Hart Crane and Percy Shelley raised a toast and danced a freestyle jig when they caught the drift.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mystic Bard William Blake burned sage and refreshed his firewall.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shakespeare and Black Lucy unwrapped a bedroll. Muses dream their own existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I found the now dog-eared paperback Complete Poems of Hart Crane <\/p>\n\n\n\n
that time I met John Trudell and Jesse Ed Davis <\/p>\n\n\n\n
rediscovered Shakespeare in a mining camp string band\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
bookmarked for future reference an anthology of English Romantic Poetry <\/p>\n\n\n\n
improvised guitar settings for a handful of poems, and forgot about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until January 2022, when Stephen Greenblatt\u2019s excellent \u201cWill in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare\u201d revived the desire to make music for some treasured poems. Greenblatt wrote that, while audiences in Will\u2019s time had enjoyed the traveling troupes performing comedies and historical dramas, they hadn\u2019t heard such poetic language as in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream Act 2, scene 1: \u201cI know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.\u201d Digging the imagery and realizing, \u201cthat would make a good song,\u201d I tuned my guitalele and started strumming a Celtic jig. The song was there, and the music felt right, to Oberon\u2019s delight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ten of the eleven songs in this collection were composed\/conceived in the same fashion in January and February 2022 \u2014 read the poem, listen to the flow, get out my guitar and play, go with the first riff or chord progression that comes to mind, and work out the lyrics\u2019 phrasing to be true to the poets\u2019 intentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These poems stand on their own and need no musical support. Setting them in various styles I love to play was organic in response to the poetry, and intentional \u2014 for my enjoyment and yours. The present day song maker cannot be constrained by popular notions of time nor bound to any genre but the future. If the music does enhance these poems, it is thanks to the superstar musicians \u2014 I heard Anthony, Bill, Curtis, Cyoakha, and Josh in my mind\u2019s ear working through the arrangements and am stoked they shared their creative talents to bring these poem-songs to life. Many thanks to them, and rising star Shavonne for singing in the \u201cTo Shakespeare\u201d chorus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reimagining roots of my love of good poetry I acknowledge these are four Eurocentric white dudes \u2014 we read Shelley and Blake in high school in 1967, when Brian Jones walked in beauty and Jimi Hendrix set guitars on fire. We learned later on our own about the Harlem Renaissance. And in 1988, when I was an activist with the Indigenous Resistance Resource Network, and playing benefits for peace and social justice campaigns, I heard and met John Trudell and Jesse Ed Davis. They set the standard for poetry with music, along with Kamau Da\u00e1ood and Horace Tapscott, and Joy Harjo. For sure my music is inspired by Black and Indigenous Peoples\u2019 musics, and hopefully honors those sources \u2014 and the many great musicians I have learned from playing in Celtic, Reggae, African, Haitian, Blues and \u2018World Music\u2019 bands. May this project shine a light on beautiful poetry, and lead listeners to seek out and discover today\u2019s poets and the classics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his tribute to Shakespeare, Hart Crane distilled a whole book into 14 lines of potent poetry \u2014 placing Will in his world, and ours. The potentially prophetic American writer\u2019s rich and intense poetry was often dismissed as too obscure by critics in his day \u2014 his vision and craft remain as modern as his contemporaries in the 1920s and those who followed, and as romantic as the Romantics he loved. Could he imagine \u201cGarden Abstract\u201d as languid Bossa Nova or \u201cIsland Quarry\u201d intoned over a Blues riff? Like Will said, \u2018If music be the food of love, play on.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the play within the song within the song within the play feeds hungry romantics, hear Crane as undying Romantic and Shelley immortal Modernist \u2014 as \u201cEngland in 1819\u201d rages through the ages against the violence and cruelty of mad rulers who cling leechlike to their fainting country. Was it coincidence a PM was laughed out of office the day I recorded my guitar rave-up? It\u2019s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Especially since Wordsworth started working for the man. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blake\u2019s \u201cAn Ancient Proverb\u201d answers Crane\u2019s query \u2018who shall again engrave such hazards as thy might controls?\u2019 a century before it was posed. And coal dust black\u2019ning child laborers sweeping church chimneys in 1822 is a poison still to be removed away. I imagine Blake putting the poem to a reggae beat, sharing a blue dream bowl with Bob Marley, and feel the psychedelic \u2014 mind manifesting \u2014 effect exhaling archaic words and phrases \u2014 Shelley\u2019s \u2018Man\u2019s yesterday may ne\u2019er be like his morrow\u2019 and Crane\u2019s \u2018thine Ariel holds his song\u2019 \u2014 revealing common themes and eternal truths these poems may hold. With Gratified Desire and so as not to bind to myself a joy, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I offer this opus. \u201cIt\u2019s the Poetry, Man!\u201d – PB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hart Crane and Percy Shelley raised a toast and danced a freestyle jig when they caught the drift.\u00a0 Mystic Bard William Blake burned sage and refreshed his firewall.\u00a0 Shakespeare and Black Lucy unwrapped a bedroll. Muses dream their own existence. And I found the now dog-eared paperback Complete Poems of Hart Crane that time I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_regular_price":[],"currency_symbol":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_slider_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","post_slider_layout_landscape_large":"","post_slider_layout_portrait_large":"","post_slider_layout_square_large":"","post_slider_layout_landscape":"","post_slider_layout_portrait":"","post_slider_layout_square":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulburton.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulburton.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulburton.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulburton.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulburton.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/paulburton.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"http:\/\/paulburton.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulburton.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulburton.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulburton.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}