Mondegreen

I knew when I nominated this theme of Mondegreen that it would prove a tricky customer. I'm starting with a visual pun. What do you see in the image below? I'll caption it for you...

"I, Mondegreen"

But seriously, what's this really all about? Well, it began with Sylvia's mother. Not the one made famous in the lyrics of a song by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show in 1972, though lyrics are central to the theme of today's blog, rather the one who used to read poetry to her daughter, Sylvia Wright. 

Young Sylvia, who in a later age might have been dubbed 'Little Miss Hearing' by Roger Hargreaves, grew up to be a freelance journalist and author. She was born during WWI, attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, and after graduating became an editor of books and magazines, most notably Harpers Bazaar, for which she also wrote regular columns, some of which articles were gathered together in the 1957 collection 'Get Away From Me With Those Christmas Gifts'. She also wrote one novel, 'A Shark Infested Rice Pudding'. (I've not read it.)

And it was one of her pieces for Harpers, in 1954, that gave rise to the whole mondegreen thing. In it she recounted a memory from her childhood of her mother reading poetry to her from 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry', specifically a 17th century poem titled 'The Bonnie Earl o' Moray'. (Never mind that it was Scottish!) It included the couplet "They hae ta’en the Earl o’ Murray/ And laid him on the green", which Sylvia misheard as "They hae ta’en the Earl o’ Murray/ And Lady Mondegreen".

Wittingly or otherwise, Sylvia Wright had given a name to a phenomenon we are surely all familiar with, the act of mis-hearing a spoken or sung word or phrase and mistakenly believing it says something else, even going so far as to say or sing the incorrect version ourselves repeatedly. 

Sylvia Wright mis-hearing

Mondegreen, a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning, soon entered literary parlance and various linguists have collected famous mondegreens and analysed how the phenomenon may have helped shape the written versions of lyrics that for generations were passed on as part of an oral tradition. There have even been attempts to 'reverse engineer' some phrases, to suggest their original pre-mondegreen form.

However, it took the best part of fifty years for Sylvia Wright's neologism to get formally accepted in the likes of Webster's College Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary.

In the mid 1970s I was doing a postgraduate course at Exeter University and shared a flat for a while with a friend who was particularly prone to the mondegreen effect, especially when it came to the lyrics of Bob Dylan, whose masterpiece LP 'Blood On The Tracks' had recently been released. We indulged in many lively debates/ disagreements about several of the songs on that album. Mind you, Dylan's enunciation has always favoured mis-hearings, and this was in the days before the words to songs were routinely provided as part of the package. 

And Dylan himself famously had been guilty of mis-hearing a Beatles lyric back in 1964. When he first met them in New York that year and offered them some prime cannabis, he was surprised to learn they'd never tried it before, because he'd always assumed that in 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' they were singing "I get high", when in fact they sang "I can't hide", proof, if it was needed, that one aspect of the mondegreen phenomenon is that one often hears what one expects to hear. 

Bob Dylan

I'm not including a new poem today as I've been churning out haiku daily (as part of a musical advent calendar project on Facebook). Instead, I'll regale you with snippets of some of the lines we disagreed over, and about which he was incorrigibly in the wrong - because that's often another aspect of the mondegreen phenomenon. Mis-hearings are hard to shift.

From 'Tangled Up In Blue':

"split up on the docks that night, both agreeing it was best"; correct version goes "split up on a dark sad night".

"every one of them words rang true and quoted Leonard Cohen"; correct version goes "glowed like burning coal".

From 'Idiot Wind':

"said beware of lighting up a Lucky Strike"; correct version goes "of lightning that might strike".

From 'You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go':

"mine have been like the lanes and rambled"; correct version goes "like Verlaine's and Rimbaud's."

Sylvia Wright died aged sixty-four in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is not recorded if her tomb states "Here Lies Lady Mondegreen."

Thanks for reading, have a good week. S ;-)

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This Writing Game

Leonard Cohen once asked Bob Dylan “How long does it take to write a song, Bobby?” To which Dylan replied “You tell me first.” “It takes three years”, said Leonard. “Three minutes,” Dylan told Cohen. “You see, I’m a three-minute guy.” That exchange is said to have taken place around 1967.

What are we to make of it, apart from the fact that at least one of them was probably exaggerating?

Cohen always thought of himself as a poet (and novelist) first and foremost. He only turned to music when his novels didn't sell and poetry couldn't pay the bills. Dylan on the other hand self-deprecatingly claimed he was just a song and dance man. Yet he's the one who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in October 2016, just a month before Leonard Cohen died. When Cohen was asked in jocular fashion by an interviewer if he'd forgotten to fill out the forms and if he'd like to comment on Dylan's award, Len replied somewhat gnomically: "It's like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain." 

