Our next meeting: Sunday, October 7th

“And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.”
– Edgar Allan Poe, “The Conqueror Worm”

“Oh, my aged Uncle Arly,
Sitting on a heap of barley!”
– Edward Lear, “Incidents in the Life of my Uncle Arly”

“I whole in body, and in mind,
but very weak in purse,
Do make, and write my testament
for fear it will be worse.”
– Isabella Whitney, from “The Manner of Her Will…”

Death, be not proud: be poetic. It’s Halloween early at Parallel Octave, as we’re only hosting one open session this month. This coming Sunday, October 7th, join us for some of the obscurer (yet equally melodramatic) poems of Baltimore’s own Edgar Allan, not to mention William Blake. Worms! Skulls! Smiling, worm-eaten skulls!

Sunday, October 7th
Mattin 105, JHU campus
2-3:30 PM

BYOinstruments: friends, foes, actors, musicians, and other interested parties (interested in recording poems, that is) are all welcome. There will be a piano in the room.

Poems follow:

We wouldn’t want this to get too serious, though: some of the funnier bards have written about death, as well, and after last session’s success with poems of humorous penchant, we thought it appropriate to invite Mr. Lear to the party again, with his hilarious–although death-contemplating “Incidents in the Life of my Uncle Arly.”

Also on the lighter side is Isabella Whitney’s “A Communication Which The Author Had To London, Before She Made Her Will,” a breakup letter with a city that would have made C.P. Cavafy proud, had he been alive in the late 1500s. Whitney, purportedly the first female poet to write secular poetry in English (thank you, Poetry Foundation website, for helping ParOct to purport since 2010 by stealing from your biography pages) also wrote a longer rhyming will, “The Manner of Her Will,” which we cannot hope to record in full but do intend to link to, cause it’s kind of awesome.

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Conqueror Worm”
(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178359)

Edgar Allan Poe, “To One In Paradise”
(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180810)

William Blake, “The Sick Rose”
(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172938)

William Blake, “The Smile”
(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176906)

Edward Lear, “Incidents in the Life of my Uncle Arly”
(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/incidents-in-the-life-of-my-uncle-arly/)

Edward Lear, “There Was a Young Person of Smyrna”
(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/limerick-there-was-a-young-person-of-smyrna/)

Isabella Whitney, “A Communication Which The Author Had To London, Before She Made Her Will”
(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180377)

Isabella Whitney, “The Manner Of Her Will…” (for reading, probably not for recording)
(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180378)