Poe’s poetry brought to musical and visual life: The Conqueror Worm by Folkswitch

Like the tales that made him famous, Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry is richly dark, exploring those same themes of love, loss, death and evil. His short stories were his bread and butter, and he was the quintessential craftsman in their writing. But Poe’s poetry was his art, personal and seeping with emotion.

The Conqueror Work brings Poe’s poems together with acid rock, traces of heavy metals, European cabaret music and and a feel of the theatrical, to give his emotional discourses new settings for a new age.

Poe’s life was scarred by loss, his father to abandonment, his mother to death – an event which seemed to overtake many of the women who were instrumental Poe’s life. Poe’s poetry reflects that loss, from the obvious paean to the departed, Spirits of the Dead, to his last poem, Annabel Lee, where heroine succumbs to illness and her love continues to visit and lie with her nightly, in the grave.

Poe’s poetry explore unflinchingly death, as in the Conqueror Worm the key lines which close out the poem read “That the play is the tragedy, ‘Man’ And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.” Even Poe’s idea of angels, usually thought of as bringing relief and hope, in his poetry only affirm the futility of it all. In Annabel Lee, they conspire with demons to keep the lovers apart.

There is no bright spot in this collection of Poe’s poetry. The music which accompanies veers from intense, pounding drums and overdriven guitars, washes of feedback stain the palette upon which the author’s words rest, to the gentle strains of the broken hearted. It’s amazing how easily Poe’s poetry can be sung, as though the author hummed along as he penned the stanzas. Phrases such as “Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before” roll lightly off the tongue, while others long to be screamed in anguish, “Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!’ Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’”

A Dream Within A Dream finds Poe exploring the structure of life, reality and the loss of all you know and care about it. In the end Poe believed we lost all, because that was his experience and it inundates Poe’s poetry. The City In The Sea is an apocalyptic vision – a glorious city ruled over by the figure of Death, who is only preparing the way for the return of Satan and the unleashing of Hell on earth. In Poe’s poetry, that glorious city, as well as all things of beauty in the end succumb to the conqueror worm.

There are many version of The Raven out there in musical form, but seldom is there a conscious attempt to actually sing the damn thing. Lou Reed even settled for narration over the top of Metal Machine type music, rather than find the rhythm of Poe’s poetry. Here Folkswitch keeps the words intact, presenting the poem much as a high school musical drama performance, breaking it into sections to follow the story arc, from the longing for lost Lenore, to the appearance of the raven, to the narrator’s descent into madness.

Poe’s poetry, like his more famous tales explore madness, as Poe explored it in real life, the inevitable result of a life of hardship and loss. It can be argued that madness is the proper response to the human condition. This collection of poems and music takes that exploration further and brings it into the modern age, while trying to keep touch with its nineteenth century roots.

It was a time and a place where death was always a heartbeat away, the world was growing more dangerous and after Poe’s death, the wholesale slaughter of great swatches of the human race began in earnest. Perhaps Poe saw the future and gave us a blueprint for dealing with inevitable loss, death and pain. His words still echo down to us today.

The videos of Poe’s Poetry

Each interpretation of Poe’s Poetry on The Conqueror Worm has been given a visual treatment, resulting in nine stand alone videos as well as one extended length, 60 minute compilation. Dark and menacing, the videos draw from the German Expressionists as well as more modern artists who have explored the dark side through music and video. Not a horror film per se, the treatment of Poe’s poetry does result in a feeling of unease, and we humbly submit brings the music, and the lyrics a new perspective.

All the videos can be found on this site, as well as the Folkswitch YouTube channel.

