Poetry and LPTJ

[fishjim]

Given the literary (and biblical) inspiration behind so much of LPTJ, I doubt anyone's surprised our pilot is a poet, but the poetry machine needs convincing.

I made the case over at the Paris Review Daily:

http://blog.theparisreview.org/2010/07/12/the-mountain-goats/

The argument for song lyrics being formal verse (i.e., poetry in rhyme & meter) got excerpted on the Poetry Foundation blog, which gives me hope. Lyric poetry started with the lyre, and here's proof it's coming home.

[DCDave]

//

[Doctor Bob]

...biblical) inspiration behind so much of LPTJ

Can't say I'd noticed.  Are you maybe thinking of the Flight into Egypt?

[fishjim]

No? I hear King James all over the place.

The last MG release is explicitly informed by the Bible. Each song title is chapter & verse: Genesis 30:3, 1 John 4:16, Ezekiel 7.

I'll pretend there's no MG <-> LPTJ crossover, but only to a point. Devil's in the English.

[G.C.R]

John does tend to prefer that we don't talk about his band here, though.

[fishjim]

OK. Happy to remove the thread if you guys think it's off-topic.

[jebreject]

I thought it was interesting, and mostly talks about LPTJ, so it's certainly relevant. Not sure if I have anything to say about it, though, really, other than it's always nice to see folks seeing what we see in JD.

[G.C.R]

No, no, don't remove it - I'm glad to have read the article! I was just wanting to respect the host's wishes before the discussion of his poetry turned into discussion of his lyrics, because I don't know that this is the place for that (despite the ways they may cross over).

[Ignatius]

I like to think that our editor is the GM of the StL Blues sometimes.

[fishjim]

Thanks, G.C.R. Right thing to do.

Maybe the way to steer this is to keep the discussion about poetry & music,  just not our host's. In the piece I talk exclusively about JD, but only because he seems to represent a larger trend -- i.e., the best metrical or formal verse of the last several decades showing up as song lyrics.

[fishjim]

Here's something to start off.

An old collaborator of JD's, Simon Joyner of Omaha, sings what I find to be a visionary poem about encountering Los Angeles. "Javelin" appears on The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll, a primitive vinyl issue John Peel played beginning to end on air in 1994.

Those familiar with the song can probably syncopate the lyrics and catch the spell. I doubt the words would have affected me as much if I'd encountered them on a lyrics sheet, but I'm coming to think that's immaterial.

~

JAVELIN

The headlights coming at me look like angels in retreat
And the city of angels looks like hell on the horizon
Will you be there waiting for me
To stop this metal ache from creeping out of my engine

I should have brought my grandfather's Bible
I'm always getting myself into trouble
And he survived World War Two
He held on to it like I want to hold on to you

My dreams are torpedo messengers
Exploding in the desert while you sleep
Your valley it crawls with cactus and failure
If the stars are on fire, then it's all because of me

So goodbye old dustbowl
Hello Mojave

Well you've been living too close to the ocean
To hear my trembling voice plateau
You might find it shattered scattered and broken
Along the seashore among the other shells

I've got to learn to sing from my abdomen
And hold on to the ghosts and let them haunt me
To think of my heart as a javelin
Falling down and descending into Los Angeles

I've got the summer of strangers to look forward to
If you aren't here and waiting for me
And the blue of my eyes to look backward through
More headlights blowing by me indecently

So goodbye Great Plains
Hello little earthquake

- Simon Joyner

[fishjim]

Once you've got Joyner's song, here's something from a favorite old-school poet to deepen the hue:


I CAME UPON A PLATEAU


I came upon a plateau
where mesquite roots
crazed the stone
   and rains
moved glinting dust
down the crevices
   Calling off rings
      to a council of peaks
I said
Spare me man's redundancy
and putting on bright clothes
sat down in the flat orthodoxy

Quivering with courtesy
a snake drew thrust in sines
and circles from his length
rearing coils of warning white
   Succumbing in the still ecstasy
sinuous through white rows of scales
I caved in upon eternity
saying this use is colorless

A pious person his heart
looted and burnt
      sat under a foundation
a windy cloak clutched round his bones
and said
When the razed temple cooled
I went in
and gathered these
relics of holy urns
Behold beneath this cloak
      and I looked in
at the dark whirls of dust

The peaks coughing bouldered
laughter shook to pieces
and the snake shed himself in ripples
across a lake of sand


- A.R. Ammons (~ 1951)

[fishjim]

As a reader & listener, I feel like the visionary impulse of the Ammons poem, written in the visual syntax of William Carlos Williams, crossed mediums somewhere in the 60s, re-emerging in song lyrics such as Joyner's.

