ACL 1002 Studying Poetry and PoeticsLecture Week 11

Poetry and Song – Robert de Young

In the lecture today I want to talk about the relationship between song and poetry. One of the twentieth-century artists who is generally credited as being one of the most important songwriters in the last 50 years is Bob Dylan, so I’d like to start with a quote from the liner notes to his album Bringing It All Back Home from 1965:

am standing there writingWHAAT? on my favorite wall when who shouldpass by in a jet plane but my recordingengineer "i'm here t' pick up you and yourlastest works of art. do you need any helpwith anything?''

(pause)

……. i would not wantt' be bach. mozart. tolstoy. joe hill. gertrudestein or james dean/they are all dead. theGreat books've been written. the Great sayingshave all been said/I am about t' sketch Youa picture of what goes on around here some-times. though I don't understand too wellmyself what's really happening. i do knowthat we're all gonna die someday an' that nodeath has ever stopped the world. my poemsare written in a rhythm of unpoetic distortion/divided by pierced ears. false eyelashes/sub-tracted by people constantly torturing eachother. with a melodic purring line of descriptivehollowness -- seen at times through dark sunglassesan' other forms of psychic explosion. a song isanything that can walk by itself/i am calleda songwriter. a poem is a naked person . . . somepeople say that i am a poet

(end of pause)

an' so i answer my recording engineer"yes. well i could use some help in gettingthis wall in the plane"

(For full text go to: http://www.bobdylanisis.com/bringing_it_all_back_home.htm)

While these liner notes are not intended to be read completely seriously, I think Dylan is making a serious point here about the distinction between song and poetry – for Dylan “a song isanything that can walk by itself/i am calleda songwriter. a poem is a naked person . . . somepeople say that i am a poet.” In a press conference interview from the same period, Dylan said that he’s not comfortable being called a poet because “it puts you in a category with a lot of funny people.” While Dylan was writing a volume of poems during the period which later appeared under the volume title Tarantula, Dylan’s chosen medium for poetic expression is song, which for him is an artform which “can walk by itself.” And, as a songwriter, Dylan jokes about the fact that, after the style of a street graffiti artist, he’s just as likely to write his words on a wall as a piece of paper.

This is somewhat similar to Leonard Cohen’s comment that “poetry is a verdict.” In an interview for CBC television in 1966 Cohen – who at that time had not released any albums and was known as both a novelist and a published poet – goes on to describe that the era of the poet in his cape on the mountain is over, and that the “borders have dissolved” between traditional literary form and contemporary expression.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen are not the first contemporary artists to experiment with the virtues of adding music to their words. The earlier generation of “beat”writers (from which we get the word “beatnik’) in the 1950s, and I would include the poet e e cummings in this group as well, experimented with reading their poetry to the accompaniment of jazz music. So, how then are we define “song” in relation to “poetry?” Let’s have a look at what our glossary of literary and poetic terms has to say on this by way of definition:

SONG: A lyric poem with a number of repeating stanzas (called refrains), written to be set to music in either vocal performance or with accompaniment of musical instruments. See dawn song and lyric, above and stanza, below.

LYRIC (from Greek lyra "song"): The lyric form is as old as Egypt (surviving examples date back to 2600 BCE), and examples exist in early Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and other sources. If literature from every culture through the ages were lumped into a single stack, it is likely that the largest number of writings would be these short verse poems. There are three general meanings for lyric:

(1) A short poem (usually no more than 50-60 lines, and often only a dozen lines long) written in a repeating stanzaic form, often designed to be set to music. Unlike a ballad, the lyric usually does not have a plot (i.e., it might not tell a complete story), but it rather expresses the feelings, perceptions, and thoughts of a single poetic speaker (not necessarily the poet) in an intensely personal, emotional, or subjective manner. Often, there is no chronology of events in the lyrics, but rather objects, situations, or the subject is written about in a "lyric moment." Sometimes, the reader can infer an implicit narrative element in lyrics, but it is rare for the lyric to proceed in the straightforward, chronological "telling" common in fictional prose. For instance, in William Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper," the reader can guess from the speaker's words that the speaker has come unexpectedly upon a girl reaping and singing in the Scottish Highlands, and that he stops, listens, and thinks awhile before continuing on his way. However, this chain of events is not explicitly a center of plot or extended conflict between protagonist and antagonist. Instead it triggers a moment of contemplation and appreciation. Thus it is not a plot in the normal sense of the word.

(2) Any poem having the form and musical quality of a song

(3) As an adjective, lyric can also be applied to any prose or verse characterized by direct, spontaneous outpouring of intense feeling. Often, the lyric is subdivided into various genres, including the aubade, the dramatic monologue, the elegy, the epithalamion, the hymn, the ode, and the sonnet. Contrast with ballad, elegy, and ode.

