He Sleeps

Dear companion, fair and funny,

I think I'll watch you sleep.

Oh! You lived inside me!

Do you still know the furious beating of my heart,

memorized from your months swimming in the dark?

Perhaps you hear it even now,

behind your eyes as you dream.

The new day turns over like you,

stretching with toes curled.

A Haiku

Bangs: I'm not sure why
I get them cut each time then
Pin them back daily.

You are

sun on my face and You are easy
song in my mouth and You are happy
blessings at my right, my left and You are giving

weight on my shoulders and You are frustrating
breaking in my heart and You are unfathomable
world closing in and You are distant

but You are, You are
You were and You will be
everything You said, all the things You promised

no matter what You are to me
You are

At Long Last: Sleeping at Last

It is pretty late so forgive me if this is a less than eloquently written entry. But I couldn't NOT write about the concert I was just at while it was so fresh in my mind, so here goes.

If you've ever listened to anything I've ever said on this blog ever, listen to this: Sleeping at Last is a band you should know - and once you know them, one you will love.

Two brothers and their friend, all hailing from the Chicago area, make up the trio that is Sleeping at Last. I hardly believed there were only three of them in the group until I saw them in person. They just produce so much sound for so few people! Of course by "sound" I mean so much more than noise. Their songs are lush, rich, full. The band members themselves are industrious, with the lead singer switching back and forth between keys and guitar (at one point playing both on the same song, I kid you not) and the bassist/keyboardist/looper/pedal pusher doing so many things at once I lost count. The drummer kept himself busy too, at several intervals shaking his little heart out with one hand and knocking the snot out of the toms with the other.

The best part about this show was that they were joined by a guest string quintet. The band uses a lot of orchestration on their cd and to hear the full effect with the strings live was unreal.

And the craziest part? These guys could not look less like rock stars. I present you Exhibit A, the lead singer:

I dare you to envision what you think his voice might sound like and then go visit their MySpace page and listen to some of their songs. He is so unassuming looking - like any random baby-faced twenty-something you might pick out of a coffee shop - and then he opens his mouth and out comes this insanely unique and lovely voice.

Did you think I was done gushing yet? Well too bad because we're just getting to the good stuff - their lyrics! The songwriting is so different - he finds this way to string together all these really great, unique and visual words in a subtly striking way. And then, as if sounding cool wasn't enough, the words have such great - even worshipful - meaning. So I'll leave you with the words from one of my favorite songs, Needle & Thread. And for the love of all that is good, just go listen to their music okay? I'll loan you my CD.

Needle & Thread

When the world welcomes us in
We're closer to Heaven than we'll ever know
They say this place has changed
But strip away all of the technology
And you will see
That we all are hunters
Hunting for something that will make us okay.

Here we lay alone in hospital beds
Tracing life in our heads
But all that is left
Is that this was our entrance and now it's our exit
As we find our way home

All the blood and all the sweat
That we invested to be loved
Follows us into our end
Where we begin to understand
That we are made of love
And all the beauty stemming from it
We are made of love
And every fracture caused by the lack of it

"You were a million years of work,"
Said God and His angels, with needle and thread.
They kissed your head and said,
"You're a good kid and you make us proud.
So just give your best and the rest will come,
And we'll see you soon."

All the blood and all the sweat
That we invested to be loved
Follows us into our end,
Where we begin to understand

That maybe Hollywood was right:
When the credits have rolled and the tears have dried,
The answers that we have been dying to find
Are all pieced together and, somehow,
Made perfectly mine.

We are made of love,
And all the beauty stemming from it.
We are made of love,
And every fracture caused by the lack of love.

Please

Oh God
I'm just a fool
And today I am bound up in all my insufferable humanity
It clings to everything I touch
Culture-numbed, world-weary
I take delight in all the things I hate
And I am utterly unable to manifest a desire to seek Your face.

But my name is written on Your heart, hallelujah
I can't help but believe in You
Please tell me that counts for something.

sweet

six fifteen and the beep-beep has commenced
i can poke the snooze button with my toe if I stretch
draw my foot back into the cocoon of covers
flip the pillow to find the coolest corner

and when I roll over there you are
little white shirt stretched across your skinny shoulders
and with the day creeping up on us
the sweetest thing is ten more minutes curled around your back

Wow friends, it has been a long time! This blog existed three years ago as part of a project for one of my classes, "Does Poetry Matter?" (The answer to that question is yes, and the previous posts are fairly interesting, if you have some spare time and care about things like alliteration and iambic pentameter.)


