We will record poems, with live improvised music, on an as-yet-unspecified, mysterious theme. Perhaps something about the bitterness of endings, and the promise of return.

Ten poems of the Twisted Spring:

Frightening, these daffodils. Frightening.

We met to record poems related to this subject, the Twisted Spring,
on Sunday, April 7th, 2-3:30 PM, in the SDS Room in Mattin Center on the JHU campus. Sound files from this session can be found here on SoundCloud.

“Sun, leprous flowers, foul child. The asphalt burns.
The garrulous sparrows perch on metal Burns.
Sing! Sing! they say, and flutter with their wings.”
- John Gray, “Poem”

Poems included the following works of Gray, Herrick, Millay, Thomson, & Clare…& Nashe, & Shakespeare:

**************

Spring
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

*********

Clock O’Clay – John Clare

In the cowslip pips I lie,
Hidden from the buzzing fly,
While green grass beneath me lies,
Pearled with dew like fishes’ eyes,
Here I lie, a clock-o’-clay,
Waiting for the time o’ day.

While the forest quakes surprise,
And the wild wind sobs and sighs,
My home rocks as like to fall,
On its pillar green and tall;
When the pattering rain drives by
Clock-o’-clay keeps warm and dry.

Day by day and night by night,
All the week I hide from sight;
In the cowslip pips I lie,
In the rain still warm and dry;
Day and night and night and day,
Red, black-spotted clock-o’-clay.

My home shakes in wind and showers,
Pale green pillar topped with flowers,
Bending at the wild wind’s breath,
Till I touch the grass beneath;
Here I live, lone clock-o’-clay,
Watching for the time of day.

*******

Poem
by John Gray

(To Arthur Edmonds)

Geranium, houseleek, laid in oblong beds
On the trim grass. The daisies’ leprous stain
Is fresh. Each night the daisies burst again,
Though every day the gardener crops their heads.

A wistful child, in foul unwholesome shreds,
Recalls some legend of a daisy chain
That makes a pretty necklace. She would fain
Make one, and wear it, if she had some threads.

Sun, leprous flowers, foul child. The asphalt burns.
The garrulous sparrows perch on metal Burns.
Sing! Sing! they say, and flutter with their wings.
He does not sing, he only wonders why
He is sitting there. The sparrows sing. And I
Yield to the strait allure of simple things.”

******

The Enkindled Spring
By D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.

***********

Spring
by William Shakespeare

When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are plowmen’s clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

**************

Birds in Alarm – by John Clare

The firetail tells the boys when nests are nigh
And tweets and flies from every passer-bye.
The yellowhammer never makes a noise
But flies in silence from the noisy boys;
The boys will come and take them every day,
And still she lays as none were ta’en away.

The nightingale keeps tweeting-churring round
But leaves in silence when the nest is found.
The pewit hollos ‘chewrit’ as she flies
And flops about the shepherd where he lies;
But when her nest is found she stops her song
And cocks [her] coppled crown and runs along.
Wrens cock their tails and chitter loud and play,
And robins hollo ‘tut’ and fly away.

*******
To Daffodils
Robert Herrick

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
Ne’er to be found again.

*************

Spring, the sweet spring
By Thomas Nashe

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo!

*************

selections from The Seasons: Spring
By James Thomson

As rising from the vegetable World
My Theme ascends, with equal Wing ascend,
My panting Muse; and hark, how loud the Woods
Invite you forth in all your gayest Trim.
Lend me your Song, ye Nightingales! oh pour
The mazy-running Soul of Melody
Into my varied Verse! while I deduce,
From the first Note the hollow Cuckoo sings,
The Symphony of Spring, and touch a Theme
Unknown to Fame, the Passion of the Groves.