So the essential element here would seem to be that songs, while they might resemble poems in form, are different is this essential respect: the song is designed for performance, and designed to be a combination of words (often called song “lyrics”) and music. For many contemporary artists -- people such as Dylan and Cohen – this element of performance is central to their craft. While both are still actively engaged in producing albums (which are themselves recorded performances from a studio), both are keenly interested in touring and performing their work. This would seem to be especially important for Dylan who has been on the road continuously for more than 10 years now in what has been labeled the “never-ending tour.”

What I want to have a look at today then are some examples of songs and to examine them in the context of performance.

I want to start by having a look at an Iggy Pop and the Stooges song, “No Fun.” Let’s read the lyrics:

No fun my babe no fun

No fun my babe no fun

No fun to hang around

Feeling that same old way

No fun to hang around

Freaked out for another day

No fun my babe no fun

No fun my babe no fun

No fun to be around

Walking by myself

No fun to be alone

In love with nobody else

Well maybe go out maybe stay home

Maybe call mom on the telephone

Well come on, well come on,Well come on..........

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/i/iggy+pop/no+fun_20066979.html

In an interview in the 1970s Iggy Pop talked about the fact that early in his writing career he was influenced by a phrase he remembered from his days as an impressionable teenager watching television. When entering tv competitions, answers had to be “25 words or less” and he said that this idea of economy of words stuck with him. In “No Fun” this idea is realized and the song essentially strips down the idea to its bare minimum -- somewhat characteristically for the song, it repeats its key refrain of “no fun, my babe, no fun.”

Let’s have a listen to the song as released on the Stooges first album in 1969:

Play “No Fun”

In performance, the song is deliberately monotonous and repetitive -- the boredom of having “no fun” when life seems repetitive and dull. But the song rises in tone and pitch at the end when Iggy screams, at least 3 times, “well come on” the singer is clearly trying to bring about an end to this boredom and a new course of action, and as the song fades we hear whoops, as the mood of the song has gone from boredom to action.

In fact when the archetypal British punk band the Sex Pistols did a cover version of the song some 10 years later, the lyrics were pared down even more. Let’s just have a quick look on YouTube at their performance. Iggy Pop, as you probably know, became famous for appearing without a shirt on stage, something we see Sid Vicious echoing here. Iggy Pop is usually referred to as the grandfather of punk and his performances (such as crowd surfing which he’s often cited as inventing) are highly influential on later artists in his genre.

On the subject of mood, the next song I want to look at from the point of view of performance is Patti Smith’s “Pissing In A River.” Patti Smith of course started her career as a performance poet in New York, performing at new punk clubs like Max’s Kansas City and then CBGBs. Let’s being by reading the lyrics of this song, but this song is a good example I think of the importance of performance in creating the mood and tone implied by the language:

Pissing in a river, watching it riseTattoo fingers shy away from meVoices voices mesmerizeVoices voices beckoning sea

Come come come come back come backCome back come back come back

Spoke of a wheel, tip of a spoonMouth of a cave, I'm a slave I'm free.When are you coming ? Hope you come soonFingers, fingers encircling theeCome come come come come comeCome come come come come come for me oh

My bowels are empty, excreting your soulWhat more can I give you ? Baby I don't knowWhat more can I give you to make this thing grow?Don't turn your back now, I'm talking to you

Should I pursue a path so twisted ?Should I crawl defeated and gifted ?Should I go the length of a river[The royal, the throne, the cry me a river]Everything I've done, I've done for youOh I give my life for you.Every move I made I move to you,And I came like a magnet for you now.

What about it, you're gonna leave me,What about it, you don't need me,What about it, I can't live without you,What about it, I never doubted youWhat about it ? What about it ?What about it ? What about it ?

Should I pursue a path so twisted ?Should I crawl defeated and gifted ?Should I go the length of a river,[The royal, the throne, the cry me a river]What about it, what about it, what about it ?Oh, I'm pissing in a river.

http://www.lyricsdomain.com/16/patti_smith/pissing_in_a_river.html

The song is basically about unrequited love or a relationship that has ended-- the speaker feels powerless in the face of the lover’s decision to leave her. She feels she has as much

impact as “pissing in a river.” The lyrics here are clear and simple -- “Oh I give my life for you” -- but the song in performance becomes transformed into an emotionally harrowing plea for the lover to change his mind, to return to her in the face of her desperate passion.

Play “Pissing in A River” by Patti Smith (from the album Radio Ethiopia)

In performance, Smith’s tone builds and builds in emotional intensity in a way that is not really possibly by simply reading the words on the page. The mood of the song is determined by performance.

