I had quite a lot of fun with this project. I wanted the background of this piece to sound like a jazz club or poetry club because of the tone of the poem itself. I didn't want the loops to be too overpowering so I teetered on the line between variety and monotony-- I wanted the listener to be able to pay attention to the poem rather than the background. To do this, I periodically took out instruments (like the drum beat in the background), but I did it explicitly before there was a shift in the tone of the poem. I used the change in background music to indicate that a change in mood would be coming.
I had a few issues making everything sound like it's in the same key-- sometimes the loops I wanted to overlay didn't quite fit with the others that were already in the piece in terms of pitch. I had to use pitch shift and time shift a lot throughout the work. I tried to create unity with the piece by using the piano loop used in the beginning half of the poem at the very end of the piece (and slowing it down to make it sound like a ritard). It was difficult to get the timing right using time stretch, but it worked out towards the end.
