…And where his hand should have been, was a bloody hook….

by Tony Fonseca, with David Faucheaux

02/29/2008

Harper, Bob. Twisted Rhymes. Bob Harper Productions, Inc., 1993-2004. Audio CD Time: 52:16. Available to purchase at http://www.hearbob.com/index.html.

I never cared much for Edgar Allan Poe as a writer, and had little to no respect for him as a poet—that is until I heard Bob Harper's spoken poetry CD, Twisted Rhymes. It occurred to me, after listening to various demented and gothic poems created with simple techniques, such as rhyming couplets, and narrated in a kitschy manner that Vincent Price himself would have been proud of, that this is probably the way that Poe's poetry should be appreciated, not simply as words on a page. The author and narrator of the verse, Bob Harper, has more fun than should be legal, as he plays with campy story lines and ghoulish imagery, and seems enraptured when he gets to recite words like “cadaverous” (which is now one of my favorite words).

But this CD isn't all about camp. The production values are excellent. The spoken poems are accompanied by mood music, special effects that illustrate either what is happening in the text, or what is to be read between the lines. And more importantly, almost each of the pieces hides as its subtext what seems to be leftist leanings. Being a good leftist myself (what other kind is there), I appreciate the underlying sympathies which the pieces exhibit with medieval peasants, farmers, native Africans, and military widows—people who are normally cast aside or taken advantage of.

Nonetheless, the main reason that I would suggest that each and every reader of this review go out and either find a copy of this CD, or purchase XM Satellite Radio, where Harper's spoken rhymes are often in rotation on the Sonic Theater channel, is because the pieces are fun. Listening to Harper breaks the monotony of ESPN Sports Radio, NPR's All Things Considered, and the same old 200 music CDs played again and again. His voice will become like a welcome passenger riding shotgun, except that he will offer entertaining rhythmic speech and intelligent commentary on various social issues, as well as on the nature of the gothic itself. You won't help but be able to notice the homage to Poe in “And Nothing More,” while tongue-in-cheek offerings such as “Cup a' Joe” (which actually made me laugh out loud) and “Patient Number 9” will make you wistful for the great Vincent Price. Many reviewers have in fact noted, and rightfully so, that the selections on Twisted Rhymes are the equivalent of gathering sleeping bags into a tight circle, placing flashlights against faces, and going for the one-upman scare.

The CD will also give you an appreciation for the difficulty that must be involved in creating works in such a medium. Harper made me realize that I could follow a poem easily, even while driving, without the benefit of the written version in front of me. A consummate voice actor, he signals each new stanza of a given poem through repetition of a phrase, as in “Royal Blood,” where each begins with “It was a lovely affair /a marvelous affair,” or he uses a repeated rhythmic structure, as in “Cup a' Joe,” where every stanza begins with a terse, Raymond Chandleresque line similar to “I didn't notice. Didn't focus. Didn't care.” In addition, Harper accounts for line breaks, commas, and periods by pausing correctly, as a seasoned poet would do, and he estimates various voices where quoted material would be clearly indicated in a written text by punctuation. What he does best is make sure that rhyme is not the only thing listeners hear, which would make the pieces trite and clichéd. All of this combined makes each poem memorable after one hearing, which is useful since one cannot read a line three or four times, as with a poem on paper.

Ultimately, these poems work because they are spoken. Audio lends to this collection a greater sense of atmosphere and immediacy. Stereo-enhanced sound effects lend a sculpted feel and greater urgency to the vignettes. Horses hooves travel from one speaker to the other, chopping sounds startle the reader, a ship's bell ushers in a feeling of dread, and a police dispatcher's call initiates one poem's actions. Music plays a useful role in setting the scene for the Cinderella-like ball that ends so abruptly for one of the guests. Multiple voices create a layered effect. 

Nonetheless, what makes Twisted Rhymes so appealing is the variety of Harper's subject matter. The opening poem, “Royal Blood,” tells of a stately party where several lords are taken into a back room and forced to play “the king's deadly game.” What the game amounts to is this: the king wants the lords to share in the uglier decisions he has had to make as a despot, decisions which no doubt these lords have profited by. So he brings out a peasant and states that each lord must slash one of the poor man's body parts with a sword, so that each may partake of the screams he (the king) hears in his own dreams. This is pretty heady psychological stuff masquerading as simple horror, and what makes it work is that the narrator, like the listener, decides not to participate. The question is, will his friends, the other lords, follow suit? The same over-the-top horror can be found in “Patient Number 9,” “Musical Murder Mystery,” and “Cup a' Joe.” “Patient Number 9” offers a sub textual puzzle as well as a demented maniac playing doctor. If you are paying attention you'll hear a woman's voice begin every stanza, and the house is always referred to as “our abode.” Is the ghost of a former “patient” there watching? Does the good doctor have a nurse accomplice? This kind of enigma just adds to the fun.

More subtle, disquieting horror can be heard in “Cobwebs and Candlelight,” “In Laredo 1857,” and “And Nothing More.” My personal favorite, “Cobwebs and Candlelight,” is narrated by a ghost hunting priest. But he is not looking to exorcise a demon; rather he has come to the home of a military widow who was ill-used by her own government (a Rebel soldier took her husband away, and a Yankee bank foreclosed on much of her estate). She eventually went crazy, and was murdered by townspeople who “cleansed” their intentions with “biblical verses.” The reason the priest has gone there, we find out, is to release her spirit from its torment. The final verse begins, “Cobwebs and candlelight./ I'll not forget that autumn night./Nor will I tell who set the fire./A burning house, or a funeral pyre,” and ends with his bidding the restless spirit goodbye. “And Nothing More” offers the same human dimension to haunting, as it deals with a revenging revenant that has returned to bestow a curse on a remaining family member centuries after a wrongdoing (and it shouldn’t be lost on listeners that the ghost is an Irish Catholic who was betrayed by a fellow Irishman to a British Protestant general). Here, the narrator, an ex-cop who knows that evil isn’t supernatural, that it doesn't play with doors or move furniture, is slowly brought around to realize that a wronged spirit is at work. At the poem's end, he has to convince the spirit that a centuries old grudge should be allowed to die, that an eye for an eye is not always the best policy. “And Nothing More” turns out to be a very powerful piece.

However, the best poem on the CD is its second longest, “When the Full Moon Comes Rising.” It begins with the king's bishop alerting him to a threat from the local hermit, a witch named Anna Mae Brill. As it turns out, the king himself created this witch by wrongfully torturing and killing her husband (which would have also made her destitute and forced her to live in the hills). Brill gets her revenge by raising an army of zombies “when the full moon comes rising,” and these undead warriors “cleanse” the kingdom. By poem's end, the peasants—the only people who respected Brill's witchcraft—have become landholding farmers, and the new king is “just like any other man.” But Harper doesn't just end the tale there. Brill's curse is an annual one, so woe betide anyone who needs to be “cleansed” in order to preserve the new balance of power. The final lines are “...an owl is staring, strangely alert./For when the full moon comes rising,/So does a hand,/through the dirt.”

Try listening to that while driving near a cemetery. Preferably one where Poe or Price is buried.

[Insert evil laugh here]

Twisted Rhymes:

1. Royal Blood (4:50)

2. Cobwebs & Candlelight (5:46)

3. Patient Number 9 (3:57)

4. When The Full Moon Comes Rising (7:05)

5. Cap'n MacKnee (3:15)

6. VooDoo

7. Musical Murder Mystery (4:22)

8. In Laredo 1857 (4:18)

9. Cup a' Joe (4:34)

10. And Nothing More (9:32)