The next song I’d like to turn to is a Bob Dylan song that was used in the film Wonder Boys in 2000. Dylan won an Oscar for best song for the title song written especially for the film, “Things Have Changed,” but the song I want to look at, also used in the film, is “Not Dark Yet” from the album Time Out of Mind. Dylan is frequently liken to the Romantic poets we looked at some weeks back, in that his songs are frequently about self-reflection and mortality, characteristic themes we saw in the work of Keats, Shelley and Byron.

Here are the lyrics for “Not Dark Yet”

"Not Dark Yet"

Shadows are fallin' and I've been here all dayIt's too hot to sleep and time is runnin' away

Feel like my soul has turned into steelI've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal

There's not even room enough to be anywhereIt's not dark yet but it's gettin' there.

Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drainBehind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain

She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kindShe put down in writin' what was in her mind

I just don't see why I should even careIt's not dark yet but it's gettin' there.

Well, I've been to London and I been to gay ParisI've followed the river and I got to the sea

I've been down on the bottom of the world full of liesI ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes

Sometimes my burden is more than I can bearIt's not dark yet but it's gettin' there.

I was born here and I'll die here against my will

I know it looks like I'm movin' but I'm standin' stillEvery nerve in my body is so naked and numb

I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away fromDon't even hear the murmur of a prayer

It's not dark yet but it's gettin' there.

http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/not-dark-yet

Dylan’s song -- like Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “Ode to a Nightingale” -- laments the simple fact of mortality and its inevitability. The lyrics work reasonably well on the page, but typical of most, if not all of Dylan’s songs, it is in performance that the work truly comes alive:

Play “Not Dark Yet”

The combination of Dylan’s aging, melancholy voice (he’s nearly 60 here which possibly gives greater resonance to the sentiments of the song) and the spare and slightly ethereal production of Daniel Lanois creates the mood of the song, that again, does not really work to its full capacity on the page. The song is delivered slowly in a voice that sounds both experienced and tired.

On a similar note, the last song I want to have a look at is by Leonard Cohen. Cohen has been publishing volumes of poems since 1956, and is the author of two novels, but after 1967 Cohen made the decision that he would start writing and performing as a singer / songwriter. In 1977, the two platforms for Cohen’s work collided in a quite extraordinary way with the release of a volume of poems and prose entitled “Death of a Lady’s Man” and an album produced by legendary producer Phil Spector, entitled Death of a Ladies’ Man. The change in title from singular to plural establishes some sense of difference between the two works, but what stitches them closely together is that the lyrics of some of the songs on the album, including the title song, are drawn from the published poems. Here’s the lyrics for the title song as they appear in the published volume:

"Death Of A Ladies' Man"

Ah the man she wanted all her life was hanging by a thread "I never even knew how much I wanted you," she said.

His muscles they were numbered and his style was obsolete. "O baby, I have come too late." She knelt beside his feet. "I'll never see a face like yours in years of men to come I'll never see such arms again in wrestling or in love."

And all his virtues burning in the smoky Holocaust She took unto herself most everything her lover lost

Now the master of this landscape he was standing at the view with a sparrow of St. Francis that he was preaching to

She beckoned to the sentry of his high religious mood She said, "I'll make a place between my legs,

I'll show you solitude."

He offered her an orgy in a many mirrored room He promised her protection for the issue of her womb

She moved her body hard against a sharpened metal spoon She stopped the bloody rituals of passage to the moon

She took his much admired oriental frame of mind and the heart-of-darkness alibi his money hides behind

She took his blonde madonna and his monastery wine -- "This mental space is occupied and everything is mine."

He tried to make a final stand beside the railway track She said, "The art of longing's over and it's never coming back."

She took his tavern parliament, his cap, his cocky dance, she mocked his female fashions and his working-class moustache.

The last time that I saw him he was trying hard to get a woman's education but he's not a woman yet

And the last time that I saw her she was living with some boy who gives her soul an empty room and gives her body joy.

So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed it would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed

It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/deathofaladiesman.html

This volume of poetry and prose reflections is written during the breakup of Cohen’s relationship with the mother of this two children, and this poem, like others in the volume, documents the poet’s fall from favour. In real life, Cohen is often accused of being a “ladies man” in the sense of being successful with women -- a title Cohen has rejected by the way saying he’s not even in the league -- but in this poem the speaker has a world weary tone about the death of this relationship and the death of his dream.

But in the hands of record producer Phil Spector, who places Cohen in an echo chamber, the poem is transformed into a real lament, which provides a different emotional register from the words on the page:

Play “Death of a Ladies Man”

It’s been well documented that the recording process for this album was both eccentric and exhausting, and Cohen was apparently woken by Spector at 4am to record this song which was done in one take. This song, although the title song, is the last one on the album, and Cohen genuinely sounds weary and broken, and as his voice trails off into the distance, we get a great sense of emptiness and failure.