Poetry as Politics

It was more than 30 years ago that I took a course in “modern poetry” which featured music and lyrics from among others, my hero, Jim Morrison.

The course treated the lyric as stand alone poetry – akin to the early English poems sung to facilitate their distribution at a time when writing materials, and the ability to read or write were rare.

The college course borrowed reviewed those songs distributed on vinyl for posterity by muses offering their commentary on society.

Not exactly Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, or Shakespeare -- all of which ended up verbal literary traditions -- but when balanced against the old literature to reflect that time's concern for how the world should be shaped, the class made sense.

The course's featured lyrics came from people such Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison, both among my album purchases, but not the only artists whose music I sought to reflect a mood I held regarding society while cruising around town.

Getting into the flow, I lobbied in class for review of lyrics from Cream and Jimi Hendrix.

As their instrumental music were personal favorites.

But, argue as I might, and to my disappointment I couldn’t earn a place in the discussion for the words surrounding the Cream / Hendrix "inspirational" music like "White Room," "I'm So Glad," "Politician," "Purple Haze," "Voodoo Child" and others.

I later learned that the lyric both groups adapted either came from tradition which already existed (like Hendrix' "All Along the Watchtower"), or centered on the meter and cadence of spoken words which supported the beat as opposed to the emotion I read into it.

The lyrics had difficulty standing alone.

My arguments to recognize Hendrix and Cream were more suited to a “music” class than a “poetry” class – probably reflecting my overall average grades in “Liberal Arts” for those studies not directly associated with printed literature.

To allay my disappointment, I took “modern poetry” courses which explored such writers as William Carlos Williams, e. e. cummings, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Robert Graves, Gerard Manley Hopkins, TS Elliot, Wilfred Owen, and William Butler Years among others. It taught me that absent the music, the thoughts I wanted reviewed in the current lyric were recorded in the written word not by people who played instruments, but by craftsmen who knew how to use the written word.

Dylan and Morrison were the rare combination of verbal artists who had their literature distributed by leverage the more popular musical medium.

Fortunately for me, losing the argument to include Cream in that combination started to build a foundation in poetic literature which I’ve enjoyed to this day.

Today I was listening to my favorite National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast, and discovered that certain “hip hop” artists shared the concern for their society I attempted to adapt into my post-modern-literature studies.

Despite my disappointment at not making Cream and Hendrix part of my “modern poetry” course, I may explore today's artists concerned about such issues as social justice, environmental protection, anti-imperialist perspectives, and pro-worker agendas among others.

The music isn't to my taste, but if I tone down the bass, and control the trebel, there may be a parallel between those “modern English” authors I explored and the subject line for the “hip hop” / “rap” poets favored today.

Now my job is to convince those lost in the past like me to see what's in the now and understand we share a concern roaming across the generations worth leveraging into the power my peers and I had enjoyed those many years ago.