“I beg to submit the following solutions of your (the Poet’s) chief difficulties.
Topic 1. You frequently asked where are the friends of your childhood and urge that they should be brought back to you. As far as I am able to learn, those of your friends who are not in jail are still right there in your native village”.
(from “Poetic Answers” by Stephen Leacock in “Literary Lapses”).
Poetry today has fallen from popular favour and is limited to self-published collections, literary journals or haikus printed in school magazines. We must not forget the occasional poetry slam public readings which attract dozens if not scores of people. But if you really want to produce poetry and publish it on your own self-indulgent website (like this one) or on your Facebrag page, you can always download an app: just enter a topic and Dougies’s Doggerel Degenerator will produce lines and lines of the stuff for just 99 cents.
However as we all know the modern day “poet equivalent” is the songwriter. Like the sentimental poet of a century ago, popular song writers are still asking the unanswerable and pondering the imponderable. As a ponderer myself I feel their ponderings deserve to be poked, prodded and plundered for clever phrases.
A few of the more poignant questions by songsmiths of living memory will be answered here and now.
Bob Dylan has contributed many ponderable poetic puzzles to the universe.
“How does it feel? How does it feel? To be without a home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?” (“Like a Rolling Stone”)
Bob is uniquely qualified to ask this question having been without a regular home since he started touring in 1962. But he is too well known to be “a complete unknown”. Perhaps the answer can come from authentic complete unknowns such as the winners of American Idol, Australian Idol or Latvian Idol about 3 weeks after they win. Regarding Bob’s question about how it feels to be a rolling stone, he could always ask Mick, Keith, Ron and Charlie but at the moment, rumour has it, they are too rolling stoned to give a coherent answer.
Poetic queries abound in the songs of Lennon and McCartney. In heartbroken tones in “Yesterday” Paul asked “Why she had to go? I don’t know, she wouldn’t say”. Well Paul that’s just not good enough. Go and ask her again so you can tell us all. We’ve been waiting for an answer for over 50 years now.
Eric Clapton brought us some pretty poetic puzzles. In “Layla” , while claiming to be someone called Derek and the Dominoes, he asked Miss L “What do you do when you get lonely and nobody’s waiting by your side?” Admittedly Eric was at this time completely preoccupied trying to figure out the more interesting question “Who shot the sheriff?”. But when Layla got lonely because Eric or Derek was busy with the sheriff question, I guess she probably phoned a girlfriend and they went out for a coffee, or she might have called her mum and had a good old cry over the fickle unfaithfulness of men. But at least she learnt not to trust males who can’t decide whether they are Eric or Derek.
The poetic Prince once queried “How can you leave me standing? Alone in a world that’s so cold, so cold?”
If I may be so bold, your late Royal Princeness, you could have tried a quick trip in your private jet to the town of Marble Bar in Western Australia, famous for its summer temperatures of over 45 degrees Celsius. The private jet strategy would have solved all your problems at once. You would have no longer been “standing” (you would have had to sit for takeoff), you wouldn’t have been “alone” (at least there would have been a pilot to chat to) and Marble Bar is still so hot, hot, hot rather than “cold” that it would have seemed more like Mars than this “world”.
But the poetic decades march on. Beyonce (“Crazy in Love”) posed the big issue “Who he thinks he is?” Frankly I’m not sure Queen Bey, but you could always bribe his shrink to spill the beans.
The Aerosmith boys are heavy on lyrical questions. “Everytime I look in the mirror, All those lines on my face getting clearer, The past is gone, it went by like dusk to dawn, Isn’t that the way?” (“Dream on”). Aero (or is it Mr Smith?), it probably is one of the ways and it could be the way but if, as you hint, it involves cosmetic surgery or memory altering substances, I’d rather answer in the negative.
Noted by her mother for her poetic prowess, Katy Perry wants to know (in “Unconditionally”) “Oh did I almost see? What’s really on the inside? All your insecurities, all the dirty laundry?” No Katy, I hope not. All my dirty laundry is in the laundry basket, safe from your prying poetic peeping and as for my insecurities, I just updated my antivirus, antispam, antiKaty apps to the latest versions, so for the moment I’m safe.
Let’s leave the last poetic interrogation to Coldplay who posed the query “When the tears come streaming down your face/ When you lose something you can’t replace/ When you love someone but it goes to waste/ Could it be worse?” (“Fix you”)
I can sympathise Coldplayers because I’ve lost something I can’t replace. It’s my One Direction 8GB USB flash drive with a picture of the boys on the outside. But take heart, it’s not so bad really. I never liked One Direction so I covered up their picture with a label. I only bought it because it was cheap. And I only used it to backup my “miscellaneous” folder from my old computer and the files probably weren’t that important. “Could it be worse?” you ask. Yes it could be worse. Consider poor old Dilbert in the comic strip of the same name when he was asked by his friend Wally what new job he had been given in the company reorganisation. “Organ donor” he replied. Now that’s worse.
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© Geoff Milton 2018
