Song operates on so many levels. It operates on the level you just spoke of where it addresses the heart in its ordeals and its defeats but it also is useful in getting the dishes done or cleaning the house. It's also useful as a background to courting.
Dear IOWerZ, both Regs and Rez Commentarians, humour yours truly for a digrambling parlour-game moment (particularly since it's one heckuva freaky near-spring Monday here in the normally ice-boxed Heart of The Near North's Almaguin Highlands):
Who, in your opinion, would you consider the English-language speaking world's top poetic dog? Stay with me, please, since the question's a little more germane and a tad less superficial than it might first appear to be.
Personally, my vote goes to SIR Geoffrey Hill, the current Oxford Poetry Professor (who took up his position after Ruth Padel tried to take the process down a notch by enlisting one of her ex-lovers, an Independent journalist, to remind voters for one of the most highly coveted gongs that Derek Walcott had endured public humiliation citing his apparently less-than-honourable sexual proclivities at the allegedly spiteful hands of a student less-than-pleased with her final grade in one of his courses way back in the closing decades of the twentieth century).
As everybody knows, her tactic backfired (in exactly the same fashion that California dame's suit against our bullet-proof Justin Bieber missed its mark by a country mile); plus, as everybody also knows, Miss RP did more good than harm to Nobel Laureate and now Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Alberta, Derek Walcott, as well as co-competitor, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, one of the universe's finest poets, period.
For the record, both gentlemen landed on their feet, gracefully and graciously; thus, to complete the honour-roll trifecta, so did SIR Geoffrey Hill, the poet who receives my vote as the top dawg of our time during this, The Decade of Dread (which follows The Decade of Desperation Row, natch).
Still, knowing mind-changing me intimately, tomorrow I could easily change my mind and confess I really believe Leonard Cohen deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature (especially since Booby Dylan's been nominated for that honour; and, well, the alleged thief of guitars and others' creative works across a swath of genres, certainly doesn't sit well with most fans of poetry, myself inclus).
But, SIR Geoffrey Hill? "Geoffrey Hill, Oxford's Professor of Poetry, has received a knighthood for services to literature in the New Year's Honours List," reports Anna Leszkiewicz, additionally noting "Dr. Peter McDonald, Christ-Church Tutor, literary critic and editor of Geoffrey Hill: Essays on His Later Work," pulls no punches describing the true state of English poetry, both concisely and procisely, while unconditionally endorsing Sir Geoffrey Hill's overdue pair of appointments:
"The knighthood is right and proper as an expression of national pride, though it must be added that the British poetry world has seldom been inclined to take any particular pride in Hill's achievements: This reflects badly on that little world, but will be of no consequence in the longer term. Oxford's securing Sir Geoffrey's services as Professor of Poetry will, I think, come to be seen as a great triumph for our University."
Thus, Dear IOWerZ, the knighthood of Sir Geoffrey Hill provides a neat segue into the burning question of the day: Who do you think, of all the practising poets dans le monde, stands the best chance of snagging the ticket to swag-a-braggadocio non-pareil; or, plainly, who do you think will be the next poet, following after Sweden's Tomas Tranströmer's feet-steps, to depart the on-deck circle and toss a going-going-gong with bases loaded, bottom of the ninth, on their first-pitch scorched tater out of the park?
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Anyhoo . . . Once that sardiculous dust-up vis-à-vis the T. S. Eliot Prize shakes, settles and rolls on down (even more completely), we're left with lots of news that stays news I hope to deliver to each of youse — Hydro One Gawdlettes willing — over this week; or, more to the point, your poet-on-health-hiatus scribe happily 100% bettah returns to her post to up-catch you on all the news that's fitz to print (in the run-up to our annual Planetary Poetry Month feature which will revisit each of the winning entries from our Thursday / Verse Day while presenting, for the first time ever, the remaining 20-odd poems to ensure April remains the coolest month, at least here @ IOW).
Everybody knows Leonard Cohen, COC, will oversee the release of his latest CD come next Tuesday (Jan. 31st), Old Ideas, currently enjoying Disc-of-the-Week status over in Music/Arts, one week, one day from today.
