COURSEPACK
POETRY & MUSIC
Week 8
Between Spiritual and Animal
Julian Jaynes, Patti Smith, Harry Smith, Folk Music, etc.
Last Great American Whale by Lou Reed (1989)
They say he didn't have an enemy
his was a greatness to behold
He was the last surviving progeny
the last one on this side of the world
He measured a half mile from tip to tail
silver and black with powerful fins
They say he could split a mountain in two
that's how we got the Grand Canyon
Last great American whale
last great American whale
Last great American whale
last great American whale
Some say they saw him at the Great Lakes
some say they saw him off of Florida
My mother said she saw him in Chinatown
but you can't always trust your mother
Off the Carolinas the sun shines brightly in the day
the lighthouse glows ghostly there at night
The chief of a local tribe had killed a racist mayor's son
and he'd been on death row since 1958
The mayor's kid was a rowdy pig
spit on Indians and lots worse
The old chief buried a hatchet in his head
life compared to death for him seemed worse
The tribal brothers gathered in the lighthouse to sing
and tried to conjure up a storm or rain
The harbor parted, the great whale sprang full up
and caused a huge tidal wave
The wave crushed the jail and freed the chief
the tribe let out a roar
The whites were drowned, the browns and reds set free
but sadly one thing more
Some local yokel member of the NRA
kept a bazooka in his living room
And thinking he had the chief in his sight
blew the whale's brains out with a lead harpoon
Last great American whale
last great American whale
Last great American whale
last great American whale
Well Americans don't care for much of anything
land and water the least
And animal life is low on the totem pole
with human life not worth more than infected yeast
Americans don't care too much for beauty
they'll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream
They'll watch dead rats wash up on the beach
and complain if they can't swim
They say things are done for the majority
don't believe half of what you see and none of what you hear
It's like what my painter friend Donald said to me
"Stick a fork in their ass and turn them over, they're done"
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O Delmore how I miss you,
Dreams from his teacher.
by Lou Reed (2012)
O Delmore how I miss you. You inspired me to write. You were the greatest man I ever met. You could capture the deepest emotions in the simplest language. Your titles were more than enough to raise the muse of fire on my neck. You were a genius. Doomed.
The mad stories. O Delmore I was so young. I believed so much. We gathered around you as you read Finnegans Wake. So hilarious but impenetrable without you. You said there were few things better in life than to devote oneself to Joyce. You’d annotated every word in the novels you kept from the library. Every word.
And you said you were writing “The Pig’s Valise.” O Delmore no such thing. They looked, after your final delusion led you to a heart attack in the Hotel Dixie. Unclaimed for three days. You—one of the greatest writers of our era. No valise.
You wore the letter from T.S. Eliot next to your heart. His praise of In Dreams. Would that you could have stopped that wedding.* No good will come of this!!! You were right. You begged us—Please don’t let them bury me next to my mother. Have a party to celebrate moving from this world hopefully to a better one. And you Lou—I swear—and you know if anyone could I could—you Lou must never write for money or I will haunt you.
I’d given him a short story. He gave me a B. I was so hurt and ashamed. Why haunt talentless me? I was the walker for “The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me.” To literary cocktails. He hated them. And I was put in charge. Some drinks later—his shirt undone—one tail front right hanging—tie skewed, fly unzipped. O Delmore. You were so beautiful. Named for a silent movie star dancer Frank Delmore. O Delmore—the scar from dueling with Nietzsche.
Reading Yeats and the bell had rung but the poem was not over you hadn’t finished reading—liquid rivulets sprang from your nose but still you would not stop reading. I was transfixed. I cried—the love of the word—the heavy bear.
You told us to break into ______’s estate where your wife was being held prisoner. Your wrists broken by those who were your enemies. The pills jumbling your fine mind.
I met you in the bar where you had just ordered five drinks. You said they were so slow that by the time you had the fifth you should have ordered again. Our scotch classes. Vermouth. The jukebox you hated—the lyrics so pathetic.
You called the White House one night to protest their actions against you. A scholarship to your wife to get her away from you and into the arms of whomever in Europe.
I heard the newsboy crying Europe Europe.
Give me enough hope and I’ll hang myself.
Hamlet came from an old upper class family.
Some thought him drunk but—really—he was a manic-depressive—which is like having brown hair.
You have to take your own shower—an existential act. You could slip in the shower and die alone.
Hamlet starting saying strange things. A woman is like a cantaloupe Horatio—once she’s open she goes rotten.
O Delmore where was the Vaudeville for a Princess. A gift to the princess from the stage star in the dressing room.
The duchess stuck her finger up the duke’s ass and the kingdom vanished.
No good will come of this. Stop this courtship!
Sir you must be quiet or I must eject you.
Delmore understood it all and could write it down impeccably.
