Formal poetry, eh. Can I still write it? I suspect not. I always feel on the verge of it abandoning me, given which sad state of affairs I take the small pre-emptive step of abandoning this new example I’ve just written, hereunder. I do think ‘Go Long’ from Joanna Newsom’s latest album is the loveliest thing I’ve heard all year though, I must say.
Go long, go longer. Linger, song,
words I hang on, echoing on,
although what song I hardly care,
any words to any old air
so long as I am lost among
the old heart rights and wrongs, heart-wrung,
light on the air as your sweet tongue.
But ‘heart’, and ‘heart-wrung’? Are you sure?
Or were you listening too hard to hear?
Whether the heart be song’s true spring
or nowhere at all, means not a thing,
drifting on the words we share.
All besides I trade, forswear,
if you too give in, borne along.
And where? I’m listening too hard to hear.
The rest of the album is smashing. Particularly Jackrabbits and the lines "I was tired of being drunk, and my face cracked like a joke. So I swung through here like a brace of jackrabbits. With their necks all broke ...". Really beautiful. Off to see her at the Royal Festival Hall on 12th May - I can't wait.
ReplyDeleteWhat's formal? The outer eddies of the offstream sometimes seem desperately formal to me, though what do i know? Anyway, your poem did its work; just listened to that song and a few others on youtube. She reminds me a little of Tori Amos, though very different too. Definitely something new. Will probably buy the album now. Thanks for keeping me in touch.
ReplyDeleteListening too hard, eh? Not always a good idea.
My favourite lines from 'Inflammatory Writ'...
ReplyDelete'Even mollusks have weddings, though solemn and leaden / but you dirge for the dead, take no jam on your bread / - just a supper of salt and a waltz through your empty bed.'
Or then again, maybe....
'Advice from the master derailed that disaster; / he said "Hand that pen over to ME, poetaster!" /
While across the great plains, keening lovely & awful, / ululate the last Great American Novels - / An unlawful lot, left to stutter and freeze, floodlit.'