Highway 61 Revisited (Johnny Winter): Issa's Sunday Service, #43

This week is the birthday of Mr. Johnny Winter who, for our purposes today, is the smokin'est blues guitar player of his generation. On another day, we might discuss this in depth; today he's it. Today's selection for Issa's Sunday Service is the Bob Dylan tune "Highway 61 Revisited."

This is Bob's re-imagining of the Abraham and Issac story, played out in the larger contest of the then (and still) impending threat of nuclear war. For those alive back in the day who remember the Kent State protest and killings ("Tin soldiers and Nixon coming ..."), you might also remember the sculptor George Segal's controversial memorial "In Memory of May 4, 1970, Kent State University," that set off its own firestorm of protest, drawing on the same Biblical story for its resonance in modern times:




Looking back over the first 40 plus weeks of selected LitRock songs, it seems that there is a really formidable subset of songs drawing on the Bible. And this rock and roll was supposed to be the devil's music - who'd a thunk?

Back in 1992, Johnny Winter performed "Highway 61 Revisited" at Dylan's big 50th birthday bash at Madison Square Garden. What follows is that performance; watch Johnny signaling the drummer to speed it up (!), G. E. Smith telling the sound crew to turn it up, and Steve ("Hit it, Stevie") Cropper's fixed stare at one helluva amazing guitar slinger ...

There are also two other possible literary allusions in this song I'd never caught before. Take a look at the 3rd verse:

Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
I got forty red white and blue shoe strings
And a thousand telephones that don't ring
Do you know where I can get rid of these things
And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son
And he said yes I think it can be easily done
Just take everything down to Highway 61.

This song was written in the wake of the immense popularity of the Louis Armstrong rendition of the Brecht/Weill composition "Mack the Knife." Mack the Finger sung by King Louie: oh, yeah, I'd say so. Though one of his more popular numbers (a la "Hello, Dolly"), it certainly isn't one of Pops finer moments. However, I will never say anything negative about one of the great jazz musicians of the 20th century. Somehow, we all have to pay the bills.

The other allusion is a bit more generic: "Now the fifth daughter on the twelfth night." Could be to Shakespeare but since Twelfth Night is a lot bigger than Will's take on it, I'll have to let that one go: the lyrical thread is a bit too tangled for me to undo.

Finally, why Highway 61 revisited? Well, it may be as simple as Highway 61 runs by Duluth, Minnesota, Dylan's hometown, on its 1400 miles trek to New Orleans. Also Dylan, ever the singer steeped in the folk and blues tradition, would have been well aware of Mississippi Fred McDowell's song "61 Highway," with its blistering slide guitar that even Mr. Winter could learn a thing or two from.






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Today's feature poem comes from the California poet, Tom Riley, originally published in Lilliput Review, #67, April 1995. Think of it as an admonishment, think of it as a cautionary tale - think of it:

What You're Good For

The ice giants
fry the eggs of the snow serpent,
the tastiest morsels they know,
on the bare backs
of hot-blooded
lads like you.

Tom Riley

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And here's one for those who, though perhaps success in avoiding those ice giants, have been breaking their backs with all the recent snow:

he's also in no mood
to sweep the snow...
scarecrow

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Sea Fever: Issa's Sunday Service, No. 121

When I began this feature on Issa's Sunday Service two plus years ago, I imagined two things: one, that I would be digging very deep into the classic canon of rock and roll and, two, that I would be getting tons of suggestions (since I was offering two free issues of Lilliput Review as incentive - and still am) for the list from newer artists I was unaware of, being something of a dinosaur myelf. Though both of those thoughts are at least partially true, something happened I never imagined and that was that I began stumbling on things left and right through a variety of methods too arcane to delineate.

Today's selection is a result of one of those stumblings. I have a pretty wide net cast for poetry via google reader and one of the things I tend to run into as a result is musicians putting out new albums which have some affiliation with poetry or literature. This week I found an album, though it originally came out in 2006, with a distinct country folk rock feel by Kris Delmhorst.

And what an album it is: Strange Conversation. The conversations are perhaps not as strange as the title implies, but they are skewed enough to make it appropriate. Delmhorst interprets, reworks, and just plain sings works by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Browning, E. E. Cummings, James Weldon Johnson, George Eliot, Rumi, Byron, John Masefield, Walt Whitman, Robert Herrick (links are to specific works Delmhorst performs), and two cuts derived from Hermann Broch's novel The Death of Virgil. Heady stuffy, possibly lethal in some cases - the culture clash on the Rumi will just twist your head around and, if you are like me, you'll be screaming no, no, no - until you realize that the scream has the pinkish-red tinge of the ecstatic.

