Ella, poets who suffer pain should fall in love with girls named Jane

[sovay]

Tonight was my family's annual Halloween party, which this year was full of children: my niece as Elsa from Frozen, Fox with the tail and ears of a black cat, Peter as a Rowling wizard, two granddaughters of a family friend (accompanied by their aunt rather than their mother, which it's good someone told me, because otherwise I thought I was having a terrible time telling faces in that family apart) in black-and-orange Halloween regalia. There was mulled cider and a lot of pizza and pumpkin-carving, which was the only time all evening I had a chance to sit down until people had left. spatch's pumpkin reminded me of Sesame Street's Yip Yips and my sister-in-law of Hyperbole and a Half. Mine is the traditional cat. It was a good time.





For about a day and a half now I have been listening to the original television cast recording of Stephen Sondheim's Evening Primrose (1966) with Anthony Perkins and Charmian Carr. It's wonderful music—four songs plus reprises and about half an hour of incidental music, lyrical early Sondheim. Given its whimsical, macabre, Twilight Zone-ish plot, I can understand why the musical never had more than a cult following, but at least two of its songs developed enough of an independent afterlife that I had encountered them in the wild before finding last month's YouTube clips and the other two are equally as strong, if more difficult to excerpt. (And clever. The lines that lead to the title of this post are a heartfelt but out of his depth poet trying to rhyme the name of his beloved: "Ella, gay as a tarantella / Pure as larks singing a cappella / Let my poem be your umbrella—") I am seriously thinking of trying to get hold of the DVD. And I still wish Perkins had done more musicals.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, glad you had fun. I like the pumpkins!

[percysowner]

Wow! I remember seeing Evening Primrose when it was broadcast. Thanks for letting me know I can find it again.

[jesse_the_k]

Great lyrics, lovely work from spatch

[gwynnega]

What great pumpkins! The party sounds lovely.

[asakiyume]

It does look like one of the Yip Yips! And the cat is inspired; I'm impressed by those thin whiskers. I've done No-Face from Spirited Away and a face that's supposed to look like the Cat Bus from Totoro but doesn't really. I'll try to take pictures.

And that poet needs to pull himself together; Ella's not that hard to rhyme--Jane is arguably *harder* to rhyme, unless you're writing rock lyrics. JANE JANE, YOU DRIVE ME INSANE, JANE. (sung screamo style)