I know sex and death are two of the most common themes in poetry, but does anyone else see a really amusing amount of correspondence here, or is it just me?
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(may i touch said he (let's go said he may i stay said he may i move said he but it's life said he (tiptop said he (cccome?said he e.e.cummings, "may I feel said he" |
I. Paradise And now our bodies are oh so close and tight Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night Girl: Boy:
C'mon! Hold on tight! We're gonna go all the way tonight Radio Broadcast: He's rounding first and really turning it on Batter steps up to the plate, here's the pitch-- He's taking a pretty big lead out there, almost
Girl: Do you love me? Boy: Girl: Boy: Girl: Will you love me forever!!! III. Praying for the End of Time Boy:
Meatloaf, excerpted from "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" |
Well, maybe it's not as close a correspondence as I thought; I first read the
cummings line, "But your wife" as "But I want to be your wife", and now I realize it's more probably meant to be, "But what about your wife?" Despite that, though, the cummings poem somehow sounds to me like adolescent sex, as much as the Meatloaf song. I don't think cummings can be meaning to say that all sex is adolescent, since it took him three tries (so presumably some maturity) to get marriage right. And then he did -- and there's nothing like a happy marriage to convince you that all good sex doesn't have to be in the adolescent model.
It's always startling to realize how frankly sexual so much of e.e. cummings' work is, once you get past the few poems most commonly anthologized. (Was the other meaning of his own name an influence?) I suppose it shows his genius that he evokes the mood with such allusory brushwork, though I don't think the comparison is all to Meatloaf's discredit either. (The baseball announcer part makes me laugh every time.)
I've been reading Poetry Speaks; the central conceit of the book is the
included CDS with poets reading their own work. They go back as early as possible, with Alfred Lord Tennyson as an old man recording onto Mr. Edison's new wax cylinders, and coming up to Sylvia Plath (all included poets are dead). The accompanying book has a short bio of each poet, an essay on their work by a living poet, and several selections. To the credit of the editors, they've included poets whose names I hadn't heard, though I've seen their work, as well as works I'd never seen from Big Names (like the one above). I'm finding that having a few poems broken up by essays and listening to the CD is prompting me to analyze each one with more attention, instead of the glaze my eyes get when confronted with page after page of Erato's and Polyhymnia's tributes.