About eight or nine years ago I caught a ride from Northampton, Massachusetts to New York City with the poet Matthew Rohrer. We’d given a reading a few nights earlier with a third poet, Talvikki Ansel, at the Broadside Bookshop. Traveling with us was my son, Lucas, then around 12 years old. The conversation meandered from poetry and tales of living in New England (me and Matthew mostly), some lurid interpretations of Genesis, and some back and forth about music (Lucas chiming in here, he was dead into the Beatles back then, and a ripping good Suzuki violinist — which he has stuck with and now is a sophomore at Berklee College of Music in Boston), and then we went a few rounds on baseball (all of us bandying, but Lucas taking the lead with an encyclopedic recall of stats).
One exchange I remember: Matthew and I gabbing about what our generation of poets (born between 1960-1970) was most influenced by that wasn’t poetry or other poets. I said we were hungover from the Cold War. Matthew said it was contemporary rock and roll. To which I thought, contemporary rock and roll? Really? How is that possible?
Know about me that, growing up in Texas, I generally set the radio dial to KIKK which does not exist anymore, but for decades was the best country station in Harris County in and around Houston. I despised MTV when it launched in 1981. In high school I went to a total of two rock concerts: Queen and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. When I arrived for college in Boston in 1982 with a stetson and a ratty pair of cowboy boots, I had never even heard of the Grateful Dead and avoided punk.
If George Jones or Ronnie Milsap sang it, I knew it. If Johnny Cash or Trini Lopez played it, I knew it. Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, June Carter, the whole countrypolitan sound, I knew them all, plus Lyle Lovett, plus dipping far back into Hank Williams, Bob Wills, entire song books of the Grand Ole Opry, and plenty of gospel yodeling. One piece of knowledge from my Texas life is this: If you walk into a Willie Nelson concert and the band is playing “Whiskey River,” you’re only hardly late. Willie starts every show with “Whiskey River.” And you don’t have to worry about missing part of the song, since he closes every show with it too.
Top it off, I was pretty competent at riding the mechanical bull at Gilley’s in Pasadena, too. That’s the original Gilley’s not the one in Dallas or Las Vegas. For what it’s worth.
So when Matthew began talking about the music that our generation of poets was influenced by, I was just dumbfounded. I offered UB40 and NRBQ, thinking I’d sound like I knew what I was talking about, which I probably didn’t. But he gently assured me he meant something else, like Robyn Hitchcock and the Soft Boys, Camper Van Beethoven, Pavement, The Flaming Lips, The Talking Heads (them I knew — “Oh, yeah, they’re good,!” I said), The Smiths, and PJ Harvey. I mean, it’s bad. A few years ago I tagged along to a U2 concert with the editor Kevin Craft (it was like his 40th or 50th show, something like that). Three hours go by and everyone sings to every song. Me, I don’t know the words to even one. Though that “Elevation” is pretty catchy.
Now, sure, I’m lame. I can listen to Iris DeMent for two days straight without a break. I love Leonard Cohen’s “Ten New Songs,” an album that Lucas nicknamed “One New Song” because, he says, all ten sound alike. So when it comes to things like saying my generation of poets is influenced by The Flaming Lips and not hungover by the Cold War, I’m still mildly flummoxed. Though I suppose it’s accurate. Even though it seemed to me, back then and, well, even now, that the likelihood of global mass destruction was pretty pervasive, that it got under the skin of my generation, influenced the imagination of my generation as we were fretting over nuclear freeze and also, at the same, time, kind of sure, blindly so, but kind of sure still, that mutually assured destruction was pretty unlikely too. That combo of fear and dismissiveness was a pervasive feeling. Things did look awful cold. Yeah, I get it now, the feeling was like burning down the house.
So my generation got stirred up by the music, and it sure seems to me like the generation of poets after mine is influenced by music too. Or, if not music, then cable TV, by pop TV, by iTunes, MySpace, by flash mobs of indie bands. So much of the poetry written by the generation born after the Nixon landslide of 1972 feels like it was incubated inside an Xbox, doesn’t it? Or from watching the Cosby Show. So much of the poetry written by the generation born during the Carter era feels like it was influenced by afternoon reruns of The X Files, dreamy apocalyptic frights and manipulative, “Is that you, Johnny?!” closeups.
