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Commissioned by Choral Arts Initiative for the 2018 PREMIERE|Project Festival, Brandon Elliott, director Full poem: http://plthomaspoetry.blogspot.com/2013/03/you-i-do-not-think.html This work features the first half of P. L. Thomas’ poem “you (i do not think).” As the lines organically grow into a more complicated thought, more performers and more harmonies are introduced. The light, clipped text of the beginning and end contrast the fullness of the more gentle words. What I appreciate most about this and so many other poems by P. L. Thomas is its ambiguity. Though the text references “love,” there is nothing so concrete to specify romantic love. The speaker could just as easily be describing a friend they admire and set apart from others, one whose uniqueness is so natural that they cannot help but stand out.

you (i do not think) (2013) P. L. Thomas (b. 1961)

i do not think

i do not think of you i do not think of you as other people i do not think of you as other people do

maybe you could not see in my eyes the you i love

who you have been who you are who you are becoming who you are without me

i imagine you imagining yourself disembodied to witness

the world of me you chose to set aside for you without me PMEA District 3 Chorus Festival, February 9, 2019

Featured on the Choral Arts Initiative Series on MusicSpoke.

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