Laughing Len and Freewheelin' Bob

Reading that exchange between the two writers made me think about the different approaches to their craft. They were both north American Jewish kids in love with words and wanting to forge a living from writing...and I don't think it matters than one wrote primarily poems and novels and the other wrote primarily songs. (Of course it shouldn't be overlooked that Dylan also published a collection of experimental prose poems written in 1964/65.)

Cohen went to McGill University and read English Literature, wrote poetry which he performed in the cafes in Montreal and also played in a country music band. After graduating he embarked on an MA but dropped it in favour of trying to make a living as a writer, using inheritance money from his grandmother to relocate to Hydra in Greece in 1960 where the weather was good and the living was cheap. 

Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota but claims he didn't attend much, got kicked out of English class for using four-letter words and spent most of his time learning to play guitar and getting into the local folk scene. He dropped out of university at the end of his first year and moved to New York City in 1961 intent on becoming a folk musician. The city library and the folkies he met on the circuit of clubs and coffee houses became his real education as a writer.

It's true that Cohen used to take a long time to write his poems, novels and songs. He was a patient and studious writer, working at his craft every day, revising, re-shaping, maturing and polishing what he felt he needed to say. He never forced writing out into the world until he felt the work was ready, was as nigh on perfect as it was possible to be. When he said it sometimes took him three years to complete a poem or a song to his satisfaction, he wasn't exaggerating. In fact later in his career he confided that some works took five or ten years to gestate.

Dylan on the other hand was the hare to Cohen's tortoise. Impatient and mercurial and fuelled by amphetamines where Cohen made do with retsina, it's true he didn't take long to write songs. It was almost as if he was extemporising in the beat tradition. Songs and poetry came pouring out of him, more inspiration than perspiration. He rarely revised what he wrote and is famous in the recording studio for wanting to do everything in one take then move on quickly to the next song. Admittedly three minutes was a somewhat dubious claim, especially as many of his greatest songs are twice or three times that long just to sing, but the difference between the two is clear, minutes as opposed to years, sparking as opposed to smouldering. Maybe it's a question of temperament, for the way they worked was really at opposite ends of a spectrum

Dylan appears to have enjoyed a facility that Cohen did not have, dare I say it a livelier imagination and a brain operating at a higher voltage, closer to genius, and I think Cohen clearly acknowledged that Dylan was worthy of the citation bestowed by the Nobel committee. Of course, it's not really a competitive undertaking, though egos do come into it. We're lucky to have had both Bob and Len in our lifetimes.

I suspect I'm nearer the Cohen end of the spectrum than the Dylan end in terms of modus operandi. Of course I wouldn't claim to be anywhere near either of them in terms of talent. Nonetheless I have been working towards a first collection of poems over the last few years and it should be here in a couple of months' time.

the cover of my upcoming poetry collection

If you enjoy reading these Saturday blogs and the poetry they contain, From the Imaginarium pulls seventy-five of the best poems together. That's the plug for now. More news when I have it.

Bob Dylan, if  by any unlikely chance you're reading this blog, excuse me for reproducing one of my favourite Leonard Cohen poems in preference to one of yours. I'm just trying to even things, giving a shout out to K2.

There Are Some Men

There are some men

who should have mountains

to bear their names to time.

Grave-markers are not high enough

or green,

and sons go far away

to lose the fist

their father's hand will always seem.

I had a friend:

he lived and died in mighty silence

and with dignity,

left no book, son, or lover to mourn.

Nor is this a mourning-song

but only a naming of this mountain

on which I walk,

fragrant, dark, and softly white

under the pale of mist.

I name this mountain after him.

                                        Leonard Cohen, 1961

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Are Songs Poetry?

A Blogpost in Twenty Bob Dylan Albums:

 

1) Whether Bob Dylan is a poet or not we can argue until the trains come home and still be none the wiser. My question to you: Why is ‘Poet’ the benchmark? 

2) The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan roams at his own pace and actively avoids labels, sometimes he’s Poet, singer/songwriter, often The Jokerman, when he can be bothered the Rolling Stone, always the Song and Dance Man. Is it our inability to define that causes-us grief?

 

3) The Times They Are A-Changing goes without saying and so does the borders of literature. Weren’t the Troubadours musicians as well as poets? Isn’t old W.B. singing the Lake of Innisfree in that recording of his?

 

4) Another Side of Bob Dylan is author - he wrote the novel Tarantula and the award-winning Memoir - Chronicles.

 

5) Bringing it All Back Home - Bob Dylan as poetry’s gateway drug. Discuss.

 

6) On Highway 61 in the confines of Desolation Row: Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot are fighting in the captain’s tower.

 

7) Blonde on Blonde 1966 - when poetry went electric. The derision of the Poet Maudits the push-back from the members in their ivory squares, Walt Whitman and the Newport Convention. If only we thought of it first. If only we had an audience.

 

8) In John Wesley Harding Dylan alludes to the Bible seventy seven-times, but also rhymes Mouse with House.

 

9) Nashville Skyline is at heart a country album. Dylan’s music is steeped in tradition whether blues, folk or country please refer to Tradition and The Individual Talent.

 

10) 1969’s Self-Portrait is a terrible album, and Dylan’s first flop, just another example that God is fallible.

 

11) The day after a Bob Dylan concert is always a New Morning, all the songs he played he changed, reminds me of Derek Mahon.

 

12) Blood on Tracks 1975 - Two of love’s greatest songs in A Simple Twist Of Fate and Tangled-Up In Blue, but whereas in a traditional sonnet, there’s an edge, space and punctuation, in a song you are blind to proportion. A Bob Dylan song often finishes when you least expect it and always goes on for too long. 

13) I have a Desire to treat Dylan’s words as verse. I know I shouldn’t but then again why is Allen Ginsberg standing in the corner? 

14) Music sets the context as well as the tempo. It is the Mercy of the music that eases us into the lyrics, you cannot divorce the two. Why would you? 

15) Good As He’s Been To You - Dylan’s voice has the ability to mangle words into rhymes the reader is unable to, leaving one dizzy and confused. 

16) Like a Slow Train Coming headlong, see him approach the monocle with the Odyssey under his arm: ‘But it’s not literature.’ ‘What is?’ I say. 

17) In the book Visions and Sin by the Infidel Christopher Ricks; Ricks brings Dylan into the academy and deconstructs. I’m grateful it exists but I have to admit, it is akin to listening Dylan live singing Blowing in the Wind. Painful and excruciating to read, makes you pine for the original. 

18) Love and Theft - whether Bobby Zimmerman stole his name from the Welsh Bard is a red herring to get us literary types hyped up over nothing. 

19) You thought the World Gone Wrong when Dylan won the Nobel Prize. 

20) Throw your Norton out the cannon, settle for the Best of Bob Dylan, it might not be literature as we define it but it’s great song-writing nevertheless, and as the lines between mediums continue to blur take pleasure in the words of this pioneer. Who knows you might learn something.

Jamie Field

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Relationships - mine have been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud...

...not really. That's a quote from our man Dylan, who's done a better job than most [in my humble opinion] at apprehending the essence of male-female relationships in popular song from Blonde on Blonde  to Blood on the Tracks [seminal albums both] and Desire. Maybe that's just a male perspective. Lady Dylanophiles speak up, if indeed there are any.

Lines I wish I had conjured up [#127 and #128 in an infinite series] come from Dylan's "Visions of Johanna" which can be found on the afore-mentioned Blonde on Blonde album from 1966.  A former Poet Laureate has proposed that composition as greatest song lyric ever written and I wouldn't be so churlish as to disagree with the Motion. It is seven minutes of aural magic, Dylan's amphetamine-sparkled imagination fired into a wider and wilder orbit after his encounter with Allen Ginsberg. Of the many wonderful images that come tumbling out, these are two I still marvel at every time I hear the song:
- 'the ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face'
and

- 'inside the museums infinity goes upon trial'

Give it a listen if you get the chance. It's on vinyl and CD, iTunes and Spotify and there's probably a YouTube rendition lurking in the ether.

So then, relationships. Here's a poem I started to write over a decade ago but only finished to my satisfaction tonight. It's about a pivotal - and fairly catastrophic - time and I think it speaks for itself [otherwise it's not doing the job properly].

Sofia Gardens
Sofia Gardens
in the sun
planting bulbs out as she hums
a tune that comes from nowhere
earthly.

I heard today a friend of mine
has gone.
Life isn't tidy, love isn't neat
can't be kept in a box

nothing stays discreet

my head a riot of emotions
but there's a stillness in retreat.

I was looking for some answers
and missing you is what I found.
It's hard to figure out
what's right and wrong
and where my feelings for you
belong. Don't be long.

Lovers come and lovers go,
passion burns as hot as snow
and every body wants to be
wanted.

When darkness falls
I smoke another silhouette
listen as the soundtrack slows,
shorn of absolutes
bereft of co-ordinates
   intangible and shifting
      irresolute and drifting...

Sweet friend of the dew
apprehended anew
your smile and your touch
are like prints on my soul
and Sofia Gardens

 

Thank you for reading. I wish you a Merry Christmas and much happiness in 2015, S ;-)

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