Poets and pop.

The topics picked for RR lists just goes to show (for the mockers and sneerers) that there's a lot of overlap between pop and poetry. The songs people mention can very often easily stand beside the stuff I read in Carol Ann Duffy's piece in today's Guardian :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/25/war-poetry-carol-ann-duffy


Those wonderful poems brought to mind a song from one of Australia's biggest ever bands Cold Chisel called Khe Sanh. Don Walker writes like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, two other pop poets (among many)

http://www.coldchisel.com.au/l1_khesahn.html (no, that's not one of my prolific typos - it really is the URL).

And then I went rummaging around for stuff about pop and poetry and found this piece from last year about poet Simon Armitage's love for pop :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/3672932/A-poets-love-of-pop.html



Cheers, Caitlin

"Let lips do what hands do; They pray"

I thought about posting some kiss-based poetry on the Spill when Maddy suggested it as a topic, but the blog was moving really fast that week and I didn't want to slow it down, so I've saved it for now. The first is by a little-known (at least here in the UK: US residents?) poet called Edna St Vincent Millay, who was a very bohemian and free-living woman: the second is by Sir Thomas Wyatt, a courtier from Tudor times, a genuine Renaissance man. The poem may or may not be about Anne Boleyn. Hope you like them!

'What lips have kissed my lips, and where, and why'

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.



They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot stalking in my chamber
I have seen them gentle tame and meek
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometimes they did put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she caught me in her arms long and small;
And therewithal sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said, Dear heart, how like you this?

It was no dream, I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of foresaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness
And she also to use newfangleness.
But since so kindely I am served,
I would fain know what she hath deserved.

Thoughts, anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

A propos of bugger all, I thought you might like to have a look at this website, about a close ally of music, dancing. I answered the online questionnair and was slightly perturbed to realise the site owner was publishing the whole thing. He seems lovely and welcomes contributions, so feel free to bug him with your own answer!

http://history-is-made-at-night.blogspot.com

"Peotry is sissy stuff that rhymes"

Thus sa NigelMolesworth, curse of St Custards. However, being more of a Fotherington-Thomas sort, I love the stuff. Hullo clouds, hullo sky! Following a request from DebbyM, I've been thinking about a good poem to post. Someone else jogged my memory of this one by the fantastic e e cummings, so here it is.

i like my body when it is with your

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

Here's my absolute favourite from him though: I have it stapled next to my whiteboard (not political correctness, the boards are actually white now) and when I have a stressful moment my eye can rest upon it and it gives me a lift. I can't get through reading it aloud without my voice breaking.especially the last line. The words are oblique, like most cummings, but you don't have to over-analyse it, let the words wash over you. Poetry should always be said outloud though. If we all have the temerity to sing along with music at our PCs (and we all do, right?), why not read them out. The sounds are everything.

somewhere i have never travelled
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens ; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands