Cover
Click image to order
Never miss a post
Your email address:*
Name: 
Please enter all required fields
Correct invalid entries

Categories

« This Just In . . . The Political Muse [by Jerome Sala] | Main | "Modern Love": I [by George Meredith] »

October 15, 2008

Comments

I love Stephen Sondheim's lyrics for "West Side Story" and it's great to see this one on the page. It fits Bernstein's music perfectly. I can't hear these words without that trembling anticipatory tune full of excitement in my ears. Can you, JMH?

DL I have to try very hard to do it, very, but I can, and it reads much faster!

Well, the other day I was listening to Peter Frampton 'Something's Happening', not so classic, but of it's day. PS - Yes, the sky in NY has been quite something this week!


Who said it's my year was it you there - Can't go wrong
I see a new way you'll be in my play - Sing my song
Where is the reason I keep teasing - If I knew
To see the new year not being blue here - Evermore

You know it's alright somethin's happening
Hold tight it might be lightning
Turn up the lights somethin's moving
Can't sleep at night my heart keeps missing a beat

Well, I know it's my year ain't got no fear - Hold me down
Take it easy if not for me - Sing my song yeah
Where is the reason I keep teasing - If I knew
To see the new year not being blue here - Evermore

You know it's alright somethin's happening
Hold tight it might be lightning
Turn up the lights I feel like dancing
Can't sleep at night my heart keeps missing a beat

Yeah, ooh baby, don't ever let it bring you down
Ooh baby, that's not the way I want it to sound
Ooh baby, don't ever let it bring you down
Ooh baby, I'll pick you up on the ground

Alright somethin's happening
Hold tight it might be lightning
Turn up the lights I feel like dancing
Can't sleep at night my heart keeps missing a beat

Yeah, ooh baby, don't ever let it bring you down
Ooh baby, That's not the way I want it to sound
Ooh baby, don't ever let it bring you down
Ooh baby, I'll pick you up

I too remember that whispered Mary Poppins line with joy... I don't know if this quite fits your category, but for me the West Side Story piece falls into the category of songs you have to sweep your arm across the horizon while singing/reciting. And so does this one.

Corner of the Sky (from Pippin)

Everything has its season
Everything has its time
Show me a reason and I'll soon show you a rhyme
Cats fit on the windowsill
Children fit in the snow
Why do I feel I don't fit in anywhere I go?

Rivers belong where they can ramble
Eagles belong where they can fly
I've got to be where my spirit can run free
Got to find my corner of the sky

Every man has his daydreams
Every man has his goal
People like the way dreams have
Of sticking to the soul
Thunderclouds have their lightning
Nightingales have their song
And don't you see I want my life to be
Something more than long....

Rivers belong where they can ramble
Eagles belong where they can fly
I've got to be where my spirit can run free
Got to find my corner of the sky

So many men seem destined
To settle for something small
But I won't rest until I know I'll have it all
So don't ask where I'm going
Just listen when I'm gone
And far away you'll hear me singing
Softly to the dawn:

Rivers belong where they can ramble
Eagles belong where they can fly
I've got to be where my spirit can run free
Got to find my corner of the sky

Oops, I can't believe I forgot to thank you Liz and Kath for your striking contributions.

Sometimes I realize that to my meaning meter, only poetry does a certain thing. But I think here, lyrics have nearly cornered the market on prediction or something unspecified about to go down. Furry Inner Esting.

btw, I have this one, from my first book The Next Ancient World


Two At A Time

Remember the first house you can remember,
how the stairway hung from nowhere,
unconnected from the floor from you were
bounding away and floating free from the landing
to which you were flinging yourself, the torque of your perfect legs
projecting you towards your room or the room
you shared; what if you know now
what wne through your mind, not all the time
of your childhood, but just then,
just a script
of your mind while on those stairs, each time, what thoughts
would therein be recorded beyond a steady refrain of
two-at-a-time, two-at-a-time? What will you wonder
thirty years from now when all of this has the same unconnectedness,
when the office where you work will hang
in the air of memory without hinges,
without crosswalks, what litany of concern, what
delicate structure of related thoughts
will you wish you could recall, could reassemble,
thirty years from now,
when all the cars today on Broadway
are vintage cars, and we, the populace of the present,
glow out our individual and collective ignorance
of some particular future event, the innocence of which
makes us shimmer when photographed as if, if you
could only speak to us, we could grant you some wish,
and whisper what it was to live before.

now I'm saying too much but anyway, I have been reminding of this poem of mine, also from my book The Next Ancient World. Book came out September 2001. Poem previously published 2000.

Brazenly, I offer that poem as well:

Waiting to Happen

The bottom of the town might open up
or influenza. Or everybody on the planet
finds a lump. Some man might plan
even now some foreign words to live
in the future’s memory-- as Kristallnacht
takes up space in ours. Saint
Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Bubonic
Plague. Consider now the length
of good times we’ve indulged in,
consider the bliss of sullen bus rides,
consider the paradise of trouble on the job,
the incommensurable dream of sexual
frustration, the joy of being mad and unfulfilled,
the glory of a night alone, lonely,
watching sitcoms; left out of the world.

On the other hand, this may be remembered
as the dawn of the golden age, wherein
after five millennia of disaster followed
on disaster, forever after no disaster comes.
Then this loneliness will never be redeemed.
If we never starve this bread will never seem
in hindsight to have been a feast of pleasure
is part of what I mean. But look at the books.
Consider the odds. We will very likely starve.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Your Information

(Name and email address are required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)

Cover
click image to order your copy
That Ship Has Sailed
Click image to order
BAP ad
Cover
"Lively and affectionate" Publishers Weekly

Radio

I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark


from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman

StatCounter

  • StatCounter