Anyway, I decided to repurpose this old blogspot as my new general thought-posting-place. Because, you know, it is important to post your musings in the vain belief that they deserve to be read. Also, I just really feel like there are not enough places on the internet you can go to read the thoughts and opinions of strangers. Good thing I started this back up again!


I have retitled this blog "overjoyed." The distinction between joy and happiness has been an important touchstone in my life... and if you don't know the difference, I hope you'll ask me. I think each time I post I'll try to share something that has recently revealed joy to me. Here's something for today:




We put up a birdfeeder in our backyard and, I'll admit, I was skeptical. Pretty much any birdfeeder I've ever had turned into a squirrel feeder, which then became a sad display riddled with holes from the bbs my dad would shoot at it to chase the squirrels away. Wow, that makes my dad sound crazy/redneck, and he is generally neither of those two things. He just doesn't like squirrels who eat all the birdseed.

I've digressed. As the picture above suggests, our birdfeeder has been a rousing success. It attracts, in particular, goldfinches. A male goldfinch is one of those things that you can't hardly believe is actually the color it is. When you color, as a child, rarely is anything actually one of the colors from the box of Crayolas. The sky is generally not BLUE and storm clouds are not BLACK and your face is not PEACH. But a male goldfinch is every bit YELLOW. More yellow, even, than the crayon. And though I am not a huge fan of birds, the sight of this yellow goldfinch on my backyard bird feeder stirs joy in me. The display of vivid colors in an often muted world is cause to be joyful.

I have grand plans for this blog... so stay tuned. I know you are trembling with excitement. Try to get some sleep. I'll post again soon...

This will be my last official blog for class purposes.

Tuesday evening I gave my presentation on Frost for our Undergraduate Research Symposium. For some reason I've had the hardest time getting papers out recently - I think I'm overwhelmed and undermotivated. Still, I have found it very interesting discovering the role that Frost created as an American poet. He was like a little poet-celebrity! Seems strange - I know I don't think of the poet as fulfilling that sort of role, and I'd imagine not many other people do, either.

Well, I've been trying to ponder whether or not our class solved any of the questions regarding what poetry is and how it should be manifested. I don't think we did! Still, we explored a lot of the options, including introducing me to things I didn't really know about. Before this class I had never heard or seen anything about e-poetry. I'll have to admit I reacted a little negatively towards it as poetry only (you can read my earlier posts about it), although some of it I really did enjoy. Much of it seemed like the multimedia art now found at many modern museums. I also didn't know much about spoken word poetry or poetry slams. I had these visions of beatnik poetry readings with djembes and snapping and people saying, "Be cool." I was really interested in the poetry slam.

One of the things that sticks out most to me was watching the video "What I Want My Words To Do For You." I had never thought of using poetry in these theraputic or rehabilitation settings. Particularly after hearing Trish talk about her experiences with the women and the Campus for Human Development, this idea seemed particularly intriguing to me. Next semester I'll be taking a class entitled "Writing in the Community" where we will hopefully continue to explore the way in which people can reclaim their lives through the power of writing.

Poetry certainly does matter. It matters a lot, and I think one of the ways that it matters most is in the way that people can relate it to their own lives. Though this might not be the most academic or high-brow function of poetry, it seems to be the most meaningful. Most people aren't great poets. When a person can find a poem that says what they feel and think, there's an attachment there that is both powerful and purposeful. In my research on Frost, it seems that people felt able to latch on to his poems as meaningful to their own lives. Whether or not they were accurate in their interpretation of a poem seemed irrelevant - they were attached to the meaning that the poem had to them, not the meaning someone else had ascribed to it. I appreciate that, and I often find it true for myself.

So go read some poetry. And share it with someone else.

These past few days I've been working on a paper which examines the great American poet Robert Frost and his popularity. No American poet has ever been so lauded, so acclaimed, so known, and so read. It makes for really interesting material. Frost had serious fears of failure and rejection, making recognition and praise extremely important to him. At times it seems like he found little purpose in anything other than the accolades of others. Whenever his poetry books or lectures receved less than glorious reviews, Frost often spun into periods of depression and illness.

He also created for America the role of the poet as a public figure, something I'm not sure we've seen in quite the same way since Frost. Frost spent the majority of his life, right up until his death at nearly 90 years old, traveling and speaking or doing poetry readings: an activity he called "barding around." People literally came out by the thousands to hear him read and to watch his spontaneous, humor-filled presentations. It seems very strange - imagine a poet getting such public attention today!