Confession: I haven’t had a television since 1985. Maybe I just don’t know much about it as I didn’t know about contemporary rock and roll. I’m a dud. I’ve nothing against television really. From all I read it seems we’re living in a golden age of TV drama and I’m just missing it. My loss. But I just don’t have the time or patience to sit still and am terrified by the distraction of advertisement-laden technicolor. Life, life, it’s just so short. My clock is ticking. I want calm. Time to think. Got to write. Got to write. When I’m not slammed by everything else, including the great, great joys of being alive.
I was thinking about this the other day while looking at a poetry website new to me, Coldfront. Probably you already know about it. It’s designed like a cross between the Huffington Post and the Drudge Report, a curated blip of a site for poets and for poets interested in music. It treats new books of poetry like releases of new albums. I like that energy. Wished I’d thought of it. It features poetry readings like events, like cultural touchstones. It cares about the zeitgeist and the savage gossip of the po-biz. It features poems from other sites. It reviews books of poetry as if reviewing poetry is necessary to the life of the art. And, well, it is. The editors are right. It is necessary. And it seems like there are editors in every city in America on Coldfront’s masthead too which is another hyper-collaborative cool thing about Coldfront. Though I do wish they’d opt for a redesign. Dudes, it ain’t hip to be an ugly book. And I say this as someone who loves you.
But I want to get with it this time. I want to be in the know. Is the know at Coldfront? Is this the future for poetry? The place where the next poetry is getting incubated because it’s looking so closely at this year’s poetry? Every year a top 40 rundown of poetry books? It’s got that clique-y feel, it must be something. Got that Casey Kasem mojo. I don’t want to miss it this time.
And yet I know that the old-timey stuff is necessary too. Who cares about Iris DeMent if you haven’t listened to Loretta Lynn? And what’s so great about Loretta Lynn if you haven’t heard Baptist hymns? No Lyle Lovett without Louis Armstrong. No hip poetry dude without Frank O’Hara. No Frank O’Hara without Edna Millay. No Edna Millay without John Keats. No John Keats without John Milton. No John Milton without Homer.
You know, like, no Bob Dylan without Woodie Guthrie. No Iron Curtain without the Napoleonic Wars.
Some days, man, I just miss the Cold War. Back in the day, you know.
5 responses
yeah. cold war & post-pop lyrics. (& country music is an interesting post-pop parallel evolution, esp. if you look at people like lyle lovett & lucinda williams.) good call. (dylan & cohen & l. reed & eno & lennon—& joni mitchell— influenced generations of pop musicians to work on their lyrics as much as the music. robyin hitchcock, pj harvey, björk, johnny lydon, rza, l.l. cool jay, costello, thom yorke, have doing some of the best lyrics around.) & if you think abt the popular song & the show tune, you find that the only decent practitioner of that craft is sondheim. all those sub-lloyd-weber-rice musicals worse than suck, they bite. no surprise that merritt from magnetic fields has written several really good (& successful) musicals.
I came to poetry through music, no doubt about it. When my twelve year old self first heard Neil Young sing, “what is the color when black is burned” I about lost my mind. I had never heard lyrics like that before. After Neil Young I discovered Jim Morrison, an adolescent boy’s poet if there ever was one, then moved onto Robert Hunter, and eventually discovered Bob Dylan. Because of them I started reading Thomas, Rimbaud, and Keats. These days I don’t consider song lyrics poetry, but I sure like it when they’re poetic.
Thanks for sending this along, DB. My ability to weigh in on the music stuff is kinda complicated–in a way, for similar reasons. Because I grew up in a neighborhood where getting caught listening to anything other than Rap, R&B, or Hip-Hop could make the walk home a little riskier than usual . . . well, I grew up listening almost exclusively to Rap, R&B, and Hip-Hop. Also, because of economic reasons, I really didn’t get too much experience with “the album” until college . . . graduate school, really, if I’m being honest.
Once in college and beyond the pressures of my home community, rampant downloading gave me free range with new music genres on the one hand, but, on the other hand, it also ruined my patience with the album as a form. I’ve since found that patience/appreciation, though with plenty of “catching up” still to do . .
All of which is to say, I don’t much trust my personal connections between music and cultural happenings.
