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)