Frost often covered his insecurities and low self-esteem with big talk. In letters he would write of himself as "the only artist" or the only poet with "a theory." He claimed on more than one occasion to "not care what people think of my poetry, so long as they award it some prizes." At the same time, other statements - and his own behavior - indicate that the love of the popular reader was extremely important for Frost's own agenda as a poet of the people. He looked with disdain - or nervous competition - on the majority of his contemporary authors, and instead sought the praise of critics and academics, knowing that their good words would bring public success.

I find Frost interesting, because at first glance or skim, it seems his poems would be easy and simplistic. They bear none of the modernist trademarks that Frost loathed in his peers: no obscure words, or curious punctuation, or lack of capitalization, or unstructured verse. In form they are classic and familiar, and even in vocabulary they do not hinder the average reader. But in concept, in poignancy, in "sense of sound," and in complexity, they rival the best poems ever written. This is my favorite Frost poem, so far - although I know it is well known, I think it is very beautiful:


Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

The Poetics of Jason Mraz

Some of you might not have heard of this guy yet. Or maybe you heard his song, "The Remedy" on the radio last summer and fall... it got a nice seat in the top 40 rotation for quite some time. His name is Jason Mraz, and you should sit up and take notice. Go here: www.jasonmraz.com

Like John Mayer, Mraz has lyrics worth listening to - lyrics worth reading as poetry. Unlike John Mayer, Mraz has made it obvious that the writing is, for him, paramount, saying in one interview that his object was to "get some poetry into the songs." Later, he said, "Just start writing, and don’t read it. Before you know it you’ll have barfed onto your paper all kinds of things you’d hoped to do. Or you’ll realize that you are doing it, or will do it. That’s how I discovered [writing].”

Mraz is a necessarily hyphenated artist: roots-rock-jazz-hip-hop-country-pop... yeah, that about covers it. In the space of one song, there is a banjo playing while Mraz raps. Above all these things, however, Mraz has consistently impressed me with his lyrics. Again, we're looking at an artist who is concerning himself with a love for words and an understanding of their aesthetic qualities. Sometimes words can be rich with meaning, and other times they can just sound fun. Mraz comments on his inclusion of white-boy rap stylings within many of his songs, saying he loves rap because "it isn't the typical, 'hell, all I need is 12 syllables to complete this stanza'".

Mraz was also trained in musical theater, and thus he brings an element of strength and weight to his performances, which I find interesting in light of our discussions on poetry slams and spoken word poetry. In live musical performance, there is an element of sponteneity and crowd interaction, much like those elements are crucial and influential in spoken word poetry events.

Mraz is often incredibly positive, and within his songs praises the power of words and poetry. From his newest single, "You and I Both":

See I'm all about them words
Over numbers, unencumbered numbered words
Hundreds of pages, pages, pages forwards
More words then I had ever heard and I feel so alive

I also am impressed with the aesthetic qualities that he ascribes to his lyrics, often using words not only because they fit his message and convey his meaning, but because they sound incredible when placed together. He offers up compact rhymes and choppy quick rhythms that seem highly akin to many of the poetry slammers we listened to. Here are some of the lyrics from a few more of his songs, and just from reading I think they make an impact, though they are great to hear:

I heard two men talking on the radio in a cross fire kind of new reality show
Uncovering the ways to plan the next big attack
they were counting down the days to stab the brother in the
be right back after this
the unavoidable kiss
where the minty fresh death breath is sure to outlast his catastrophe
dance with me, because if you've got the poison, I've got the remedy
the remedy is the experience. It is a dangerous liaison
I say the comedy is that its serious.
Which is a strange enough new play on words
I say the tragedy is how you're gonna spend
the rest of your nights with the light on
So shine the light on all of your friends
because it all amounts to nothing in the end.

And from "All That Lies," I love this play on the word "lies" as both the noun and the verb:

Don't get me wrong cause I don't want to know what the truth is
I believe that I'd be here with or without it
All that lies around put me where I am, where I stand
Tell me can you hear all the pretty sounds to hear
Tell me can you see all that lies around

This is from another unreleased song called "After An Afternoon." I thought it was incredibly and richly poetic, in a way that I'd almost be surprised to know that someone could sing it can do it any justice at all.

I bare my windowed self untamed and untrained
Dreams that hardly touch our complexions truest faults
If room enough for both my drowsy spirit shall fall
Bold waves tumble to the season of my heart
Where you have offended my faith and my trust
Until all is lost into the beauty of the day

Well, these blogs on Mayer and Mraz have hopefully been more than just advertisements for some great musicians. I've been considering a lot lately the way that poetry and music lyrics can - and can not - be the same things. Both these songwriters have impressed me with their clever and generous use of language. I can consider it nothing less than some of the finer poetry that has caught my recent attention.

