Sweet Jane: Issa's Sunday Service, #44

Patti Smith & Lou Reed

It's time for a shout-out to all the poets (who "studied rules of verse") out there and, for the Sunday Service, I can't think of better way than Lou Reed and Sweet Jane.

This live acoustic version from Spanish TV is worth a look-see, especially for the chord thieves amongst us:





Lou is a god in NY, but, aside from this little number and "Walk on the Wild Side," a future LitRock selection, I'm not sure this is the case everywhere else (well, of course, there is always France and, it would seem, Spain). I'm a huge Lou and Velvet Underground fan, so there is no objectivity here. This Sunday Service is all about the worship.


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This week's feature poem is from issue #68 of Lilliput Review, April 1995. In a previous post, 6 poems were highlighted from this issue. scarecrow's poem is about the ultimate transcendence, which all attain, no matter religion, race, or sex.

¶dreamed that my face was large
-composed of sifted red clay dirt,
-yucca,
-snakeweed,
-mesquite,

-hoofprints abounding.

scarecrow

in cuffs dragging
through the dirt...
plum blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don


PS To listen to all 44 selections so far (or to pick and choose individually), see the Issa's LitRock Jukebox on the sidebar. Or visit the spin off page here. Background info on all the songs and links back to the original posts can be found here.

As always, I'm offering the two current issues of Lilliput Review free (or have 2 copies added to your current subscription) for any litrock selections that I use in a future post. Just email me at: lilliput review at gmail dot com.

Tom Waits and Jack Gilbert: A Song and a Poem

Tom Waits

One song, one poem:

This popped up on the ipod on the way to work and, as it always does after I hear it, has been haunting me all week. No candidate for Issa's Sunday Service, still I thought it well worth posting the haunting "What's He Building in There," with the clichéd hope that I'd get rid of it that way.

It's all yours. Good luck passing it on ...

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And here's a poem found last week on the Writer's Almanac site well worth passing on, from Jack Gilbert's excellent collection, Refusing Heaven:


Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Jack Gilbert

dragonfly--
flying two feet
then two feet more

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don