When first the Soul of Love is sent abroad,
Warm thro the vital Air, and on the Heart
Harmonious seizes, the gay Troops begin,
In gallant Thought, to plume the painted Wing;
And try again the long-forgotten Strain,
At first faint-warbled. But no sooner grows
The soft Infusion prevalent, and wide,
Than, all alive, at once their Joy o’erflows
In Musick unconfin’d. Up-springs the Lark,
Shrill-voic’d, and loud, the Messenger of Morn;
Ere yet the Shadows fly, he mounted sings
Amid the dawning Clouds, and from their Haunts
Calls up the tuneful Nations. Every Copse
Deep-tangled, Tree irregular, and Bush
Bending with dewy Moisture, o’er the Heads
Of the coy Quiristers that lodge within,
Are prodigal of harmony…

This is the choir teaching the audience a few choruses from the show, in the gallery next to the theater, right before the performance. Picture by photographer Rami Shaya. More pictures will be posted here as soon as they are uploaded.

2012 winners and finalists from the Poetry Out Loud competition.

We’ll be drawing on ParOct favorites for this event:
we will read Wallace Stevens‘s “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” at 1:30 PM,
and Gertrude Stein‘s “Stanzas in Meditation,” with audience participation, at 3:00 PM.

Followed by free food for all, performers and audience, at Gertrude’s!

From the Poetry Out Loud website:

Please join us at the Maryland Poetry Out Loud State Finals, March 9, 2013, 1:00 pm, at the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Auditorium. The competition will be hosted by Aaron Henkin, host of WYPR’s weekly arts and culture radio magazine, The Signal, with performances by Emmy-nominated singer/songwriter ellen cherry and Baltimore-based improvising chorus, Parallel Octave.

The event is free and open to the public.

We will meet
on Sunday, March 3rd
in JHU’s Mattin Center, in the SDS room
from 2-3:30 pm
to record poems
with live improvised music
upon the theme of Tercets N’ Dregs.

I have been faithful to thee, Ernest Dowson, in my fashion.

In keeping with this session being on 3/3/13, we have chosen to focus on the triplicative, triangular, three-sided tercet–a three-line stanza. (The one we have shown you above is actually half of a six-line stanza, but, you know…who’s counting…not us.)

In keeping with the dreaded month of February finally being over, we have taken Ernest Dowson’s poem “Dregs” as the second half of our theme, and also sampled some poetry from him, Robert Graves, and others, that relates to things having dragged on longer than they should.

Those things might be relationships, life, human existence, Phil Jackson’s coaching career, or somebody or other’s long, long poem in tercets (ahem, Wallace Stevens, ahem).

To this end, we will also attempt the first four stanzas of Mary Sidney Herbert’s amazingly named “The Doleful Lay of Clorinda,” but will not attempt the whole thing. We’re not crazy. Well, not that crazy. (Best title ever, though, right?? THE DOLEFUL LAY OF CLORINDA?? C’mon!)

There are more 3s to acknowledge in March–this triplicative month marks the launch of our sister branch, ParOct Austin, which forms a glorious triangle of ParOctivity between Austin, Baltimore, and Łódź. Helmed by our Baltimore alumna Nancy Hoffman, ParOct Austin will be…ParOct Awesome. Nie możemy się doczekać–we can’t wait.

We thank Ellen Freytag, Amy Raasch, and Mark Alan Hilt for their help in creating ParOct’s March theme; we would also like to acknowledge this helpful web page:

http://www.webexhibits.org/poetry/explore_classic_tercet_examples.html

BALTIMORE:
We will meet on the JHU campus in the Mattin Center bulding, in the SDS room (right across the hall from our former meeting place, Mattin 105) this Sunday, March 3rd, from 2-3:30 PM. As usual, all actors, musicians, poets, and friends or foes of the tercet are welcome. There will be a piano in the room; otherwise, BYOinstruments.
The SDS room is a large room, the orchestra room–so BYOlargeinstruments. Tubas welcome.
Join us!

AUSTIN:
Nancy will tell you what to do. But you are probably going to meet in Austin, not in Baltimore.

Poems include, but are not limited to, the following listed below.

Very truly yours,
The Octaves Parallel

*****************************

A. TERCETS

I. The Eagle
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92)

He clasps the crag with crooked hands:
Close to the sun it lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, it stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

II. From Two Voices
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92)

A still small voice spake unto me:
‘Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?’