Discuss. Dispute. Dispel.

[fishjim]

An old friend of mine from college is a trumpet player in the Latin funk band Spanglish Fly, which plays the bugalú at the Brooklyn venue Barbès each Monday night in August.

The gig gave me an idea for a poem, which follows. This is quick writing for me, which could mean trouble. But I like it, and it's timely, so it's done.

Sharing the poem here because 1) it echoes ideas from the Paris Review piece that begins the thread, and 2) I'm hoping the poem finds its way to some Brooklyn-bound LPTJ passengers who'll get to boogaloo at Barbès. Last show's this Monday 8/30.


~


BUGALÚ NIGHTS


If the blackened ocean has got you blue,
And the blackened land, and the black air too,
And the black-crowned heron on the fishin' pier
Ain't here no more, flapped to Timbuktu –

If your blue's so slick it stains right through
Your blood-brain barrier to the moody glue,
And the seagull crossing the Gulf's nightmare
Bears a message for you – receive it here:

Hoof to Brooklyn, where the grey grove grew,
And the last buck tapped to know his ghost.
Walt Whitman would've done the bugalú

If he'd heard the horns in the room, like you.
Drink, and make an offering to your host:
You will know him by the post-horn tattoo.



                             X
                             X  X
                             X  X  X
                           X
                         X 
                       O  O       
                     X       O
                   X  O  O   
                 X
               X
   

[fishjim]

A favorite transmission from Horace, for context. Makes my poem look like a little kid, but hey, I can take it.


~


Odes: II, 19

I saw Bacchus himself -- oh believe me, men in
Later times! -- singing hymns high on the crags,
And nymphs learning his songs, and I saw
Goat-footed satyrs with pointed ears.

Lord! My heart beats with new fear,
Remembering, and my heart rejoices, full of
The god. Lord! O Bacchus, spare me,
Wielder of that terrible staff!

I must sing your endless festivals,
And the fountain of wine, and rivers flowing with milk,
And sing, oh once again, how honey
Fell out of hollow trees;

I must sing your happy mate, high
In the heavens, now, and Pentheus King of Thebes,
His palace destroyed, himself destroyed, for defying
You, and Lycurgus, blinded, killed.

Rivers bend when you call, and the savage
Sea, and on lonely mountains you bless your Thracian
Women, wet with wine, you tie their hair
In harmless knots of vipers.

When slobbering Giants climbed
Toward Olympus, fought the steep slopes of the sky
To attack your father Jove, you became a lion, tooth
And claw, and hurled them down.

They say you're happier dancing, and laughing,
And playing, you're unhappy with a sword
In your hand, but you've had a hand
In war as in peace.

Glorious with your golden horn, even Cerberus
Stared and could not harm you, but gently
Wagged his tail, and when you left licked
Your feet with his triple tongue.


~


Translated by Burton Raffel

[Greg Nog]

Oh, my.  That's wonderful.  I've never read any Horace; I suppose I should.

[fishjim]

Greg -- go for it, you'll love him. He's got dozens of translators, so it's worth reading a few poems to see if you like a person's style before buying something. The one I always come back to is The Essential Horace, translated by Burton Raffel, published by North Point Press (1983).

Also, before you raid the in-flight bar cart, here's Horace's word to the wise re: wine & Bacchus:


Odes: I, 18

O Varus, never plant trees instead of holy vines,
Never, here in Tibur's mild soil and in front of its founder's
Walls; Heaven makes everything hard for teetotallers,
Only wine drives off gnawing care.
Who groans about money or war, with wine in his gullet?
Who can ignore you, then, Our Father Bacchus, or you,
Lovely Venus? But moderation, moderation:
Remember the Centaurs, mauling the Lapithae over
Wine, and remember the Thracians and how Bacchus
Levels them, when they're so flown with passion that right
And wrong disappear. Bacchus, it won't be me,
O gracious one, who'll disturb you, or flare into daylight
Your leaf-hidden mystic signs -- no wild cymbals, no blaring
Horns, no orgies of blind conceit, with empty heads lifted
Into high places, and with a foolish faith
That betrays its own secrets, clearer even than glass!