And, yet, it seems to me that my unwieldy background doesn’t really look all that particular these days.
In terms of Coldfront, while I’m new to that site, my impulse is to say that it seems that poetry might finally be borrowing the top-charts exposure/consumption model of pop art. If so, my hope is that machines such as these will expand the current elite-like knowledge of the many worthy voices standing rows behind the select winners of our most prestigious literary awards. Even if I’m being optimistic about that last point, poetry might need this model now. With social media, blogging, online journals, &c. flaring up and adding to the sheer amount of poetry produced each year (and I don’t mean that as a negative), in order to accurately sample what’s out there, perhaps we will eventually come to rely on yearly top-40 lists, especially for newer readers trying to get traction on the poetry scene (alongside their studies of what’s come before, of course).
Or, these are my immediate scattered thoughts anyways . .
to those who have not gotten into albums, get the to the used/skuff bin at yr local indie record store.
you can find these albums for anywhere from $2 to $6 apiece. & some libraries have them too. so you can check them out & burn them to yr itunes.
but i’d recommend hunting down the cds because the itunes crash from time to time.
these are all albums, & should be played sequentially. some really essential & seminal albums that arguably define their decade i’d recommend (in various categories, classical, minimalist, punk/post punk, jazz, rock), ambient,in no particular order:
(1) v.u. (velvet underground, first album, the peel it & see, all tomorrow’s parties is the first minimalist microtonal pce of music on a pop album & the rest of the album still defines the 60s & transcends it—a million bands were started by kids who really loved lou reed & that album)…& i’d recommend any frank sinatra/nelson riddle collaboration or those early to late 60s albums by dylan & the rolling stones… but onward:
(2,3,4) miles davis, bitches brew, in a silent way & on the corner (pre-fusion jazz & funk that still is ahead of the game);
(5, 6) brian eno, another green world, discreet music (another green world, one of the most beautiful albums ever, & the progenitor of all sorts of electronic & dance music; discreet music, music that you can ignore or get lost in);
(7) pablo casals, bach cello suites (2 cds, & sorry yo yo ma, but still the best recordings, from the late 1930s & early 40s);
(8) steve reich, music for 18 musicians (a great mandala of an album);
(9) glass, einstein on the beach (the deep end of the minimalist pool, & likely to run $12 to $18, used, but, hey, 3 cds)
(10) laurie anderson, mr. heartbreak (a great & defining 80s album, with plangent music & allusive & ellusive lyrics alluding to creation myths, pynchon, lagoons, byrds funerals & wakes, crappy hotels, & lyric mashups of the tempest & moby dick; & with peter gabriel & phoebe snow doing duet vocals with laurie, & wm. burroughs doing a guest lead vocal, & all sorts of amazing musicianship);
(11) marianne faithfull, broken english (just yr basic reggae/punk/disco testament, with the best songs ever about adultury & bad faith);
(12) pil, album (the 3rd post-pistols album, johnny lydon/rotten made, with ginger baker & tony williams on drums, & herbie hancock on keys);
(13, 14, 15, 16) billie holiday’s last 4 albums: all or nothing at all,songs for distingué lovers, body & soul, lady in satin (all made shortly before she died; in a bbc interview, again shortly before she died, she said “there’s no business like the show business, sometimes you have to smile to keep from throwing up”);
(17, 18, 19, 20) elvis, costello, this year’s mode, get happy, trust, imperial bedroom (part of elvis costellos early roll, his first 6 albums found him on such a roll not seen since early dylan);
(21) steve kuhn, trance (a solo piano album that seamlessly combines bop jazz with 19th. c. russian music, like scriabin & rachmaninoff);
(22) eberhard weber, the colours of cloë (the most beautiful chamber jazz you might ever hear);
(23) dylan, blood on the tracks (arguably his best 1970s album);
(24) van morrison, st. dominic’s preview (van morrison’s peak);
(25) burt bacharach & elvis costello, painted from memory (one of the great collaborations, a classic collection of love songs);
(26) willie nelson, teatro (prod. by daniel lanois, who has worked with eno for a long time, one of willie nelson’s best, & certainly his best recorded & produced album);
(27) the beach boys, pet sounds (say no more)
oops, typo alert… i meant to say “get thee to the used/skuff bin at yr local indie record store.”
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