Then to the still small voice I said:
‘Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made.’

III. First and last sections only of Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

[...]

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

B. DREGS AND REGRETS; DOWSON TO GRAVES

Ernest Dowson, “Dregs”

http://poetry.elcore.net/CatholicPoets/Dowson/Dowson63.html

Dregs
The fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof
(This is the end of every song man sings!)
The golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain,
Bitter as wormwood and as salt as pain;
And health and hope have gone the way of love
Into the drear oblivion of lost things.
Ghosts go along with us until the end;
This was a mistress, this, perhaps, a friend.
With pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and wait
For the dropt curtain and the closing gate:
This is the end of all the songs man sings.

Ernest Dowson
“Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae”

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee Cynara! in my fashion.

The Lady Visitor in the Pauper Ward (Robert Graves)

Why do you break upon this old, cool peace,
This painted peace of ours,
With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese,
With garish flowers?
Why do you churn smooth waters rough again,
Selfish old Skin-and-bone?
Leave us to quiet dreaming and slow pain,
Leave us alone.

Not Dead (Robert Graves)

Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain,
I know that David’s with me here again.
All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.
Caressingly I stroke
Rough bark of the friendly oak,
A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his.
Turf burns with pleasant smoke:
I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses.
All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.
Over the whole wood in a little while
Breaks his slow smile.

[The Doleful Lay of Clorinda; first 4 stanzas]

By Mary Sidney Herbert Countess of Pembroke

Ay me, to whom shall I my case complain,
That may compassion my impatient grief?
Or where shall I unfold my inward pain,
That my enriven heart may find relief?
Shall I unto the heavenly pow’rs it show,
Or unto earthly men that dwell below?

To heavens? Ah, they, alas, the authors were,
And workers of my unremedied woe:
For they foresee what to us happens here,
And they foresaw, yet suffered this be so.
From them comes good, from them comes also ill,
That which they made, who can them warn to spill.

To men? Ah, they, alas, like wretched be,
And subject to the heavens’ ordinance:
Bound to abide whatever they decree.
Their best redress is their best sufferance.
How then can they, like wretched, comfort me,
The which no less need comforted to be?

Then to myself will I my sorrow mourn,
Sith none alive like sorrowful remains:
And to myself my plaints shall back return,
To pay their usury with doubled pains.
The woods, the hills, the rivers shall resound
The mournful accent of my sorrow’s ground.

“Advice to a Girl,” by Sara Teasdale

No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;
This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are alone
And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed.

Parallel Octave will celebrate the month known as “février” by the French with a selection of poems about the woes of love. Blake! Teasdale! Housman! Joyce! Lowell! WOE!

Image via spreadshirt.com, where you, too, can have a heartbreak-emoticon T-shirt.

We believe it was William Wordsworth who once said “Woe is a dish best shared with lots of people playing instruments.”

Poems follow:

Sara Teasdale, “I am not yours, though lost in you“
James Joyce, “Flood“
A.E. Housman, “He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?“
Amy Lowell, “The Letter“
Thomas Wyatt, “They Flee From Me“
selections from the long “Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to her Husband,” by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
William Blake, “Love’s Secret“
Ben Jonson, “Song to Celia
John Clare, “I Hid My Love“
Aphra Benn, “A Thousand Martyrs

We hope to do all of the same things in the 2013, including, of course, ANTHOLOGY III (stay tuned!), and a new lineup of open poem-recording sessions on the JHU campus–there will also be a new cooperation with Baltimore’s Poetry Out Loud. As Annie Proulx says in “Bird Cloud,” “You bet.”

For now, we leave you with one of the films from ANTHOLOGY II, based on Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Fortschritt” (Progress), directed by Alexandra Nemetschke.

While we are not sure if what we are doing is “progress” or not, we know it has been tremendously fun, and we do not intend to stop. May 2013 bring you–and us–all the Greek choruses you can handle!

(You can watch all the ANTHOLOGY II films online at Parallel Octave’s YouTube channel.)