Karren
LaLonde Alenier
is a poet drawn to Gertrude Stein's work through her interest
in experimental writng and music. In 1982, Karren worked with
Paul Bowles on several of the Stein poems associated with the
opera libretto Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On,
The mother of a grown son. Karren Alenier lives with her husband
Jim Rich in Bethesda, Maryland.
Karren grew
up in a family actively interested in music. Her father was a
drummer in a dance band. Her brother Jay plays ornamented jazz
on the piano in the style of Art Tatem. Her sister Nancy, starting
with a quarter-sized violin, was the darling of one of the concert
masters of the National Symphony Orchestra. Youngest sister Lisa
pursued dance--tap, ballet, jazz, and middle Eastern forms--both
performing and teaching.
Karren's poetry
characteristically is lyrical. The words selected play to the
ear showing her interest in language, both in sound and meaning.
Holding a bachelor of arts from the University of Maryland, College
Park, Karren majored in French literature and language with a
heavy minor in American and English literature. Although she began
writing when she was in grammar school, serious work developed
after she left college and started meeting with a circle of peers
that included the now screenplay writer Deirdra Baldwin, the antique
piano restoration expert Paul Revenko-Jones, and physicist Jim
Beall.
In 1982 through
a program sponsored by New York's School of Visual Arts, Karren
spent three weeks studying with writer/composer Paul Bowles in
Tangier, Morocco. Although she intended to work with him on her
first novel, she and Bowles worked instead on her poetry about
Gertrude Stein. Bowles was particularly helpful in working out
the kinks in the rhythmic language poem "Leo on Seesaw."
Although apologetic about his own poetry and admitting that Gertrude
Stein was right in telling him not to write poetry, Bowles had
a finely tuned ear for the kind of poetry in Karren's work-in-progress
collection.
Karren with Paul Bowles in Tangier, c.1982.
In 1995, Karren
traveled to Prague to work with James Ragan on what would become
her 4th collection of poetry, later titled Looking For Divine
Transportation. This collection, awarded the 2002 Towson University
Prize for Literature, contains her poems about Gertrude Stein,
her travels in Morocco, her eccentric family, and her own brand
of Eden. In 1996, her third collection of poems Bumper Cars:
Gertrude Said She Took Him For A Ride was published by Mica
Press of Ft. Collins, Colorado. This chapbook contained a selection
of her Stein poems and an early draft of Act I of Gertrude
Stein Invents A Jump Early On. Karren delivered the first
publication reading in the Motor City of Detroit in the Writer's
Voice Series during one of the last poetry programs at the old
YMCA before it was demolished.
Since the
late Seventies, Karren has been developing the body of work that
has become Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On. The
path of creation is not linear. It was not until February 3, 1996,
on the anniversary of Gertrude Stein's birth that Karren and 12
other poets spoke the lines contained in this then one act tableau
vivant verse play. Despite two feet of newly fallen snow, fifty
people gathered at Chapters, Washington, DC's mid town literary
bookstore for this reading. The consensus was so far so good but
where's the rest of it?
Based on an
invitation to read the Stein work at Washington, DC's Grace Church
in Georgetown, Karren set her sights on writing two more acts
for the Georgetown program scheduled for April 8, 1997. Act II
was written in one week in Florence, Italy. Karren was in Italy
that fall to initiate the first Word Works Writers Retreat in
the Tuscan countryside. Overly optimistic, she planned to write
acts II and III in the week preceeding the retreat. Act III, set
at the end of World War II was written in the winter of 1997 and
required extensive research.
By the time
Act III was written, Karren understood the play's potential for
opera. She began contacting people in the arts to gather a list
of new music composers. Specifically she was interested in a composer
who had a penchant for jazz.
The first
composer Karren worked with was Jeffrey Mumford who was recommended
to her by the Dean of Music at Howard University. Jeffrey read
the verse play and suggested that Karren listen to Schonberg's
Pierot Lunaire and Stravinsky's Les Noces. In both
of these compositions, recitative predominates. With short lines
the norm in the original verse play, the musical approach indicated
recitative. Certainly recitative dominates The Mother of Us
All, the second opera Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson collaborated
on and which may have been one of Karren's major sources of influences.
Not having any experience marketing such a project, Karren began
calling opera organizations looking for a strategy to gain a commission
for this project with a big opera company. After a year of meetings
in which both composer and poet brain-stormed without success
on how to kickstart financial support for the project, Jeffrey
and Karren agreed it was best to move in separate directions.
Serendipitously,
The Word Works awarded its 1998 Washington Prize to Nathalie Anderson,
a poet whose libretto, based on a novel by Thomas Mann, was featured
in a new music opera (The Black Swan with music by Thomas
Whitman) that was premiering that fall under the direction of
Sarah Caldwell. Starting with a referral from Nat Anderson, Karren
called back and forth across the country getting a string of referrals
that lead to William Banfield. Based on a simple strategy that
Bill suggested in that short first phone call, Karren made several
phone calls and got the attention of Nancy Rhodes at Encompass
Music Theatre (now known as Encompass New Opera Theatre).
Active in
the American literary community, Karren has developed and managed
literary programs that promote poetry. She has been involved in
organizations and programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library and
the Library of Congress. Since her first book of poetry was published
in 1975, she has had an active role in The Word Works.
Her poetry
and fiction has been published in hundreds of English language
journals and literary publications. She was the recipient of the
First Billee Murray Denny Award. She has been a fellow numerous
times at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Since 1978,
she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. In 2007, her creative nonfiction book The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas was published. This volume which also includes the libretto of Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On documents the process of creating opera in America.
Online Press Kit for
Karren LaLonde Alenier
New Work by
Karren LaLonde Alenier:
Links
to Alenier's work published on the Internet
(Read poetry,
essays, interviews, and reviews published on the Internet.)
The Steiny Road to Operadom
(Internet monthly
column: Scene4.com, an International Magazine of Theatre, Film,
and Media)
The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas
(Essays, interviews, and reviews drawn from Alenier's work published in Scene4 Magazine developed into a comprehensive book that lays out the process of creating contemporary opera in America. This is the story of developing Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On against the framework of the operas created by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson. Told through the voice of the Steiny Road Poet, this is fun to read. More information at alenier.blogspot.com.)
Back List by
Karren LaLonde Alenier:
Karren LaLonde Alenier's Greatest Hits
(OH:
Pudding House Press, 2003)
Bumper
Cars: Gertrude Said She Took Him for A Ride
(CO:
Mica Press, 1996, out of print)
The
Dancer's Muse
(IL:
Ommation Press, 1981)
Gertrude
Stein Invents a Jump Early On
(Libretto,
2005)
Interview
with Paul Bowles
by
Karren LaLonde Alenier, Francine Geraci, and Ken Pottiger, Tangier,
1984, published in Conversations With Paul Bowles, edited
by Gena Dagel Caponi, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson,
1993. This interview was first published by Gargoyle magazine,
spring, 1984.
Looking
for Divine Transportation
(2002 winner of the Towson University Prize for
Literature) Contains
the Gertrude Stein poems used in Gertrude Invents A Jump Early
On (DC: The Bunny & the Crocodile Press, 1999)
Wandering
on the Outside
(DC:
Word Works, 1975, 1979 2nd ed)
Whose
Woods These Are
editor
(DC: Word Works, 1983)
Winners:
A Retrospective of the Washington Prize
editors: Karren
Alenier, Hilary Tham, Miles David Moore
(DC: The Word Works, 1999)
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