Tuesday, December 28, 2010

watching good television


if you watch this vid of television performing their song 'foxhole' you'll see a crawl that tells viewers that tom verlaine started out as a poet who often collaborated with his old friend richard hell. the next crawl says, thankfully they ditched poetry in favor of rock&roll.

fuck that shit. now that patti smith won the nba for her memoir of her friendship with robert mapplethorpe, also richard hell published novels and poems and book reviews of novels and poems, i think it's high time for verlaine to write his own book. i'd like to see an omnibus collection of lyrics, poems, sketches and other miscellany.

while i'm on a kind of wishlist of literate rock&rollers i'd like to see shane macgowan concentrate on writing poems and publish a collection or two.

i'm interested in the cross-pollination of poetry, music, movies, to name just a few disciplines. most poets are indeed influenced by music and movies, i am for sure as you probably are too, who then learn from and use various techniques from these disciplines in our writings. the same for musicians who are influenced by poetry or are or were poets themselves. jim carrol for example, patti smith, richard hell. others of course like bob dylan. no need to denigrate poetry pop cultural critics, please. i'm puzzled why poetry gets, in the phrase of rodney dangerfield, no respect from the general pop culturalists [is that even a word?!], but the same have absolutely no difficulty with the lyrics of say radiohead as printed in their albums. ever see radiohead lyrics? they look almost like concrete poems. but as tom verlaine is a proof that poetry influences his music, i want to see verlaine write some poems and publish a collection.

4 Comments:

At 6:53 AM, Blogger Jim K. said...

Gets no might be related to
gives no.
All the arts roll somewhat
easy with each
other, but one has more resentment,
to the outside, and within itself.
At the art shows, the painters,
sculptors, photogs, landscapers
and nightmare makers and actors
all hung out with each other. No
such love in the words. I get
heartbroken sometimes.
Just sayin.

I know you're open. That's not
common. Maybe someday..

 
At 11:27 AM, Anonymous Vaguely Quotable said...

One wag, I can't recall who, and I;m sure he was not the first to say it, said, most contemporary poets were musicians who scrapped the music.

On another only tenuously relevant thoughts. I find it funny that poetry as a referent is positive but poetry proper is ignored. For example, people will say a song, a film or a piece of prose is 'poetic', but most people will say actual poetry is difficult. Something I've noticed around me. It probably doesn't apply in all cases.

Television do rock, by the way.

 
At 8:02 PM, Blogger Jim K. said...

excellent lyrics..
television got a lot of
punk rockers fired up

ah...Verlaine was very much
into poetry..(the goog says)

can't seem to rummage a block
of the core source though

 
At 11:38 PM, Blogger richard lopez said...

jim, i think your right of course about painters hanging out with painters and so forth, but i've noticed with poets that poets read everything, novels, short fiction, history, science, philosophy, economics, art monographs, and watch movies and look at art works, with a voraciousness that perhaps is not shared by others in other disciplines. in other words, poets read the novelists but it seems the novelists don't read the poets. i could be wrong, and certainly wrong because of the exceptions. . .what i've read of verlaine is his poetic influences include blake and paul verlaine. i'm sure there are more. many of his peers, from patti smith to jim carroll to richard hell were also musicians as well as writers. to date, i don't know if verlaine has published a collection of his writings. i'd like to see him publish one.

ryan, you expressed precisely what i was thinking. when we admire say an athlete's, or dancer's, physical prowess and grace we say, that's poetry in motion.

on the other hand, when we say something was got on the cheap we say, it was bought for a song.

yeah, i'm puzzled by popular perception that poetry is difficult and therefore boring when some bands and movies are as complex and difficult as poems, yet garner popular and critical acclaim.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home