Search This Blog

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.

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita Anagramaniacal Opening Lines

Lolita, light of my life...  ...might fail to yell "Foil!"...  ...or opt to yell "Epee!" -- she's just that unpredic...