Archicembalo: Poems

Poetry. G.C. Waldrep, always a startlingly original, appealing poetic voice, uses music theory and history to explore the interweaving of language and music. In fiercely intelligent, passionate verse, the poet seeks the delicate point between the voice of a singer (music) and that of a poet (language). An archicembalo (pronounced ark-e-Chem-ball-o) was a complex sixteenth-century instrument, a successor to the harpsichord. The book is structured after a gamut, a nineteenth-century musical primer. Originally a single note on the scale, a gamut later came to mean a whole range-as in a singer or actor's ability to "cover the whole gamut."