One thing I really hate is when you write a whole blog entry and then your computer freezes and then it shows you the blue screen of death. I hate that.

So, this is an attempt to reconstruct a very nicely written entry I made just about ten minutes ago. Here we go.
______________

Musings on the Lyrical Stylings of John Mayer

I am not really a musician, so I don't know what technically and theoretically constitutes "good" music. I usually just listen to what sounds good to me. However, as a writer and lover of words, I sit up and pay special attention to songwriters who can woo me with their lyrics. John Mayer and Jason Mraz are two young artists who I think are bringing a respect for well-written lyrics back to the forefront of pop-rock music.

This relates particularly well to our discussion of poetry, I think, and in particular some ideas we've been discussing regarding the poet as a public figure. Many songwriters are able to bring their lyrics - their poetry - to thousands of screaming fans, establishing themselves as a bizarre hybrid: "The Poet-Rockstar." I think these two artists are indeed poets, in the way that their words and their crafting and creating with words can not only seriously impact the listener, but can also stand alone. I imagine that both Mayer and Mraz are poets at heart and in purpose - their words are not merely the vehicle for a great guitar riff or thumping beat.

Mayer first caught my attention freshman year of college, when someone placed a sample single under my car's windsheild wiper. Thank you, whoever you were. I heard his first single, "No Such Thing," on the radio and enjoyed it as vaguely as I usually enjoy music until the stupid ClearChannel radio stations play it every 40 minutes. I got the album, and became one of the bajillion people to do so, and to keep it in the Billboard Top 100 for over 80 weeks. I listened, and then I read.

I know why many pop artists have quit putting lyrics in the lyric booklets - it's because their lyrics suck. They're more about the music itself, or perhaps they're just bad. Whatever. But all of Mayer's lyrics were printed clearly in the CD insert for me to gobble up - they are also all available on his website, www.johnmayer.com.

I think what I love most about Mayer is his cleverness in writing. He uses normal words in surprising ways to capture what might have been more cheaply expressed with some meaningless cliche. In fact, he's said of himself that he is "good at avoiding cliches." In "My Stupid Mouth," Mayer sings about being on a date and saying something stupid that made things awkward:

We bit our lips. She looked out the window
Rolling tiny balls of napkin paper
I played a quick game of chess with the
Salt and pepper shaker
And I could see clearly
An indelible line was drawn
Between what was good, what just
Slipped out and what went wrong

There is an honesty and availability there, in the metaphor of comparing fiddling with table things to a chess game. In another song, "3x5," Mayer writes a letter, explaining to the recepient why he didn't include any pictures inside:

Didn't have a camera by my side this time
Hoping I would see the world with both my eyes
Maybe I will tell you all about it
When I'm in the mood to lose my way with words

Today, skies are painted colors of a cowboy cliche
And strange how clouds that look like mountains in the sky
Are next to mountains anyway

I am impressed with his ideas, first of all - something strangely true but I never thought to say, that when you're always taking pictures, always trying to capture with technology, you're not really seeing it and you can't really describe it with your words. So when he stops to really look, he can "lose his way with words" and describe the scene in all its glorious detail. Really intersting thoughts about the power of words: maybe a picture is worth a thousand words, but maybe those thousand words are still more powerful, and far richer in meaning. Maybe that is at its core the plight of the poet.

John Mayer's lyrics are sexy. I'll be honest. I think they're sexy even when he's not talking about love and sex, but they are particularly when he's on those subjects! On his latest album, in the song "Come Back to Bed," Mayer sings an apology song to the girl, who has gotten upset and left the bed. The words... well, they're good. I'd come back. A couple of my favorite lines:

What will this fix?
You know you're not a quick forgive
And I won't sleep through this
I survive on the breath you are finished with

Don't leave me
ninety-eight and six degrees of separation from you, baby
Come back to bed

I could go on. I won't, because I don't want this to sound like the mad ravings of an obsessed fan. I'm just hoping to point out that in an era of pretty crappy popular music, Mayer exists as an author who still values the power of a word and a well crafted line. Without fluff or flattery, I consider his lyrics poetry. This brings an interesting suggestion to the definition of poetry, perhaps, and to the image of the poet. Interestingly, Mayer has said of himself, "I always think about lyrical ideas, but I don’t start putting lyrics in until the music is there. I don’t wake up, jump out of bed and go “Oh my God, I got to write this down.” " So perhaps he's a reluctant poet. Still, he seems to understand the impact of his lyrics and his ability to manipulate the language, as he has also said, "I tend to write confessionally...What would be most detrimental would be for me to change the way I write."

Next blog: the lyrics of Jason Mraz.

Invitation

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come site by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!

