Bearing in mind the ever-growing aural presence of lyrics in our daily lives, it's worth noting that more and more poems make use of them.
My current favourites include Matt Merritt's terrific I'm Your Man (from his Happenstance pamphlet, Making The Most Of The Light) with its references to Leonard Cohen, plus Maura Dooley's The Spoils (from Kissing A Bone), in which she invokes the singers and songs on the records that are being divided up by a separating couple.
As for myself, I've even alluded to a cheesy Paul Young song in a poem that might well find its way into my pamphlet. Dangerous territory indeed!
DISPLACED They called her aloof, impractical, clumsy, plain. It was, they
say, difficult for her not to fall in love.In spite, that is, of the first
coughs...
I do it the other way around, sort of, by writing poems that I later turn into lyrics.
ReplyDelete