Poetry. Drama. African & African American Studies. THE PRIME ANNIVERSARY is comprised of a sequence of poems and a one-act play, common themes of which include number, measure, and the very idea of continuity. Drawing from Pythagorean sources and Spanish modernist poets, among others, Jay Wright examines arithmetical proportions and the limits of intonation that define harmony. Invoking Empedocles' philosophy of love and strife, attraction and separation, the continuous and the discrete, Wright resurrects the pre-Socratic practice of exploring thought in verse.