Music Scribe Extraordinaire (MSE) Brad Wheeler bestows his highest rating on the new one: Old Ideas achieves four of four stars from a beautiful writer and cut-above critic who calls 'em as he hears 'em. (IOW? When Old Ideas drops, we lucky listeners will be in for one neat sweet musical feat, ear-cheer division. Hallelujah!):
. . . Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
To where it's better
Than before
Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore . . .
Eight days from now, will the wait prove worth it? O, yes. Bliss-bless special. Every cut a cut-above; and, for those among us who cannot hear enough of what already exists "out there" (including the tune already dished up here/hear @ Linda Leith's Lovely Literaria, .ll.), plus, RIGHT NOW, no need for you to be LEFT OUT in the cold since we are streaming Old Ideas in its entirety ourselves for your listening pleasure (which includes the stellar Going Home, a song-poem only The Maestro himself could elevate to such glorious heights of infinite perfectitude (see above and beyond for the siren song of diurnal duty and indescribable beauty).
Seeking even more of same spectaculore? Take a Cyber-Spin and drink in the LC ambrosiae @ New Music Express wherein Our Contemporary Shakespeare so finely and divinely lays it on the musical line with Jarvis Cocker, popular Pulp frontman who elicits the following sparkler from one droll 77-year-ol' fellow on a roll: "I'll start smoking again when I'm 80, I'm looking forward to that,"; or, if you've got time, he's on the money with The Guardian's Dorian Lynskey:
I think you work out something. I wouldn't call them ideas. I think ideas are what you want to get rid of. I don't really like songs with ideas. They tend to become slogans. They tend to be on the right side of things: ecology or vegetarianism or antiwar. All these are wonderful ideas but I like to work on a song until those slogans, as wonderful as they are and as wholesome as the ideas they promote are, dissolve into deeper convictions of the heart. I never set out to write a didactic song. It's just my experience. All I've got to put in a song is my own experience.
Experience works for me, particularly since we all know how obsessively Our Man Cohen tidies up the kitchenette and ensures all his house-keeping skills remain firmly in place. Of course, his singer-songwriterly chops remain a perfekk set featuring each of his ducks in a rowboat (hence, if you didn't pick off the speaker of the lead-off quote topping this post, pas de sweat. The latest recipient of both the Glenn Gould Award and The Prince of Asturias Prize can't forget but he don't remember what :). Experience matters, though; experience makes all the diff. Just ask Jimi :)).
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Are *you* experienced enough to snap a pic of you or a representative of yourself strutting your stuff wearing one of IOWerZ T-Shirts? You are? Thought so. We been around the writer's block a time or two, eh? K . . . Experience could abso-deffo work for you if you shoot me a .jpg or .png or .bmp file of y/our IOWerZ T-Shirt in the most unusual configuration you can conceive; and, once all have been received by Valentine's Day, we shall post the pics and readers will be invited to register their votes for the best of the batch in the Comments section of In Other Words. The winner will receive an amazing prize (worth its weight in withits); and, additionally, said winner will forever own bragging rights for being crazier than the rest of us. Ready . . . Aim . . . Shoot to Thrill!
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Semi-Finally or until MuseDay Tuesday, might I draw your attention to John Lundberg's po-take on "the situation" in the Middle East in the Canadian edition of HuffPo while, over at The Jerusalem Post, Renée Levine Melammed proffers readers an intriguing and utterly convincing view of a pair of Medieval Poets who deserve so much more ink than either has received to date . . . And, because it still appears strong and free of ambiguity, should you A-G'ogles Poegles, you may wish to know this is one amazing competition that pays you for your winning entry (and has no entry fee!). 'Course, cards on table: I did enter the contest and won same for the month of March 2009 in a poem, "Don't Flash That Light Anymore, Honey," dedicated to IOW ED, Peter Scowen.
Until tomorrow, then, keep warm or stay cool, whichever matters most to you since I know some of you have brag-whined so pointedly and vociferously about the heat down under, e.g.
p.s. I failed to list the deadline for the George Bowering Baseball Quiz in the post below this one; so, for those who need to know, entries are accepted until March 1st. HTH w/apologies, aussi.
(Hat tips, Pope Paul I [Paul Ipolito] and Essex [Lenore Langs] for suggesting the neat photographic compete. Huge begrovellish feather-plumed Renaissance hat-tipped flourish-sweep to Superior, WS's Wisest OWL.)
