Category Archives: Lyric

BOOK: “Dear Lovely Death” by Langston Hughes

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Dear Lovely DeathDear Lovely Death by Langston Hughes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Second Story Books Page

This, Langston Hughes’ fourth poetry collection — published in 1931, consists of twelve short poems about (or touching upon) death. Originally, Hughes only had a small run of this collection self-published, so it isn’t always listed among his works.

These poems are short and lyrical. The last few poems are not so explicitly about death as the early ones. However, given that old chestnut (variously attributed to Robert Graves and Samuel Delany) that all poems are about love, death, or the change of seasons, these would definitely hit the second category.

I’d recommend this collection for poetry readers.

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BOOK: “The Negro Mother: And Other Dramatic Recitations” by Langston Hughes

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The Negro Mother: And Other Dramatic RecitationsThe Negro Mother: And Other Dramatic Recitations by Langston Hughes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Google Books Site

This short volume consists of just five intermediate length lyric poems. The poems included are: “The Coloured Soldier,” “Broke,” “The Big-Timer,” “The Negro Mother,” and “Dark Youth of the USA.”

This collection stands out from Hughes’ others. Each poem is a character sketch, a snapshot of tribulations suffered by black Americans in Hughes’ day (published in 1931.) The poems are longer and more biographic than most of Hughes’ work.

This is a powerful collection of poems, and I’d highly recommend it for poetry readers.

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BOOK: “Bruce Springsteen’s America” ed. by Robert Coles

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Bruce Springsteen's America: The People Listening, A Poet SingingBruce Springsteen’s America: The People Listening, A Poet Singing by Robert Coles
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Publisher Site

This book assembles ten reflections upon the role that Bruce Springsteen’s songs have played in the lives and thoughts of everyday Americans. It’s presented as the views of Harvard Psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Robert Coles, but while Coles contributed both front- and back-matter as well as editing, the bulk of the book consists of the thoughts of a diverse assemblage of Americans — a lawyer, a teacher, a police officer, a grandmother, a student, a salesman, etc.

The degree to which Bruce Springsteen’s music is central to the book varies both in Cole’s contributions and in those of his contributors. Sometimes, it’s heavily about those songs, but other times it drifts into territory in which Springsteen seems to have little relevance. That’s okay… unless one bought the book primarily to read about Springsteen’s cultural influence, and one might easily be forgiven for thinking that’s the book one was getting.

Few, if any, musicians have images more intertwined with what it means to be American than Bruce Springsteen. This is, therefore, an interesting topic, though it may have been more interesting with a bit more focus.

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Angry Monkey [Common Meter]

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Photograph of monkeys taken at the Medellin Conservation Park in Colombia.
Angry Monkey pops his head up,
   behind glass at the Zoo.
 I sympathize. If I were stuck
   there, I'd be angry, too.
 Sitting 'round in a monkey suit
   with walls one sees right through.

BOOKS: “Fine Clothes to the Jew” by Langston Hughes

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Fine Clothes to the JewFine Clothes to the Jew by Langston Hughes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Available online – Lehigh University

This, Hughes’s second poetry collection, is different from the first in that it leans more heavily into blues music structure and into dialectal language use. It’s not that these didn’t feature in Weary Blues, but in this collection one can read most of the poems with a blues shuffle riff playing in one’s head (and, if you do, you will hear how Muddy Waters might have belted them out in a Blues club.)

While it’s fun to read, this collection is not nearly so deep or evocative as the collection that preceded. Still, if you like poetry and / or the Blues, you’ll definitely find this to be a worthwhile read.

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PROMPT: Song Lyric

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Daily writing prompt
What’s a song lyric that has stuck with you forever?
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Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
Keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin

And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Might be later to win
For the times they are a changin'

From “The Times They Are a-Changin'” Bob Dylan (1963 – from the eponymously named album.)

Poison Ivy [Lyric Poem]

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Poison Ivy, I think you know
 that you will always be my foe.

I can slice your vine, pal-o-mine,
 and still end slathered in calamine.

Because I must haul your corpse away,
 and on my gloves your oils will stay —
 waiting that unexpecting day
 when I scratch some tender bit.

BOOK: “Lonesome Cities” by Rod McKuen

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LONESOME CITIES LTD EDITLONESOME CITIES LTD EDIT by Rod McKuen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Google Books Page

Rod McKuen is the posterchild for poets who were loathed and brutalized by critics, yet who had massive popular followings. He is the Minecraft Movie of poets. McKuen was also a songwriter and recording artist. Poet and lyricist seem almost identical career fields (one makes money for being a simplified version of the other [the poor] one,) but I suspect in their differences one finds a big chunk of the resolution to the aforementioned disparity. At the end of this collection is a chapter entitled “13 Songs” that contains a baker’s dozen of poems that are pop lyric-esque. Until I got to these, I thought McKuen may have been getting an unfair wrap for being schmaltzy and pedestrian, but when I got to them, I could see the truth in the criticism.

This is not to say McKuen would have been as harshly judged today as he was in 1968 when this book came out. He was a bisexual man who is most famous for writing “Seasons in the Sun” (an unambiguously schmaltzy song made popular by Terry Jacks in a much more up-tempo version,) and in an era in which academics were “total squares.”

At any rate, this collection, which is largely organized by city, is a fun read.

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Perspective [Lyric Poem]

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Photograph of a monkey looking sideways through the bars at a temple in Lopburi, Thailand.
Perhaps, you cannot change your jail,
   And you can't choose the lumps and scars --
 No matter how you scream or wail --
   But you pick your view through the bars.

Dragonfly Eye [Lyric Poem]

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Photograph taken at Don Mueang Temple in the north Bangkok suburbs, features waterlilies in the fore and guardian statues in the background. 
The dragonfly strafing lilies 
 doesn't know how very silly
 a bantam taller than a ram
 seems to a ram tall as a filly.