bill me. Now I’ve done it.
I’ve slept enough. You started this.

Most of the time it’s true. With no
weapons and no training they cut
the power and I am not going back.
It’s the only way to be sure. 



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