That is a poem by Shel Silverstein, and it was incorporated into recent event held by my group in our class: "Poetry Playtime." The following are excerpts from a paper I wrote in response to the event.

***

Poetry Playtime was born of the idea that most people fear poetry. They loathe it. The very idea of it conjures up words like, “boring,” “long,” and “confusing.” Yet for most of us, poetry was an integral part of our childhood development. From the sing-songy scheme of almost all children’s books to the primary colored pages of Dr. Seuss to the simplest of all nursery rhymes, we learned words through poetry. We learned to love reading through learning to read and recite poems. We giggled at the way the words sounded and loved the way they felt spilling from our little inexperienced mouths.

Our group – Tom, Tiffany, and I – hoped to encourage our fellow college students by remembering the days when poetry was fun, not scary. We wanted to recreate the experience of having poetry read to us, and this would come complete with childhood snacks and a “reading” circle.

Our poetry outreach project took place on Wednesday, March 3, at the 10:00 hour. We were hoping for good weather so we could sit outside, so obviously it was raining, and we were banished to Neely Dining Hall. Though we hadn’t picked up any “carpet squares” (an earlier idea that got canned), we arranged some chairs in a circle in the corner of the room. It would be nice, quiet, intimate… or, 70+ people would show up… which is what did happen. Luckily, there were more chairs available, and so the circle expanded. Eventually we used up all the chairs and so some stragglers stood. They may have come for the childlike smorgasbord we had prepared: goldfish crackers, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (no crust, cut diagonally), Fruit-Roll-Ups, and Capri Sun pouches. Regardless, they came, and that was the most important part.

Tiffany went first, reading some poems from a Shel Silverstein book. As I looked around the room, some people’s faces lit up in recognition – not everyone, but some. Whispers of, “Oh, I loved this poem!” and “I remember this one.” arose from our reading circle. Now I can’t pretend to know how other people were feeling, or what they were thinking. But I know what I was thinking. As Tiffany recited “Smart,” I remembered memorizing the poem and performing it for my 4th grade class. We all had to pick a Shel poem to memorize and recite, and I was so proud of myself. I was proud because I had memorized the poem, of course, but also proud that I knew that five pennies was less than one dollar.

Smart

My dad gave me one dollar bill
'Cause I'm his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
'Cause two is more than one!

And then I took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes -- I guess he don't know
That three is more than two!

Just then, along came old blind Bates
And just 'cause he can't see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
And the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!

And then I went and showed my dad,
And he got red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head --
Too proud of me to speak!

Tiffany closed the session with an excellent rendition of Dr. Seuss’s classic, "Oh, the Places You’ll Go!" I would guesstimate that two-thirds of high school graduates either received this book as a gift, or heard some part of it recited during a graduation speech. Tiffany spoke briefly on this, and mentioned that perhaps in rereading it could be meaningful to us again and again as we encountered new phases of our lives.

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...

OH! THE PLACES YOU'LL GO!

You'll be on your way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.

It’s corny, I know. Yet I feel that so often we are ushered into this “adult” world and unfortunately we leave behind the meaning we found in simplicity, exchanging it for an embittered quest into what we assume is a “more mature obscurity.” I think there is as much truth to be found in Dr. Seuss’s monosyllabic stories and Shel Silverstein’s whimsical poetry as any other poet or storyteller could wish to have. It is powerful and poignant, just in an easy-to-open wrapper.

Our poetry project touched on the very oral nature of most children’s poetry. I thought this was interesting as it coincided with our in-class discussion on spoken-word poetry. Most children’s poetry is extremely adaptable to being read out loud, and I would venture to say that most of it is better when read out loud. The act of reading to a child is incredibly powerful and purposeful. Children who are regularly read to associate reading with the comfort of having another person’s undivided attention. It also encourages them to begin to read, as they sound out the words. If you pay attention, a lot of young children first learning to read almost always read out loud to themselves. In a sense (and our program tried to capture that), we could learn a thing or two from these children. Much poetry is better understood after reading it aloud. Our poetry reading combined the remembered sense of ownership of reading aloud with the remembered sense of comfort from being read to.

I think our group addressed in our poetry outreach project the need for poetry to be accessible again. People who may have struggled with understanding or appreciating poetry for most of their “academic careers” may have walked away from Poetry Playtime with a refreshed outlook on the craft. Though perhaps they did not rush out to buy the latest Norton Anthology, maybe a few went home and dug out an old copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends. At the very least, I am certain that people came, had an encounter with real, meaningful poetry, and left feeling non-threatened, non-confused, and probably a little happier. That is good enough for me.