The Conqueror Worm
To One In Paradise
A Dream Within A Dream
Annabel Lee
Interlude: The Hearse Song (The Worms Crawl In The Worms Crawl Out)
Deep In Earth (My Love Is Lying)
Spirits Of The Dead
City In The Sea
The Raven

Personnel:

Teelin Atteberry: Drums, Percussion, Violin
Todd Atteberry: Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards, Percussion
Todd Lane: Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Conqueror Worm: The play is the tragedy, ‘Man’ And its hero, the Conqueror Worm

Poe’s The Conqueror Worm can be found in his tale Ligeia, a story of death, resurrection, opium abuse, more death and madness. The poem depicts a performance of mimes, controlled by vast, shapeless forms offstage. High above angels watch and weep, and at last an evil, formless shape crawls center stage and eats the hapless mimes, and as the curtain comes down, the title of the play, Man is revealed, and the hero, The Conqueror Worm introduced.

Poe’s mimes represent man, who given the illusion of self determination, are in fact, ruled by dark forces unseen and unstoppable. Even those deities and their minions in which we place hope, in Poe’s The Conqueror Worm are helpless to intervene. Poe proclaims we all meet the same fate, certain and hideous death, and the inevitable decomposition of what remains of us.

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Deep In Earth on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Conqueror Worm

Lo! ’t is a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years!

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils, and drowned in tears,

Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly—

Mere puppets they, who come and go

At bidding of vast formless things

That shift the scenery to and fro,

Flapping from out their Condor wings

Invisible Wo!

That motley drama—oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore

By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot,

And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout,

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And seraphs sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!

And, over each quivering form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm,

While the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”

And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

Edgar Allan Poe’s To One In Paradise: For, alas! alas! with me The light of Life is o’er!

Poe’s To One In Paradise tells of the sorrow felt when you lose the connection to the one you love, essentially being shut out of paradise. Poe creates an almost Biblical tone, comparisons to the Garden of Eden and man’s fall from God’s grace are inevitable.

Has his love left this life to go to paradise, or is he simply deprived of her company, Poe’s To One In Paradise is vague on the matter? What he isn’t vague about is the loss – the light of life is over. For Poe’s love was all to him, as it is to all of us.

Poe’s To One In Paradise draws a picture of nature as Eden, but it’s nature with the hand of man upon it … a fountain, a shrine, as well as the hand of the supernatural … fairy fruits and flowers.

The author walks through life in a trance, an unending sorrow, for even in his dreams, he sees the world through her eyes, and finds life seeing the world as she does, following in her footsteps, and who of us haven’t done the same thing? There’s something that draws us to memory when we retrace the steps we took together, which she now takes alone.

Once again there is no hope, no anticipation of a second chance, just the certainty that all is lost and all is over in Poe’s To One In Paradise.

Thou wast that all to me, love,

For which my soul did pine—

A green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,

And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast!

A voice from out the Future cries,

“On! on!”—but o’er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies

Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me

The light of Life is o’er!

No more—no more—no more—

(Such language holds the solemn sea

To the sands upon the shore)

Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,

Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams

Are where thy grey eye glances,

And where thy footstep gleams—

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

Click to purchase To One In Paradise on Bandcamp

Click to learn more about The Conqueror Worm by Folkswitch

Edgar Allan Poe’s A Dream Within a Dream: You are not wrong, who deem, That my days have been a dream

Analyzing Poe’s A Dream Within A Dream is an exercise in futility. Poe’s intentions can’t be known, but it doesn’t stop people from trying.

Read straightforward you get a sense that Poe is on the verge of loss, he’s kissing his loved one goodbye, and if there’s a sense that he’s accepted it, it’s because accepted the reality, or unreality of life. You can’t live a dream for long, because it’s simply a dream within the dream that is life.

In A Dream Within A Dream, everything slips away, like sand through the fingertips, you can’t hold onto anything, particularly something that is fluid. A dream within a dream is fluid by nature, for dreams aren’t bound by nature’s law. Instead they build upon the imagination, where there are no laws.

Life, like sand held in the fingertips beneath the waves is always being sucked into the deep, washed away by nature’s tides. Man has the ability to imagine anything he wants, and in the imagination those dreams can live. But in life, we are bound by nature’s laws, which deem in the end, all is lost.

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee: But we loved with a love that was more than love

Annabel Lee was Poe’s last poem. Legends abound that it’s based on a story from Charleston, South Carolina, but that’s unlikely. In reality he wrote it about his wife, recently deceased.

