[New-Poetry] Rock & Roll and Poetic Composition

[David Graham]

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

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html

Poetry Library:
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