Shenandoah Fish*. You were too good to survive. The insights got you. The fame expectations. So you taught.
And I saw you in the last round.
I loved your wit and massive knowledge.
You were and have always been the one.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him think.
I wanted to write. One line as good as yours. My mountain. My inspiration.
You wrote the greatest short story ever written.
In Dreams.
* Refers to Schwartz's short story, "The World Is a Wedding," as well as, prehaps, his own life.
* Character in several Schwartz works
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The Boy Cried Wolf by Patti Smith (2000)
Oh the story's told been told retold
From the sacred scriptures to the
tabloids
All the fuss and fight none above a
whisper
The soul of gold the belly of a boy
Well they drew him from the forest
Like they draw blood
Tied him to a tree like St. Sebastian
And he turned his head and let the
arrows fly
Through the trees, the trees
The ornamental leaves
Boy cried wolf
Wolf don't come
Wolf within
Boy cried wolf
In the ancient mold they're dancing
down
Calling to the moon but it don't answer
And they fell on their knees
and passed the bowl around
And the blood the blood the
sacramental blood
Boy cried wolf
Wolf don't come
Wolf within
Boy cried wolf
I am the body I am the stream
I am the wake of everything
They bring me flowers that are myself
Garlands of blood that are myself
Slain the lamb that is himself
Torn reborn the cries of our dismay
Are nothing to the wind but whose to
mind
Kings are lifted up and kings are thrown
Lost received retrieved
The human tide
Innocence had its day
Innocence had its day
Innocence innocence
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High on Rebellion, by Patti Smith (1978)
what i feel when i'm playing guitar is completely cold and crazy, like i
don't owe nobody nothing and it's just a test just to see how far i can
relax into the cold wave of a note. when everything hits just right (just
and right) the note of nobility can go on forever. i never tire of the
solitary E and i trust my guitar and i don't care about anything.
sometimes i feel like i've broken through and i'm free and i could dig
into eternity into eternity riding the wave and realm of the E. sometimes
it's useless. here i am struggling and filled with dread-afraid that i'll
never squeeze enough graphite from my damaged cranium to inspire or
asphyxiate any eyes grazing like hungry cows across the stage or page.
inside of me i'm crazy i'm just crazy. inside i must continue. i see her,
my stiff muse, jutting around round round round like a broken speeding
statue. the colonial year is dead and the greeks too are finished. the
face of alexander remains not only solely due to sculpture but through the
power and foresight and magnetism of alexander himself. the artist must
maintain his swagger. he must he must he must be intoxicated by ritual as
well as result. look at me i am laughing. i am laughing. i am lapping
cocaine from the hard brown palm of the bouncer. and i trust my guitar.
therefore we black out together. therefore i would run through scum. and
scum is just ahead, ah we see it, but we just laugh. we're ascending
through the hollow mountain. we are peeking. we are laughing. we are
kneeling. we are laughing. we are radiating at last. this rebellion is
just a gas our gas a gas that we pass
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25TH Floor by Patti Smith (1978)
We explore the men's room
We don't give a shit
Ladies lost electricity
Take vows inside of it
Desire to dance, too startled to try
Wrap my legs 'round you, starting to fly
Let's explore
Up there, up there, up there on the twenty-fifth floor
Circle all around me
Coming for the kill, kill, kill, oh, kill me baby
Like a Kamikaze heading for a spill
Oh, but it's all split milk to me
Desire to dance, too startled to try
Wrap my legs 'round you, starting to fly
Let's soar
Up there, up there, up there on the twenty-fifth floor
We do not eat flower of creation
We do not eat, eat anything at all
Love is, love was, love is a manifestation
I'm waiting for a contact to call
Love's war, love's cruel
Love's pretty, love's pretty cruel tonight
I'm waiting here to refuel
I'm gonna make contact tonight
Love in my heart, the night to exploit
Twenty-five stories over Detroit
And there's more
Up there, up there, up there
Stoned in space
Zeus, Christ
It has always been rock and so it is and so it shall be
Within the context of neo rock
(I feel it swirling around me)
We must open up our eyes and seize and rend the veil of smoke
(I feel it feeling no pain)
Which man calls order
(I'm waiting above for you baby)
Pollution is a necessary result of the inability of man
(I know that I'll see you up there)
To reform and transform waste
The transformation of waste
(I'm floating in a door backward)
(On boundaries over this world)
The transformation of waste
(I'm waiting above in the sky, dear)
The transformation of waste
(Upon a [Incomprehensible])
The transformation of waste is perhaps the oldest pre-occupation of man
([Incomprehensible])
Man being the chosen alloy, he must be reconnected via shit
([Incomprehensible])
At all cost inherent within us is the dream of the task of the alchemist
([Incomprehensible])
To create from the clay of man
([Incomprehensible])
And to re-create from excretion of man pure and then soft
And then solid gold
All must not be art, some art we must disintegrate
Positive
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Powers in the Air by Peter Blegvad (1983)
Say someone stole a line
from Ezra Pound.