More on that one in a future post, I'm sure.

But today's selection I believe is the most unlikely of all and, with sweet irony, the best cut on the album: "Sea Fever," based on a poem by the largely forgotten, once immensely popular poet, John Masefield, who served as Britain's poet laureate from 1930 till his death in 1967. The fact that the Delmhorst rendition is, to my ear, exquisite is in no small way a measure of how fine a poem "Sea-Fever" really is.

Masefield was a poet and novelist of the country and the sea and today's song/poem is one of his most famous and one of the few of his considerable catalog still known today. He must, in some ways, have felt a man out of time. Certainly he came at the end of the great agrarian and sea faring eras and his work more comfortably fits in the 19th than the 20th century into which he was born. He has been slotted Georgian and that in and of itself is limiting, damning, and true, all in one fell swoop.

In any case, a tip of the ol' sailor's cap to Delmhorst, in loving memory of Masefield, and this one goes out to any who've spent time "the call of the running tide" or sailing her wide spread "silver plain."

Here's a fine, straight-forward reading of the poem with lyrics.



"And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over."

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This week's poem from the the Lillie archive comes from issue #67, way back in April 1995. I don't know what Mr. Masefield would have thought - the inner sea and all that - but I like it. Hope you do, too.

the foraging poet

searches inside herself for metaphor
finding the sea: slippery fillet of kelp
scallop-smooth muscles thicken
in buttery baths mollusk-soft

the melting blaze of saltshore fires
against oceans rising

Patricia Ranzoni

my dead mother--
every time I see the ocean
every time...

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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The Story of Isaac: Issa's Sunday Service, #67

In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham & Isaac - George Segal, 1978.

One of the more controversial pieces of art over the last 50 years, George Segal's bronze sculpture in memory of the Kent State killings, utilizing the Abraham and Isaac biblical story as analogy, still remains an emotional flashpoint for those who remember the murders of Jeffrey Glenn Miller, age 20, Allison B. Krause, age 19, William Knox Schroeder, age 19, Sandra Lee Scheuer, age 20.

Leonard Cohen's song "The Story of Isaac" utilized the same story to similar purposes on his album Songs from a Room, recorded ten years earlier.  The opening verses are a simple lyrical retelling of the story.  The final two verses, however, plainly draw the analogy to the Vietnam War, which was at its worst around the time of the song's composition:

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
Your hatchets blunt and bloody,
You were not there before,
When I lay upon a mountain
And my father's hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word.

And if you call me brother now,
Forgive me if I inquire,
"Just according to whose plan?"
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform,
Man of peace or man of war,
The peacock spreads his fan

In Memory of the Kent State Massacre. Photo by John Filo.

This is Cohen's first appearance on ISS, though his song "Hallelujah" was covered early on by Popa Chubby.

Since I'm thinking about (and now watching) Popa Chubby's rendition, I couldn't in good conscious not acknowledge the finest rendition of all, sans Cohen himself: Jeff Buckley:









And, in memory:









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From the archive this week a poem from Lilliput Review #123 by one of my favorite unknown poets, W. T. Ranney:

Counterfeit father of an Industrial City,
mama encased in Europe,
my life sways like a kite line
thru rented rooms odd jobs,
to days I only thot had ended
before I was born

W. T. Ranney

the trainer lets
his monkey hold it...
New Year's kite

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue 

best,
Don

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The Turning Year, WCW, & a Free 6 Issue Subscription to Lilliput Review

The first batch of new issues for subscibers went out this week and I am hopeful that the rest will follow over the next few weeks. Also announced is the publication of chapbook Number 19 in the Modest Proposal series, entitled The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro.

The Turning Year is a companion volume to Unending Night: Japanese Love Poems, both of which are drawn from the classic 100 Poems by 100 Poets (Hyakunin Isshu). Both of these collections take a unique subject approach to a Japanese poetic classic and allow the reader to contemplate both the individual poems and their cultural milieu from distinctly unique perspectives. Those familiar with Dennis's translations of Yosano Akiko and others, both from this blog and as published in Lilliput Review, know that he stays true to the original while bridging the gaps from both classical and modern Japanese to modern English. His smooth, imagistic style is at once lyrical and economic, admirable qualities perfectly suited to the source material. Along with Hide Oshiro, they have put together a fine collection of nature poems that should entice anyone with even a casual interest in Eastern verse. Here are a few examples:

Beyond sight my thoughts
turn to Kasuga temple
near my home
where above Mt. Mikasa
the same moon shines.

