Product Description
Whitman only published one
book Leaves of Grass but it was always a work in progress. He
added poems and revised others for each succeeding edition. Thus, the
first edition (1819) was a small book with only 12 poems and the
last, often refered to as the Deathbed Edition (1892), contained over
400. Some of these he wrote in clusters of related poems. Such
is the case with the Calamus cluster.
The title was chosen to
alert the reader that these were poems about what he called the
love of comrades, manly love or with the code word,
adhesiveness. The concept of homosexuality, as we know it
today, was very different in Whitmans time, but violently socially
taboo.
Acorus calamus is a
reed-like species of marsh grass. In Poetry and Prose,
Whitman wrote that it s a
" very large and
aromatic grass, or root, spears three feet highoften called 'sweet
flag'grows all over the Northern and Middle States.
The phallic plant has
always been a symbol of love and associated with the Greek myth of
Kalamos, son of the river god who loved the youth Karpos. When Karpos
died in a swimming accident, Kalamos transformed himself into a reed
so he could always be near the spot where his beloved died, and the
rustling of the reeds in the winds sounds like moans of mourning.
The Calamus cluster, 39
poems in all, recount the story of a manly love found and lost from
the perspective of some time later. They are bittersweet memories. I
chose four poems for my own cluster. They represent the four stages
of such a relationship: initial attraction, first coy interactions,
full-blossomed love, and the bitterness of its ending. It is
possible that these events actually happened or that they all
occurred in the poets mind without ever revealing his thoughts to the
intended.
Some musical devices, such
as the rustling of the leaves in the third song and the constant use
of seconds as two people who are close but not yet together in the
second one, are obvious. But, other than some indications of tempo, I
hesitate to give out remarks about how to perform the songs, or even
metronome markings, that might give the singer a preconceived notion.
This
situation has happened to everyone. So, I say to the singer: revive
the memories of a similar event in your life: a particularly
heartbreaking one is best. Bring the telling of that memory to the
vivid present, and tell us that story as if it ending some time ago
but the hurt remains strong, If, by some chance, the singer has not
had this experience, he should wait to sing this cycle until he has.
The composer
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.