Blank Forms: The Heat Decides Everything with Tyler Maxin

An adhoc travelog through Texas’s wide open spaces, from the sultry humid air of San Antonio to the dusty high plains of Lubbock County. Howling winds, rustling tumbleweeds, creaking windmills, and prairie dog towns, a state dense and sparse at the same time. This non-exhaustive survey borrows its name from a verselet by self-anointed Dallas poet laureate Robert Trammell (1938-2006), whose writings have included a short story cycle about a nondescript Metroplex dive bar and a secret history of nightclub owner Jack Ruby’s correspondence with Joseph Beuys. Jerry Hunt, a lifelong Texan whose prolific career was the subject of an extended Blank Forms study, weaves in and out of the mix: his own mesmeric composition “Cantegral Segment(s) 17.18,” elegies from his friends Jane Henry and Larry Austin, and the works of the young University of North Texas composers that he inspired, BL Lacerta and Rodney Waschka II.