Abe-no Nakamaro

At this place along the road,
the known and unknown
come and go,
meet and part again,
passing through the Osaka gate.

Semimaru

On this sudden trip to Takuke shrine
I bring no prayer offering;
God of the mountain path
please accept the brocade
of maple leaves surrounding us.

Kwanke

The Turning Year is a 19 page chapbook and sells for $3.00, postpaid. In a web-only publication launch, I'm offering the two volumes, The Turning Year and Unending Night, for $5.00 postpaid. For further information, email me at "lilliput review at gmail dot com".

In poetry info this week, it is Anne Sexton's birthday. She is a modern American favorite of mine and here she is reading her poem "Her Kind." This week the Best American Poetry Blog featured a posting on another personal favorite, Richard Brautigan. I'm not sure I agree with their contention that his poetry was not successful in his lifetime; I can't think of too many poets at the time who were more read than Brautigan but hey, maybe, all those funny mood altering whatzits beclouded me already fuzzy noggin. In any case, the posting reprints his "Your Catfish Friend," which seems to be hands down one of his most popular poems circa Internet 2008.

In small press news, a place called "The Shop" is featuring Vox Audio for sale, which includes readings by small press giants Todd Moore and Albert Huffstickler. I'm curious about the Huff reading, which is listed as taking place in Austin and Bisbee, Arizona. If anybody knows anything about this one, drop me a line. Another poetic favorite, Miriam Sagan, was recently interviewed by Patricia Prime for Haibun Today. Miriam has published frequently in Lilliput and is the author of The Future Tense of Ash, another Modest Proposal Chapbook. Congratulations are in order for Alan Catlin, whose book Effects of Sunlight in the Fog, is number 20 on the Small Press Distribution Poetry Bestseller list, eking out the fashionably happening Tao Lin.

Finally in poetic news, William Carlos Williams' granddaughter has put out and appeal for folks to vote for WCW for the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Bruce is in already, so maybe it's time for someone a tad more lyrical. Williams is listed under the general category (Walt Whitman is listed under history - I'm wondering if there isn't going to be some nasty vote splitting there). You don't have to be politically minded or even from Jersey to vote and though they ask for your name, you can always dust off your old nom de plume if need be. Nobody is checking. If you are strategizing, you may want to tone down the Abbott and Costello vote - only two folks get in across all the categories so if you vote for other famous folks ... well, you get the idea.

Art by Bobo

This week's tour of the Lillie archive brings us to issue #67 from April 1995. Ah, that simpler time of the Contract of America, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the seemingly ubiquitous Unabomber. Ya know, come to think of it, the 90's had a kind of 80's feel without all that hair. Here's what was happening in this little world of the short poem.



************************************************

old fishing village
-----caught
---------in morning mist

Patrick Sweeney

A Woman

A woman standing
under the pier with her
back to me, staring
out at the ocean.

The water that slides
up the beachface stops
at her feet. I fall
in love every day.

Andy Fogle

One Idea

The music of the night
Calls me to come out
Where insect voices sing
Of universal peace
And annihilation as one idea.

B. Kim Meyer

Rage

The rope that ties
its own knots.

H. Edgar Hix

************************************************



Finally, here is Brobdingnag Feature Poem #27 by Mark Sonnenfeld. I'll give a free 6 issue subscription to Lilliput (or a 6 issue extension to your current subscription) to the first person who can tell me what he's talking about:

lawrence, KS

what I think about
sometimes
is old bridgeboards
revving car engines
that drag-race their dust
to the rivers
eerie current
with all the mud + sand
so high as now this river is
nearby
a church
organist plays the daytime
workmen listening
from then her window
in the land ladys
rooming house sometime
the boards pop
at night
a part of her
left alone walking
the old deserted pavilion
she is drawn

Mark Sonnenfeld

For those who are not all that familiar with Lillie, the magazine features short poems, ten lines and under. Very occasionally, I will publish something longer under the heading Brobdingnag Feature poem. Hence, the above.

And, oh yeah, I do know what he's talking about ...

best,
Don