"Carla Harryman's canny CLOUD CANTATA puts before us a set of inexhaustible, unhurried conversational moments into which diverse quotidian and increasingly pressing topics arrive. Perhaps the moments are sequential--it seems to be morning, though 'morning' here is a relative term. Breakfast seems variously either underway, in preparation, or just finished, and repeatedly one or the other of the conversants mentions something about a dream of the night before. And, too, the phrase 'January to September 2021' appears on the title page. Or perhaps, as I prefer to think, they are vivid alternative versions of a long, multifaceted moment of emergent dialogue, each iteration of which refuses to be hastened to some end. It is morning, after all; incipience is in the air. And for that moment--for the sake of that moment--it is possible to greet the world, even in the throes of its tragedies. CLOUD CANTATA enacts that possibility, summoning onto the scene bravery and play. It's magnificent."--Lyn Hejinian Poetry. Drama.
Cloud Cantata
