TW’s poetry set to a variety of live music, from blues to classical. Tennessee Williams once told an interviewer: “I’m a poet. And then I put poetry in the drama. I put it in the short stories, and I put it in the plays. Poetry’s poetry. It doesn’t have to be called a poem, you know.” And certainly he did write poetry that has all of the lyrical qualities of his dramatic work. David Landon brings a beautifully chosen selection about the “lovely and misfi t”and the “brilliant and deformed” to vivid life with live musical accompaniment and dramatic fl air. The performance integrates poems that span Williams’s career and the work evokes the vulnerability and hopefulness of our human condition. Some of the poems are taken from the not widely known series Blue Mountain Ballads with blues music by Paul Bowles, a longtime friend of Williams. Whether it be women singing the blues over their unsightly gold teeth with an intensity both sad and funny, or gay lovers half-heartedly telling their life stories to each other, Williams captures emotional highs and lows and the loss of dignity we all face at times. In many cases the poems, being more personal than his plays, reveal more than expected about the poet. It’s Williams at his most personal, speaking directly to us, quietly, thoughtfully, revealingly.

-Pam Beatrice and David Roessel