I have to admit that choosing poetic lyrics was especially hard for me. I couldn't separate the way I read the lyrics on their own from hearing them with music. I read them with the music playing in my head! Also, I wonder if it's unethical to separate the music and the lyrics? Are the words really meant to stand alone? Does it ruin the artwork if they are separate from the context of the song? For the sake of my inquiry into songwriting vs. poetry we'll just say it's okay for now . . . .
"Casimir Pulaski Day"
by Sufjan Stevens
(1974-)
Golden rod and the 4-H stone
The things I brought you
When I found out you had cancer of the bone
Your father cried on the telephone
And he drove his car to the Navy yard
Just to prove that he was sorry
In the morning through the window shade
When the light pressed up against your shoulder blade
I could see what you were reading
Oh the glory that the lord has made
And the complications you could do without
When I kissed you on the mouth
Tuesday night at the bible study
We lift our hands and pray over your body
But nothing ever happens
I remember at Michael's house
In the living room when you kissed my neck
And I almost touched your blouse
In the morning at the top of the stairs
When your father found out what we did that night
And you told me you were scared
Oh the glory when you ran outside
With your shirt tucked in and your shoes untied
And you told me not to follow you
Sunday night when I cleaned the house
I find the card where you wrote it out
With the pictures of your mother
On the floor at the great divide
With my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied
I am crying in the bathroom
In the morning when you finally go
And the nurse runs in with her head hung low
And the cardinal hits the window
In the morning in the winter shade
On the first of March on the holiday
I thought I saw you breathing
Oh the glory that the lord has made
And the complications when I see his face
In the morning in the window
Oh the glory when he took our place
But he took my shoulders and he shook my face
And he takes and he takes and he takes
-- from Illinois (2005)
3 comments:
Just to puzzle things even further, what about poems set to music? It's impossible now to think of all the devotional verse by Wolsey and Newman and friends without thinking of the well-known melodies which they were set to...
Personally, I find it impossible to recite TS Eliot's Macavity, the Mystery Cat without thinking of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical... (It's the way I was taught in primary school)...
As for poem of the week, I'd love to put the entirety of Alice Oswald's "Dart" here - alas, had we but space enough and time...
So I'll settle for Christina Rossetti's 'In a Green Cornfield' - so simple, and so less prententious than its Shelleyan source...
The earth was green, the sky was blue:
I saw and heard one sunny morn
A skylark hang between the two,
A singing speck above the corn; ...
The cornfield stretch'd a tender green
To right and left beside my walks;
I knew he had a nest unseen
Some where among the million stalks:
And as I paus'd to hear his song
While swift the sunny moments slid,
Perhaps his mate sat list'ning long,
And listen'd longer than I did.
Also set to music after publication...
http://tinyurl.com/28qlob
There is certainly something different about reading this Casimir Pulaski Day as a poem, rather than as "song lyrics." On first read, it's difficult to not sing it in my head. On subsequent reads, I start to notice rhyme scheme--the variants between aba, aab, and abb. I think it has a completely different effect to see the lyrics written out poetry "proper," as opposed to simply hearing them or even reading them in the album booklet.
I've actually been thinking about poems set to music. I have a great CD of Emily Dickinson poems sung by a soprano, and I have to admit I actually like the musical version better than the original! If I can figure out a way to upload a version, I will post it for people to hear.
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