Kernis asked the talented young poet Kai Hoffman-Krull to create a text for his response to the horrifying, violating massacres in Paris and San Bernardino. Twenty-five years ago a number of his pieces with the most personal significance were testaments to the destructive maelstrom of war in the 20th Century. This new work reflects the newer nihilistic paradigm of destruction and loss in the early 21st century.
Remembering the Sea – Souvenir de la Mer is in 3 movements – the first a memory piece between a grown girl-child and the mother who has been lost to her, the second a sort of Dies Irae while the third is an elegy that asks many questions, attempts to unite through dialogue but finds no single answer. Embedded in the first movement are quotations (found in italics) from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, while much of the 3rd movement’s poetry is presented as a bilingual dialogue in French and English.