05-11-2015, 01:47 AM
I was kind of inspired by a comment I read here somewhere about Bob Dylan actually taking words from other, older songs, and using them as his own, and also by a comment of Northrop Frye on how modern ideas of copyright are sort of killing the creation of poetry, since a lot of older works blatantly stole from their ancestors (one of his examples, I think, was Shakespeare's tragedies, with the plots being all unoriginal). The following is unfinished, but I'm showing this here to see what the reaction would be in following the above idea (at least, the whole Blues tradition thing -- I may have completely misunderstood Frye on this one). Bolded stanzas are the ones so copied -- credits to Edward Bulwer-Lytton on the first, and Joni Mitchell on the second.
"Monuments"
I
Every work of art that passes
from my navel through my hands
to the block of stone or sheet of reed
I offer up is made
of light, bright starlight
gleaned from the golden candelabra
illuming your library.
And every passion thus effused,
every lick of flame released
from my fingers and my lips,
is born of the threads of silk
encasing the soles of my feet as I walked,
unknowingly, down those book-flanked aisles
to your love.
I remember:
it began as a stereotype.
It was a dark and stormy night,
and the rain fell in torrents except
at occasional intervals, when it was checked
by a violent gust of wind which swept
up the streets and rattled 'long
the housetops. But still, I slept
like a babe.
II
Class ends; a siren sings
in the distance. I jump up my seat
and pull up my bag, slinging it
over my back. Down the room's cool lanes, I run,
to the door: first stop, freedom,
sweet freedom, then the other side of school,
for another classroom door.
Sixteen women block the door,
all clad in lecture-talk and paper-work.
The way they talk, the way they think,
the way their every glance at me
seems to pull me back to my seat,
reminds me of my mother's womb,
which, sixteen years ago, I escaped,
only to find myself knocking at its door.
"Excuse me, miss", I whisper. (Careful, now--
don't intrude) "Today's leasson: relaxin",
I overhear, "a birth hormone loosening
the pubic symphysis, making
the birth canal bigger, for the baby
to get out." They only barely
step aside, so the way is hot and hard
and putrid, the smell of cheap perfume
choking me out the door.
III
Quicker than usual, I'm here, at the
first stop, freedom, in the form of a field
of flowers just behind the building,
where no one is talking and no one is watching
but me. In silence, I watch
little balls of flame, of hot red
Caesalpinias, play with golden Heliconia spears
and purple Ipomoea shields.
Suddenly, I came upon a honey-eyed
child of God. She walking along
on the nearby road, as I asked her, "Hey,
where are you going?" This, she told me:
"I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm,
gonna join in a rock'n'roll band,
maybe camp out on the land
to get my soul free. Haven't you heard?
We are stardust. We are golden.
We've got to get ourselves
back to the ga-a-a-arden."
She looked like a fool, with those flowers
in her hair, and that stardust
dripping down her nose.
I suppose freedom is just another kind of cage,
but instead of book-spines and ink
and clocks and a mother's cheap perfume,
the bars are made of Ixora bushes
and the guards are Tecoma trumpets.
At least this place smells nicer
and the company is sweeter.
"Monuments"
I
Every work of art that passes
from my navel through my hands
to the block of stone or sheet of reed
I offer up is made
of light, bright starlight
gleaned from the golden candelabra
illuming your library.
And every passion thus effused,
every lick of flame released
from my fingers and my lips,
is born of the threads of silk
encasing the soles of my feet as I walked,
unknowingly, down those book-flanked aisles
to your love.
I remember:
it began as a stereotype.
It was a dark and stormy night,
and the rain fell in torrents except
at occasional intervals, when it was checked
by a violent gust of wind which swept
up the streets and rattled 'long
the housetops. But still, I slept
like a babe.
II
Class ends; a siren sings
in the distance. I jump up my seat
and pull up my bag, slinging it
over my back. Down the room's cool lanes, I run,
to the door: first stop, freedom,
sweet freedom, then the other side of school,
for another classroom door.
Sixteen women block the door,
all clad in lecture-talk and paper-work.
The way they talk, the way they think,
the way their every glance at me
seems to pull me back to my seat,
reminds me of my mother's womb,
which, sixteen years ago, I escaped,
only to find myself knocking at its door.
"Excuse me, miss", I whisper. (Careful, now--
don't intrude) "Today's leasson: relaxin",
I overhear, "a birth hormone loosening
the pubic symphysis, making
the birth canal bigger, for the baby
to get out." They only barely
step aside, so the way is hot and hard
and putrid, the smell of cheap perfume
choking me out the door.
III
Quicker than usual, I'm here, at the
first stop, freedom, in the form of a field
of flowers just behind the building,
where no one is talking and no one is watching
but me. In silence, I watch
little balls of flame, of hot red
Caesalpinias, play with golden Heliconia spears
and purple Ipomoea shields.
Suddenly, I came upon a honey-eyed
child of God. She walking along
on the nearby road, as I asked her, "Hey,
where are you going?" This, she told me:
"I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm,
gonna join in a rock'n'roll band,
maybe camp out on the land
to get my soul free. Haven't you heard?
We are stardust. We are golden.
We've got to get ourselves
back to the ga-a-a-arden."
She looked like a fool, with those flowers
in her hair, and that stardust
dripping down her nose.
I suppose freedom is just another kind of cage,
but instead of book-spines and ink
and clocks and a mother's cheap perfume,
the bars are made of Ixora bushes
and the guards are Tecoma trumpets.
At least this place smells nicer
and the company is sweeter.