Killer Verse
Poems of Murder and Mayhem
Sunday with the Friends - Free Performance
November 8, 2015 at 2:00 PM | Lakewood Public Library Main Auditorium - 15425 Detroit Ave., Lakewood, OH
The
human race seems to be hypnotically fascinated by the deadly art of
Murder. As witness by the number of books, films, television programs,
and the news media’s unending fascination for the gruesome and gory, we
as a species seem to be mesmerized by spine tingling stories of famous
and infamous murderers and their victims throughout history, or by those
unknown to us but who are all too real.
From
a recent anthology of the same name, masterfully edited by Harold
Schecter and Kurt Brown, WordStage has chosen to present poems of
significant literary, historical and psychological interest and
underscore them with music from some of the great classical masters of
macabre music – Saint Saens, Chopin, Grieg, Herrmann, and more.
The
villains and victims who populate this presentation range from Cain and
Abel to Bluebeard and his wives, to Lizzie Borden and Jack the Ripper,
and many more murderous miscreants. The literary forms they inhabit are
just as varied, from colorful melodramatic ballads to hard boiled 21st
Century noir, from startlingly lighthearted riffs to profound poetic
musings. Some of the authors included in this program are Robert
Browning, Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden, William Cullen Bryamt, Edgar Lee
Masters, Kenneth Patchen, and Ravi Shankar. These are only a few of the
many poets, old and new, whose work will be presented in this heart
stopping – and criminally entertaining, WordStage performance.
Featuring Actor/Readers Agnes Herrmann, Paul Slimak and Tim Tavcar - Accompanied by Violinist Mary Beth Ions
(submitted by Tim Tavcar)