[New-Poetry] Rock & Roll and Poetic Composition

[James Cervantes]

Hmm. Much food for musing.  Thanks, David.

- Jim

On 2/22/08, David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:
>
> An odd & interesting piece on poetry & music.  An ABC essay (excerpts from E
> & F below, followed by link to full essay).
>
>
> Parallel Lines and Power Chords: A Meditative ABC on Rock & Roll and Poetic
> Composition
>
>
> by Michael Morse
>
>
>
>
>
> E is for "ending." I'm always a sucker for the long, extended, reflective,
> meditative jam at the end of a song that swells towards a conclusion,
> simultaneously meditative and edgy. I think of Frank Zappa's meditative
> solos in "Watermelon in Easter Hay" from his crazily operatic Joe's Garage,
> or Talk Talk on their album Laughing Stock, or any number of narratives
> ("Telegraph Road" comes to mind) by Dire Straits. Perhaps my personal
> favorite: the Pixies' "No. 13 baby" on their Doolittle release. It fronts
> the edgy lyricism of petulantly savvy Black Francis and ends in a satisfying
> feast of surf guitar rhythms, Kim Deal's pulsing bass, and a sharp Joey
> Santiago solo that fades off into the songset—put on the 11th cut and take
> note when the song hits the two-minute mark—the next minute and 50 seconds
> are exponential bliss. Download Tom Petty's song "It's Good to be King" and
> wait out its simple lyrics until the melancholy pop slides into something
> ethereal. The tension between beauty and power and the more tentative or
> reflective creeping out into new territory inspire a kind of reverie, a
> poetic dreaming.
>
> F is for fragment, our cultural bellwether. Find it in the sound bite, the
> jump cut, the sample, the appropriated image or text: "A glimpse suffices to
> trigger an entirety," says Cole Swenson.
>
> I've taught with Ann Carson's collection of Sappho's fragments (If Not,
> Winter), asking students to generate their own language within the bracketed
> spaces, indications where missing papyrus once housed language—letting them
> use the Sapphic fragments as springboards to work of their own. The work of
> discernible fragments and gaps rife with potential for play reminds me of
> listening to Rock as a child. In singing along or deciphering, fragments and
> snatches were the order of the day, with mistakes and missteps de rigueur.
> Echoing the compilation of misheard song lyrics, 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This
> Guy, I remember how a friend once thought that the refrain in the Beatles'
> "Paperback Writer" was "Take the back right turn." I've always loved the
> space to play off of a text, and Sappho's fragments remind me how Rock
> lyrics, in drips and drabs, clear or garbled, can also generate a play space
> for language. Speaking of play space and the letter F, let us praise funk—as
> in Parliament, as in George Clinton. Funk with bagpipes and strings? Oh,
> yes.
> http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20010?utm_source=poetsupdate_022108&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=content&utm_content=morse_abc
>
>
> ========================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
>
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>
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