1983 ... A Merman I Shall Be: Issa's Sunday Service, #123

US Album Cover: Electric Ladyland

While walking to work on Friday and thinking about the day's post (with the identify this picture quiz - answer Jimi Hendrix), it suddenly occurred to me that I had overlooked  one of the great rock epic songs, which is in turn part of one of the finest concept album sides (in my opinion, the finest - yeah, bring 'em on, the Beatles, the Who, Decemberists, Yes, Flaming Lips etc., I'm standing pat), that happens to make a most definitive illusion to a great work of literature: "1983 ... A Merman I Shall Be" by the incomparable Mr. H.

Included in the above widget are the 2 songs that song "1983," comprising side 3 of the two album set. The set opens with "Rainy Day, Dream Away," which sets the story of spliff induced rainy day reverie which one critic described as a psychedelic suite.  I'd call it a mini rock opera, centered around a sci/fi like tale of two people who, as the final apocalyptic war rages, go down to the sea having been transformed by their machine to return from where the human race emerged.  The music matches the theme, mock epic in style, with a beautiful melody.  Moving on to the next side after the "Moon, Turn the Tides ... Gently, Gently Away," the listener and narrator simultaneously continue the reverie and begin to come out of a long excursion into a mythic alternative to Mr. Orwell's "1984.

UK Album Cover: Electric Ladyland

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Today's featured archive poem comes from Lilliput Review #65, February 1995.  Enjoy.                      

           Bird Haiku #14

Wings extended across the ground
a dead sparrow
flies into eternity.

              David Rhine

grafting a branch--
I might be dead
tomorrow

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Undercover of the Night: Issa's Sunday Service, #41

Patti Smith & William S. Burroughs

Yesterday was the birthday of the Godfather of Outlaw Literature, William S. Burroughs. This week's feature on Issa's Sunday Service is a most unlikely song by The Rolling Stones: "Undercover of the Night." It seems especially unlikely to me in its ties to Burroughs. The Stones really shouldn't surprise in a career that spans so many years; the breadth of material they have composed is truly amazing. Though it seems inevitable, just in terms of sheer volume, that some songs would be LitRock (and this is their second appearance on ISS), I never imagined any reference to Uncle Bill. Jagger has been widely quoted as to the song's meaning and here's what he had to say:


"I'm not saying I nicked it, but this song was heavily influenced by William Burroughs' Cities Of The Red Night, a free-wheeling novel about political and sexual repression. It combines a number of different references to what was going down in Argentina and Chile. I think it's really good but it wasn't particularly successful at the time because songs that deal overtly with politics never are that successful, for some reason."(quote from Songfacts)


I guess it's honest to admit that I never imagined that I'd ever hear Jagger use the phrase "a free-wheeling novel about political and sexual repression." But, there you go. Cute and lots of brains, too. The lyrics follow:




Undercover of the Night

Hear the screams of Center 42
Loud enough to bust your brains out
The opposition's tongue is cut in two
Keep off the street 'cause you're in danger

One hundred thousand disparus
Lost in the jails in South America
Curl up baby
Curl up tight
Curl up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night

The sex police are out there on the streets
Make sure the pass laws are not broken
The race militia has got itchy fingers
All the way from New York back to Africa

Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Cuddle up baby
Sleep with all out of sight
Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Undercover
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night

All the young men they've been rounded up
And sent to camps back in the jungle
And people whisper people double-talk
And once proud fathers act so humble
All the young girls they have got the blues
They're heading on back to Center 42

undercover
all out of sight
undercover
all out of sight
Undercover
all out of sight
Undercover
all out of sight
Undercover of the night

Down in the bars the girls are painted blue
Done up in lace, done up in rubber
The John's are jerky little G.I. Joe's
On R&R from Cuba and Russia
The smell of sex, the smell of suicide
All these things I can't keep inside

Undercover
all out of sight
Undercover of the night

Undercover of the night
Undercover of the night

Undercover
Undercover
Undercover of the night

In further remembrance of Mr. B., what follows is an excerpt of an interview with him from the film The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg in which he recounts his relationship with Ginsberg and Kerouac and the flowering of his own career.





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This week's poem comes from Lilliput Review #65 (February 1995). 6 other poems from this issue were featured in a previous post.

Procession

There is a
line of them
pecking at crumbs
that fall from
the hands of a
child who grows
old in their
eyes even as
they eat

Alan Catlin

And a poem from that lover of sparrows, Issa:





fledgling faces
peek out the nest...
sparrows

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

William Wharton and Sharon Olds

It's come to my attention that one of my favorite writers, William Wharton, has died recently. Wharton is best known for his first novel Birdy (possible spoiler alert), an eccentric, moving, emotionally charged novel about the relationship of two young men growing up in the 50's and 60's. Birdy is obsessed with birds, his love at times going beyond what can be safely described as psychologically healthy. Al, his best friend, recounts his life and the story of his attempt to bring him back from the brink when he is damaged seemingly beyond repair during war .

Even more relevant for me personally was his second book Dad, which I read while my own father was going through a long, painful process of dying. It was a comfort and revelation, as sometimes only a book can be. A novel doesn't have to be by a Tolstoy or Proust to move us to the point of changing our world. This book did that and it's impossible to say how grateful I was.

Wharton himself lived a wonderful, tragic, eccentric life. I intend to post about him in some depth at the blog, Eleventh Stack, that I contribute to at my job and so will notify folks when that goes up. Though all the obituaries internationally praised him (oddly, he was beloved in Poland, having a number of works recently translated from English to Polish, including a sort of sequel to Birdy entitled Al, without ever having been published in English), he is one of those authors I believe will rapidly slip into obscurity.

I'd like to deliver one blow against the darkness for him before it finally descends.

This week is the birthday of Sharon Olds, one of the best mainstream poets writing in America today. Much of her work is intensely personal but, like all great authors, she manages to universalize the details so they resonant powerfully for her readers. Here is a poem that at once contains elements representative of her work and yet takes a somewhat different stylistic approach. Here the particular seems literally universal and there is a humor on display more overtly than is usually the case.




Topography

After we flew across the country we
got into bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly from the left my
moon rising slowly from the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Sharon Olds

Cover Art by Harland Ristau

This week's issue from the Lilliput archives is #65, from February 1995. To put things in gentle perspective, on February 23rd, 1995, the Dow Jones average closed at 4003.33, the first time it ever closed over 4000. Poetry, at that time, may also have been a tad more innocent, though I'm not sure if you can tell from the following. Enjoy.



------------------------------------------------------


Icarus

And I saw it through the barred
window, your hand with bits
of light in it. I licked them like a horse
and grew wings no sun can kill.

Ali Kress

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Dialectician

The
entire
leaf
he
shoulders
has
roots
elsewhere

Gregory Vincent S. Thomasino

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Paint Sadness

floating
down a
river

catching
on tree
roots

swirling.

Suzanne Bowers

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Elegy

He would have to tell this one to Dad.
He started to pick up the phone
and dial the number,
smiling all the while.

Then he remembered.
When everyone asked him
who he was going to call
he was afraid to answer.

Daniel J. McCaffrey

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Guardrail Graffiti (A Found Poem)

DICKNOSE
FUCK YOU
I LOVE DRUGS

Bart Solarcyzk

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Bird Haiku #14

Wings extended across the ground
a dead sparrow
flies into eternity.

David Rhine

------------------------------------------------------



In memory of Suzanne Bowers and Harland Ristau.



best,
Don