It’s the story of a man haunted by love, and follows love into the grave. It’s an exploration of obsessive love, doomed love that keep the mind busy for some time, working it out for ourselves.

Holding onto your love after the death, literal or metaphoric of the one you love, is a romantic notion. It’s one we hold true in the beginning of relationships, and perhaps we never really think of the lessons of Annabel Lee till we’re forced to. Annabel Lee suffered physical death, but any permanent separation to the one left behind is a kind of death as well. One doesn’t have to be a widow or widower to identify with the longing and loss found in Annabel Lee.

Nor does one have to experience or even long to experience the implied necrophilia of Poe’s Annabel Lee. But who amongst haven’t longed to hold in our arms one long and forever lost to us, and remember a time when we believed that even death could never break our love.

Poe did return to the pursuit, for he did love beautiful women, but perhaps his last poem shone a light into his heart, which said his heart really wasn’t into it. But instead lie at night with his bride, in that sepulcher by the sea.

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Deep In Earth on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Interlude: The Hearse Song, a.k.a. The Worms Crawl In The Worms Crawl Out

The Hearse Song is one of the first songs I ever learned, albeit in a shortened version”

The worms crawl in,
The worms crawl out.
The worms play pinochle on your snout.
You spread it on a piece of bread,
And that’s what you eat when you are dead.

Now a keen eye will instantly recognize that there’s something missing. What the hell are you eating on a piece of bread? I learned The Hearse Song from my sister, but it was a popular song in Jefferson grade school, and we all sang it the same way. It turns out there are regional variations.

It was some decades later, during the recording of this piece that I noticed the omission. We were laying down the base tracks for The Conqueror Worm which at that point was three sections. But I ran out of lyrics on the second, and needed something to fill the space while we played. I opened my mouth and The Hearse Song fell out.

There wasn’t a lot of time to figure this out. Teelin’s time is valuable, and we only had a weekend to record three drum parts. Being a considerate neighbor we like to quit drum related activity somewhat early. We had the riff and no idea what Teelin would play, but when he did that, we knew we had to record it. And it was little more than an excuse to let him unleash everything he’d built up sowing restraint throughout recording The Raven.

This is maybe half of his performance, because I eventually ran out of alternate lines for the Hearse Song. Teelin can, and will fill every available space with drums given the opportunity. To be young and hyperactive again …

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

Edgar Allan Poe’s Deep In Earth: And I must weep alone

Poe’s Deep in Earth is a curious couplet. It was found pencilled in on a copy of the manuscript to Eulalie, which speaks of the joy of his marriage.

Perhaps that scribbling is Poe thinking out loud, taking a note to remind himself of a couplet which he might use later. Perhaps he was adding a postscript to Eulalie, what happens after the ending.

His wife had died earlier that year and Poe had fallen apart. It was in this stasis that he found madness, and Poe’s Deep In Earth comes from that period , unable to leave his wife’s memory and begin life anew. Till he could throw over her ghost which haunted him, he was condemned, like one of protagonists to walk in that grey twilight, to wander amongst the graves. Poe looked at death unflinchingly, the conqueror worm dissolves all of us, the gruesome details we inevitably ponder when our loved ones are placed in the ground.

And Poe had a better imagination than most. Poe’s Deep In Earth is more than a metaphysical thought, but also speaks to the reality of the moment.

Deep in earth is where we console ourselves that our loved one’s body is safe. But in reality, deep in earth is simply a way to take the waste of life from our sight. Bodies aren’t buried deep for the benefit of nature, unless by number they become a health hazard. Nature disposes of the dead if given a chance, quite gleefully. We bury our dead to avoid nature’s blight on our consciousness.

But the grave to Poe, as it is to us is a barrier, between ourselves and those we once loved. It’s a closed gate to the physical manifestation of the person we loved. We can cross through that gate only by going deep in earth, to our own grave. Where we must lie, and weep alone.