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music as poetry

My Favorite Band

January 16, 2022 by Deanna Repose Oaks

Way back in the day, I was dating a guy who thought it would be cool to have a band’s live club performance on in the background when we got back to his place. I didn’t recognize the band, so I asked what band it was, and he answered “Soundgarden.” I replied with, “No, not WHERE is this show, who is playing?” He again answered “Soundgarden” … we went on like that for a while – me mistaking the name for a place, him trying to correct me, both of us killing the entire mood. The performance captured a show from their Louder Than Love tour and was filmed in a small club well before they were known to the masses. I was mesmerized by the performance, and from that day forward, Soundgarden has been my favorite band. After I left, I had no idea where to find their albums, as they weren’t yet widely released, and I never asked my date about them.

But that was just the beginning…

A few months later, they are again on TV, this time in heavy rotation on MTV with their “Jesus Christ Pose” video. I recognized them from the live performance and rushed out to get their album, Badmotorfinger. Every song on that album spoke to me, but my favorite is “Drawing Flies” – it had such an upbeat tempo and such a dark meaning. At first listen, I imagined a cartoonist drawing flies on a piece of paper, because of the tempo, but after a few listens, I saw it as a post-suicide corpse attracting flies. The word play against the music fascinates me to this day.

Their next album, Superunknown, brought “Mailman” a song about going postal – shooting your boss – which was set to a heavy bass line that had me imagining a man finding his wife with the mailman in the 1950’s. Funny thing is that the song was written when Chris Cornell’s wife was his boss, so the sexual undertones of the bass line were apropos. “Fell On Black Days,” my most favorite Soundgarden song (also on Superunknown), hit the airwaves right as I was dealing with postpartum depression. It fit my mood perfectly. When I listen to this song around other people, I revert back to those feelings so forcibly people ask if I’m okay…

When I got to college, I wrote a paper for my poetry unit of my Creative Writing course using these songs from Soundgarden. I broke the rules to write the paper because I wrote about a “musician” rather than a “poet.” The paper I wrote proved the depth of the lyrics and exemplified their poetic merit: I saw something not meant by the artist. I was shocked when I received an A on the paper with a note from the teacher saying she would never hear music the same way again.

By the way, the research for the paper proved out that “Soundgarden” is a place after all: A Sound Garden by Douglas Hollis and is most definitely the namesake of the band.

Comment below with your favorite band! Are they poetic?

Filed Under: Opening Up Tagged With: a sound garden, music as poetry, soundgarden

My Love of Poetry

January 9, 2022 by Deanna Repose Oaks

My love for poetry started off with nursery rhymes and deepened from books such as Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss and Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, both read at an early age. I tend to love poems with rhyme & meter – the way the words feel as I read them aloud. That is why I truly loved Shakespeare so well the first time I read his works – the composition of the words is so melodic and most everything is in rhyme.

The story behind the Star-Spangled Banner taught me that song lyrics are rhyming poems set to a piece of music. After learning about songs, I moved away from the printed page when it came to poetry. Poetry then became this living, breathing entity – documented each week as Casey Kasem counted down the top forty. Songs tell a living history and date back to the middle ages. I moved from studying Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson to studying Bob Dylan, Andrew Sisters, Glenn Miller, Chris Cornell, Metallica, Lenny Kravitz, Grand Master Flash, NWA, Jay-Z, Anthony Kiedis, Jim Morrison, Marvin Gaye, Johnny Cash… you get the idea. Again, the meter and rhyme were what hooked me. Their poetic meanings so rich in songs so simple is what keeps me loving poetry and music.

There are many people who say they don’t “get” poetry. For me, “getting” poetry isn’t a thing, it is a feeling. The way the words feel as I read them aloud, how they echo through my memory or my knowledge of history or my emotions… that is what poetry is to me.

I have a challenging time answering others when they ask me what my poems mean, because I feel poems should echo through the reader, not the writer. My poems crystallize a moment in time – a single feeling from a single moment – a spotlight on emotion. Feedback from previous readers: better when read aloud. But what these poems mean is not up to me, their meanings are up to you…

Read more here: https://deannareposeoaks.com/category/randompoetry/

Buy some here: https://www.amazon.com/Deanna-Repose-Oaks/e/B008X9J0FG

Filed Under: Opening Up Tagged With: meaning of poetry, Music, music as poetry

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