~


Translated by Burton Raffel

[cold before sunrise]

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd advertise -- you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one's name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

[fishjim]

Nobody! Thank God you're here. I've always wanted to thank you for this one:


~


I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading--treading--till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through--

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum--
Kept beating--beating--till I thought
My Mind was going numb--

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space--began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here--

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down--
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing--then--

[fishjim]

This morning I had on CD 4 of Dust-to-Digital's soul-blowing 6 CD anthology of religious roots music, Goodbye, Babylon (2004). I've probably listened to it a hundred times, yet today I realized that the lyrics to track 21 -- Reverend Gary Davis's Christian hymn, "I Am the True Vine" -- are distinct from the lyrics in the recording we usually hear.

Turns out, Davis performed an earlier version of the hymn in 1933 under the name Joshua White (The Singing Christian), with the title, "My Father is a Husband Man."

I'm offering the text here as an example of how poetic context can illuminate song lyrics. For those familiar with the Horace poems posted earlier in this thread, Davis's imagery of God the Father as the husbandman, or cultivator, in the vineyard of the True Vine (a metaphor Jesus gave us in the gospel of John, chapter 15) preaches a spirituality that's more like animism than Christianity.



~



I AM THE TRUE VINE


I am the true vine
I am the true vine
I am the true vine
My father is the husbandman

I am
I am the true vine
I am
My father is the husbandman

Went in the wilderness, didn't go to stay
My father is
Soul got happy and stayed all day
My father is the husbandman
Just let me tell you what a liar'll do
My father is the husbandman
Won't serve God and he won't let you
My father is the husbandman

Talk to me now

I am the one that speaks divine
My father is the husbandman
I can change your water to wine
My father is the husbandman
Stop, set down, let me tell you what's a fact
My father is the husbandman
If you ever go to hell, you'll never get back
My father is the husbandman
Hell is deep, and hell is wide
My father is the husbandman
God don't bother with neither side
My father is the husbandman

I am
I am

I am the true vine
I am the true vine
I am the true vine
My father is the husbandman

I am
I am the true vine

Oh Lord
My father is

Talk about me just as much as you please
My father is the husbandman
Talk about you down on my knees
My father is
If religion was a thing that money could buy
My father is
Rich would live, and the poor would die
My father is the husbandman
I so thank God it is not so
My father is
If the rich don't pray to hell they go

Talk to me now
Yes sir, talk to me good

One of these mornings, won't be long
My father is the husbandman
You're gonna call and I'll be gone
My father is the husbandman
Bring it up creatures, bring it up free
Cub's gonna root out a tender tree

I am
I am
I am
My father is the husbandman

I am
Oh Lord!
My father is the husbandman

[G.C.R]

I LOVE that song, and had never been able to make out the words. Thanks!

[fishjim]

You're welcome!

It's odd, I never could make the words out either. For years I thought he was singing, "I am a trooper / My father is a telephone man" -- which makes another kind of sense, I guess, but occults the words of Jesus.

Curious if the version you've heard is this performance, or the one from the '60s which appears on most compilations. The refrains are the same, but the "floater" lyrics vary.

You can read the lyrics to the later recording here:

http://www.reverendgarydavis.com/IAmTheTrueVine.html

[G.C.R]

Heh, I'd heard it as "I am the true vine/ my father is another kind of man"
The version I have is from the first American Primitive: Pre-War Gospel double LP (SO DAMN GOOD! seriously) and is by Eddie Head and His Family.

[fishjim]

Ah, American Primitive Vol 1! Yes, yes - SO DAMN GOOD. Many of those songs ended up on Goodbye Babylon, including my all-time gospel fave, "I'll Be Rested When the Roll is Called" by Roosevelt Graves & Brother. (As the compiler & guitar evangelist John Fahey points out, the word there is probably "wrested.")

I also love Fahey's liner notes to the compilation, which are a pretty radical essay in folk musicology. The last few graphs were the spark to many of the thoughts in this thread, so will repost here:


~


In conclusion we might ask ourselves, well, what have we here in this collection? Is it one thing or is it many?

I submit that these recordings, along with others of Sanctified Singers, Sacred Harp, large Negro Churches with horns etc., demonstrate that we have here in the USA, both now and then, one very large side of a continuum of an ecstatic as opposed to contemplative religion, which calls itself "Christian." There are other ecstatic religions in the world, or religions with the same continuum (Hinduism), but is Christianity really intrinsically ecstatic in this manner of hot enthusiasm? Are these tambourine players and guitar screamers inhabited by Christ? Do they know him?

I have to say that, Flannery O'Connor notwithstanding, underneath it all I hear pan pipes tooting and a cloven hoof beating time.

- John Fahey, 1997

[fishjim]

Came across this video last week, and think it fits here.

One guess as to the identity Freddie Mercury assumes when he dons the blue hat with yellow horns at 1:50:

"Another One Bites the Dust"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE