Are Songs Poetry? - Yes

 Are songs poetry?

 That’s a broad question and something that my late friend and poet Christo Heyworth had an ongoing gentle debate with. It was concerning the songs of the Moody Blues, both Christo and I being ‘experts’ on their work. I was ‘yes’ because I find the lyrics to most of their songs poetic, depending on the writer, and all of their albums contain a poem by the late Graeme Edge, drummer and a founder member of the band. Graeme’s poems were performed or recorded as the spoken word set to music and often by Mike Pinder. Graeme’s poems which became actual songs include ‘I’ll Be Level With You’ from the Octave album. I showed Christo my prized copy of one of Graeme’s poetry books. As for songs being poetry, he was a definite ‘no’. I couldn’t persuade him otherwise, but we had some great conversations about it at poetry evenings. We discussed other things too, like the paintings of L.S.Lowry and Christo’s visits to poetry events in Much Wenlock, Shropshire. Christo was always excellent company with lots of interesting topics to share. I wonder what he might have thought of my other poetic song choices.

The lyrics of The Smiths, Morrissey, Oasis, Liam and Noel Gallagher, I can read as poetry. Their creative use of language appeals to me and really makes me listen. Liam’s ‘Paper Crown’ and Morrissey’s ‘Every Day is Like Sunday’ are just two examples of what would be a very long list. I was about sixteen when I first saw Raymond ‘Gilbert’ O’Sullivan on Top of the Pops singing ‘Nothing Rhymed’. There he was, an odd looking bloke with an over-sized cap, sounding a bit like George Formby. He captured my attention with the poetry of his words.

Not all songs can work as poems but poems can work as songs, and I don’t just mean The Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow – I can still recite the part I had to learn by heart in the first year of high school, but I’ll spare you that. I will complain that schools don’t include learning poetry by heart or even reading a whole book, from what I can gather. Anyway, that aside, Robert Burns wrote ballads and sang them, ‘My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’, two that come to mind.

Radio DJ and musician, Mike Read, wrote music to accompany some of John Betjeman’s poems. Quote from Wikipedia, “…Thirty of these songs were recorded by artists including Cliff Richard, David Essex, Gene Pitney and Marc Almond for the 2006 various artists’ album Words/Music, and subsequently re-released in 2008 as a double CD titled Sound of Poetry. Read’s production of the musical ‘Betjeman’ based on the above has occasionally been staged for charities, including the Royal Marsden Hospital and Children with Leukaemia.”  One of my favourites is David Essex singing Myfanwy.

With an apologetic nod to Christo, though I'm sure he wouldn't mind and would even expect it, I'll finish where I started with the Moody Blues. This time, John Lodge with 'my song', and to me, a poem.

  

One More Time to Live  -  John Lodge

Look out of my window
See the world passing by
See the look in her eye

One more time to live and I have made it mine
Leave the wise to write for they write worldly rhymes

And he who wants to fight begins the end of time...
For I have riches more than these
For I have riches more than these

Desolation
Creation
Tell me someone why there's only confusion
Evolution

Tell me someone that this is all an illusion
Pollution
Tell me someone
Saturation

Tell me someone
Population
Annihilation
Revolution

Tell me someone why this talk of revolution
Confusion
Tell me someone when we're changing evolution
Illusion

Tell me someone
Conclusion
Tell me someone
Starvation

Degradation
Humiliation
Contemplation
Changes in my life

Inspiration
Elation
Changes in my life
Salvation

Changes in my life
Communication
Compassion
Solution

Look out on the hedgerow
As the world rushes by
Hear the birds sign a sigh

One more tree will fall how strong the growing vine
Turn the earth to sand and still permit no crime
How one thought will live provide the others die
For I have riches more than these
For I have riches more than these

(From the album Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, 1971)

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Paper - Examination

I chose a place next to the wall. I could lean my bare arm on the tiles for some cooling respite from the heat of the afternoon. The scuffed, well-worn desk reminded me of school. I put two spare pens, facing the same way, in the groove next to the empty ink-well. The hinged lid lifted easily. Well, I couldn’t resist. Who would, faced with such nostalgia? It was empty, as expected. Inside, it smelt of a classroom freshly cleansed with that disinfected brown sawdust sometimes used on floors. Eric Wright, form 3 alpha had this desk in 1959, according to the neatly scratched detail on the underside of the lid. Initials in a heart shape had been obliterated with red ink, or paint. Identity lost forever.

It was almost time. The room had filled up. A couple of desks at the front remained empty. I read and re-read the exam rules on the blackboard. Papers were given out and we had reading time. I was relieved to see the question I had hoped for. My answer to that question covered everything and amounted to two and a half sides of A4 and earned me top marks in a mock exam. I knew it word for word, including a four line quote. Apprehension began to melt as I allowed myself a tiny hint of confidence.

Time to begin. I held my favourite Parker pen with a new, fine-point refill, poised to start with my well-versed question, only I couldn’t. The answer had gone, almost every part of it, like something had erased it from my memory, paragraph by careful paragraph. I couldn’t remember the quote beyond the first word. Some self-counselling, deep breaths, don’t panic, answer something else and come back to it, this is an exam paper, not the end of the world.

I muddled through the exam. I managed other parts of it and returned to ‘my question’ praying for my brain to bring my memory back. It didn’t. I answered it in the best way I could, which proved to be enough as I passed with a good grade.

That was more than forty years ago. I still can’t remember that ‘perfect’ answer or the quote. I still have my mock exam papers showing the marking of 100%, but even now I can’t bring myself to refresh my memory. The blip didn’t hold me back.

 

Here’s something from Simon Armitage,

Paper Aeroplane

The man sitting next to me on the flight

     was reading a blank book, keen eyes
     panning left to right across empty leaves, fingers
     turning from one white space to the next.

Sometimes he’d nod agreeably or shake his head,

     or painstakingly underline some invisible text
     with red ink, or decorate the margin
     with an exclamation mark or asterisk.

It was a hefty-looking tome, hand-stitched

     but wordless front and back and down the spine.
    Coming in to land he laid the silver ribbon-marker
     between two bare pages to save his place.

I was wearing noise-cancelling headphones

     listening to fine-mist, when he leaned across
     and shouted, ‘Forgive the intrusion, but
     would you sign this for me? I think it’s your best.’

Simon Armitage.

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Is this a question?

Is this a question?

The legend that is the philosophy exam question to which the urban librarians claim that one student one year wrote. "If this is a Question? Then this is an answer." and got top marks. Personally I heard it as "Only if this is an answer?" Same idea, less words.

For many years, since I first heard of this interesting exploration of thought and perception I have considered many things regarding the unanswerable. Not like 'Which came first the Chicken or the Egg?' which from an evolutionary standpoint must always be the egg by definition of what constitutes a chicken. More inquiries such us: 'Is the chicken the eggs why of reproduction?'

This question has far reaching ideas that leads to reasons for reproduction. Within these thought I had the notion that the question 'Why are we here?' was some sort of genetic driving force. If we can't answer it then maybe the next generation can. This would then give a reason to procreate, the constantly push the children so that they may find the answer. But should this question ever truly be satisfied, the urge to breed would reside; there would be no point.

This led me to one conclusion: Pandas already know why we are here.

I hope you enjoy Monday's poem.

Question?
A statement to extract?

Rhetorical or fact?

A constructed situation requiring Solution?

Presentations of the choice?

A request to hear your voice?

A desperate prayer as you ask for absolution?

Please? Will you? Can I?

Stay or say Goodbye?

Three roads lay ahead one change to ride?

Is it? Are they? Won't we?

To be or not to be?

Shall I stand and shine, or cower, and hide?

Do you want to know?

What is the end of the show?

Can you still enjoy once spoilers read?

Do you believe?

Is it so hard to conceive?

What really waits for us once we are dead?

Hmmmmmmm?

Colin?

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