"Death, Inc." is a poem from Joyce Sutphen's poem collection, "Carrying Water from the Field." I chose this poem in tandem with my collaborators at the 2021 Source Song Festival, Sarah Rogers and Regan Russell; we were all drawn to the poem's strong storytelling sense and its underlying sense of humor. In the poem, death is personified in a variety of ways—a man reading a newspaper at a bus stop, a crazed truck driver high on meth, and a shadow of a tree on the front lawn. In this piece, death’s multi-faceted character is brought to life with a haunted cabaret feeling recalling William Bolcom, as well as sincere, moving, quiet music.

Without his scythe and crooked knife
he’s simply an ordinary guy.

You see him at the bus stop,
and he’s reading a folded newspaper,

or he’s in the car next to you
on the freeway—first he passes

you, and then you pass him.
It goes on like that for a long time,

but though you glance over at him,
he never looks back at you,

which (it turns out) is a good thing.
All the while you’ve been

waiting for the carriage to stop
(kindly) at your door—the carriage

that would take you past the schoolyard
and the fields, accompanied by

the gentle clip-clop of horses’ hooves,
but suddenly you realize he might be

driving an eighteen wheeler, high on
meth, tires screeching. Yes— it could

happen like that, but it’s just
as likely he might be the shadow

of a tree you planted years ago
falling across the green lawn.

-Joyce Sutphen
used with permission by the author 

Death, Inc. was composed and premiered as part of the 2021 Source Song Festival. It was written for and premiered by Sarah Rogers, soprano and Regan Russell, pianist, and distributed via online broadcast on August 4, 2021.

Ben Morris is a Colorado-based composer and jazz pianist whose music tells unconventional stories. He recently studied in Oslo, Norway on a Fulbright Grant, composing a work for big band and video inspired by his Norwegian heritage. His compositions have been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, NOW Ensemble, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, trombonist Vincent Gardner, unassisted fold, Boulder Altitude Directive (BAD), Imani Winds, Living Earth Show, and the NDR Big Band, among others.

Ben’s accolades include performing with his quintet at the Newport Jazz Festival, attending the Aspen Music Festival, studying traditional Korean music at the National Gugak Center in Seoul, and receiving the ASCAP Morton Gould and Herb Alpert Awards, two Downbeat Awards, and commissions from the Washington National Opera, the American Composers Orchestra Jazz Composers Institute, Playground Ensemble, and New York Youth Symphony First Music. Ben is also a versatile film and theatre composer, having recently scored two award-winning public television documentaries, American River and Saving the Great Swamp.

Ben completed his studies at Rice University, University of Miami, and the Norwegian Academy of Music and is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Colorado Boulder as an ATLAS fellow. www.benmorrismusic.com

Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm in Stearns County, Minnesota. She is a professor emeritus of English at Gustavus Adolphus College and is Minnesota’s poet laureate.

She is the author of seven poetry collections, including Straight Out of View, Coming Back to the Body, and Naming the Stars, and is a coeditor of To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present.

Joyce Sutphen serves as the first Poet-In-Residence at Source Song Festival for our 2021 Festival.