Red Room Poets: Thank you for your delicate servings
I tend to gobble. I read fast, I eat fast, I generally try to squeeze three concurrent lifetimes into this one. But you can't gobble poetry without getting riched out before you are full. I usually try to take too much in all at once, and as a result I've suffered from poetry overwhelm.
Belle Yang recently started a "What is Poetry?" dialogue and I stepped in yesterday with my own poetry fears and antipathies, which, Evie Shockly reassured me, a lot of people, even some of us "smart ones," have. She linked to a couple of wonderful short classics -- more links in her own blog. Cheryl Snell is sharing poetry. Dale Estey posted a poem. Alex Grant has stepped away from the flight deck to provide one good poem a day. This is just in the last day -- this conversation has been going on for a week now.
Okay, then... I'm reading, SLOWLY. I'm nibbling instead of gobbling. It's concentrated stuff. I'm chewing. I'm "getting." My heartbeat is slowing. So thank you, Poets. Keep it up.
About Ericka
Ericka Lutz writes fiction (short and long), non-fiction (creative and commercial), and performance pieces. She's the author of the novel, The Edge of Maybe (March 2012), many short stories, columns, personal essays, and advice books. With a B.A. in...
Connections
A Crime In Rhyme
Ericka, you are - to be kind - too kind.
The Elephant is to poetry, as the, er, umm, whatever is to a, hmmm, ur, other thing.
Hey, benefit of the doubt,
Hey, benefit of the doubt, and all that. TOLD you I didn't understand poetry.
I gobble
too. And thanks for the 70s music--I think. The reunion is a month away and we have the DJ. I'm not so sure I want 70s music. Was Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye 70s? I like that song a lot.
Music during our high school years sucked.
Sorry! "Sexual Healing" came out in 1982. The DJ will know what to spin. There was actually SOME tolerable music in there along with Captain and Teneille and all that horrible stuff like "Afternoon Delight" and "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and "Fly Robin Fly" etc. And then Chicago and Frampton.... good in extremally small doses. Go for the funk! Ohio Players and Earth Wind and Fire are always safe (And Bowie was around, if you liked him... )
But why is my brain wasting cells retaining all the lyrics to Boogie Nights and Sweet Love Hangover AND "I'm on the top of the world looking down on creation" when it COULD be retaining Shakespeare????
Hey!
I did not just see you diss The Carpenters. R.I.P Karen always! :)
Huntington Sharp, Red Room
P.S. OK, so that and ABBA and Gloria Gaynor and Donna Summer weren't Shakespeare. There must be room for the high and the low culture among millions of brain cells, right?
Darlin', did you WATCH that
Darlin', did you WATCH that Silver Convention video I linked to? (Last one.) Shudder. There's low culture, and I'm all for it. I lived through the 70's once and that's enough for me.... but sure, I'lI give you that some of it is "classic." Even (gulp) Donna Summer. But then there's just BAD, and there was a reason people used to say disco sucks. Because if "Get Up and Boogie" doesn't make you cringe enough, there's always the horror show of "Fly Robin Fly." http://youtube.com/watch?v=I3kgV_YA4m0 OR maybe even worse... "Lady Bump." http://youtube.com/watch?v=mgR5U_pDx0A&feature=related
No no, DON'T thank me. (Now you've made me give myself nightmares... flashbacks... arghhhh!!!!)
Boogie Oogie Oogie
This probably isn't the place to get into the cultural eddies that surrounded the "Disco Sucks" scene and its relationship to both racism and homophobia around 1980-81. Ph.D. dissertations have been written, but not by me.
I do want to defend Donna Summer to the extent that "I Feel Love" is generally considered a groundbreaking dance track that gave rise to much of the house and electronica music of the last quarter century. You may like that or hate it, but you can't deny its influence.
And Donna's the only artist to hit #1 on Billboard's dance chart in the '70s, '80s, '90s, and '00s. I'm not a fan per se, but she is performing at the Paramount in August. Wanna go? ;)
Huntington Sharp, Red Room
Not meaning to offend!
I'd forgotten about the "disco sucked" thing.... oh please don't think I meant that in the political way. I meant it in the way that the music -- a lot of it -- was very bad. I agree that Donna Summer was (is?) musically important -- but her choice of backup dancers was sometimes awful. (Then again you should have seen me in the 70's -- I made some awful choices too).
This conversation should have been on the 70s music blog -- not this one... if you came here for poetry, people, go back to where it all started and move on from there: http://www.redroom.com/blog/belle-yang/redroom-discussion-what-poetry
None taken, of course
I was too young to take offense in any kind of political way at the time (I just knew I loved "I Will Survive"), and so I come to the subject with a bit of academic distance.
Let's see if I can't tie the 70s music theme in with the poetry one, with a little literary flair added...
Out on the wiley, windy moors
We'd roll and fall in green
You had a temper, like my jealousy
Too hot, too greedy
How could you leave me?
When I needed to possess you
I hated you, I loved you too
Bad dreams in the night
They told me I was going to lose the fight
Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights.
(Chorus)
Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy come home
I'm so cold, let me in-a-your window
Oh it gets dark, it gets lonely
On the other side from you
I pine alot, I find the lot
Falls through without you
I'm coming back love, cruel Heathcliff
My only one dream, my only master
Too long I roam in the night
I'm coming back to his side to put it right
I'm coming home to wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights (Chorus)
Oh let me have it, let me grab your soul away
Oh let me have it, let me grab your soul away
You know it's me, Cathy (Chorus)
Kate Bush, 1977
Huntington Sharp, Red Room
NOW you're talking. Kate
NOW you're talking. Kate Bush was great.