Who’s to say it hadn’t lay there
for centuries just waiting
to be found?
And he did not create it,
naw. he heard a voice dictate it.
In fact all he did was
write it down.
‘Cos there are powers in the air,
and they make all our choices.
Powers in the air,
with such seductive voices.
Pull up a chair...
Say when we’re surrounded
it seems like we’re alone,
but they’re looking over every shoulder
we’re always chaperoned.
They infiltrate like vapour,
they’re thin as a piece of paper,
and they can dance right through meat, steel and stone.
They’re the powers in the air,
and they’re gonna lay it on ya,
The powers in the air,
don’t say I didn’t warn ya —
people, beware!
Say your steps are shadowed
by you can’t say what or whom,
just as you in turn pursue
what you’re helpless to subsume.
All you know is it’s the first thing
you ever hungered for, you were thirsting
for it, even as you were bursting
from the womb.
Now now now, it’s the powers in the air,
who bait us with abstractions.
The powers in the air
who divide us into factions.
Once you’ve been snared
you’re in the power
of the powers
in the air.
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Review in the Guardian, Feb 2013, of CD by Anais Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer, Child Ballads
Anaïs Mitchell: 'They’re very hardy songs. They have weathered centuries'
Anaïs Mitchell is wondering whether her new record, Child Ballads, should come with a disclaimer. "Because of the name a lot of people think they're kids songs," says the Vermont singer-songwriter. "Until they hear them, that is." Indeed. It's hard to think offhand of any children's songbook that includes the tale of a vastly pregnant woman who can't give birth after being cursed by her lover's mother, or of the young man fed poisoned eels by his sweetheart, or the girl who stabs herself after inadvertently sleeping with her brother, who then tearfully buries her.
Rather than the kindergarten, Mitchell's album draws from the most influential and emotionally powerful canon in traditional music. The Child Ballads, a collection of 305 songs, run like a deep, dark seam through the coalface of British folk. Named after Francis J Child, an American folklorist and Harvard professor who published The English and Scottish Popular Ballads in five volumes between 1882 and 1898, most of them date from the 17th and 18th centuries, though the roots of several are much older. Veteran folk singer Martin Carthy points out that one of his favourites, Willie's Lady, "goes back to Heracles".
While there are other significant traditional song collections, the influence of Child's is impossible to overstate. Since the folk revival of the 1950s they have been sung and recorded by every notable traditional musician, from Joan Baez to Nic Jones, and adapted by folk-rock pioneers including Steeleye Span and Pentangle. Fairport Convention did extraordinary things with Tam Lin and Sir Patrick Spens. Bob Dylan not only sang several Child Ballads, including Barbara Allen, but used them as prototypes for his own songs. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall derives its haunting imagery and question-and-answer structure from Lord Randall.
They remain a vibrant source today. Acclaimed wyrd folk artist Alasdair Roberts returns continually to the Child Ballads, while Fleet Foxes recently recorded The Fause Knight Upon the Road. With collaborator Jefferson Hamer in tow, Mitchell is simply the latest singer to fall under the spell. She initially heard these songs via Martin Carthy's 1976 album Crown of Horn and recordings by Paul Brady, Anne Briggs and Fairport Convention. "I just fell in love with the stories," she says. "They're so beautiful, so strange and weird. That's the poetry of it. When I met Jefferson we decided it would be cool to do them ourselves. As outsiders we had some trepidation, but they're very hardy songs. They have weathered centuries."
What makes the ballads so enduring? Although they touch on everything from Robin Hood to local clan arguments, and contain much bawdy humour, the ones that have made the deepest and most lasting impact tend to provide "serious lessons in life and love," says Carthy, who regards Child Maurice and Prince Heathen in particular as "quite astonishing jewels. None of the other songs in the British tradition carry that sort of weight and have that sort of depth. Or bite. Some of them are very brutish and dark."
For Roberts, these ancient songs of murder, incest, love, birth and magic fulfil a similar function for adults as fairytales would for a child. "They are a way for a community to deal with or rationalise the worst aspects of human behaviour by transmuting them into song," he says. "The ones I'm attracted to are archetypal, they touch on primal emotions stripped of all specificity. Things like The Cruel Mother or The Two Brothers. If you can sing about these things it becomes an exorcism." And however compelling they might be individually, the Child Ballads also possess a cumulative power. According to Roberts, collectively they constitute a "pan-British national epic of the Anglophone people, like the Homeric epics in ancient Greece or the Kalevala in Finland."