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Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Calypso Caprice (Canto Fourteen in Uly Poe's "Death of Art" Series)

When, one long-ago Fall, inside Carnegie Hall,
Perry Hartch introduced this new piece;
'twas for voices and strings -- 
plus preposterous things.
Perry call'd it "Calypso Caprice."

First came notes in a wail (43 to the scale)
play'd con brio assai by two flutes.
At the seventeenth bar, Hartch off-loaded a jar
of cream'd corn over ten tenor lutes.

Then the ladies who play'd 'em cried (quoting verbatim):
"You've not heard the last of us yet," 
whence each took her marimba (or shook her kalimba),
withal to make good on that threat. 

Soon there follow'd a rest (hours long, critics guess'd:
no one knows, for the audience left.)
Thus did Perry's "Caprice" undergo its decease...
Thus the musical world's left bereft.

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