Nr. 2 (19) anul VI / aprilie-iunie 2008 - ROMDIDAC

also have employed Romanian poets among whom for instance our classic
Dosoftei’s versified psalms and heraldic poetry proved to fit wonderfully certain
progressive rock themes and rhythms.
So as we can see from the examples above rock poetry in all its three
acceptations accommodates naturally elements from cultural areas and
times considerably remote from rock culture. This is a feature that modern
poetries in general share, both modernist and postmodernist, avant-garde or
rearguard, experimental or formal, confessional or language. Just as we have
an impressive overwhelming corpus of rock poetry and modern literary poetry
as well that at least apparently draws upon no erudite, over-knowledgeable,
or in any other way remote references.
So the good news is that rock poetry has access to all treasures as well as
asceticisms of modern literary poetry whatsoever. And certain parts of it thus
definitely qualify (which is in the stakes of this thesis) as significant modern
poetry. What we should worry about is maybe how we could ever differentiate
between rock and non-rock poetries. Could any (good) poem be read as a
rock poem, just as we have with Bishop’s “Sonnet” and just as Elledge has
included poems in his anthology that hardly mentioned anything linked to
rock culture or poems whose authors acknowledged no actual implication of
rock and roll “at all” in their writing those poems, and just as Sarah Hamilton
draws intriguing parallels between a major outstanding band in the history –
Led Zeppelin – and a poet whose poetry has never been read before as rock
poetry – John Ashbery?
I think a first criterion would be the involvement of or the potential linking
to popular culture. Ashbery’s poetry is a poetry profusely imbued with popular
culture. Bishop’s need for assertion of lesbian identity and the fashion of
doing it is very relevant and expressive for the high/low culture border
blurring in modern pop and media culture. The Shakespearean songs that I
have mentioned could be read from a wider perspective according to which
Shakespeare’s plays were actually the real popular culture of his time (cf. for
instance Docker 168-219). Going beyond the distinction between high and low,
as for instance in the maximalist manner of Frank Zappa, helps such poetry
absorb ‘classical stuff’ and integrate it into popular culture.
But then, while popular culture could be a necessary criterion it is not
always a sufficient one. As we have seen above one of the poets in Elledge’s
anthology, Floyd Skloots claimed that rock and roll was part of his life (the
true topic of his poetry) in the same way “the Dodgers, early television, and
being a Polio Pioneer in 1954 were part of my life” (Elledge 260). As the poet
implicitly argues rock culture does not exhaust the whole popular, media, and
educational culture phenomena in America. When an explicit mention of rock
(including names of significant figures and/or products – in all senses – of rock
culture) is not present – hence unlike jazz poetry where explicit references are
prevailing, with outstanding exceptions like Crane and for instance, sometimes
Clark Coolidge – we have to identify other criteria that could qualify a poem
as a rock one.
When I first mentioned above the ‘songs’ in Shakespeare’s Midsummer
Night Dream as possible rock lyrics the first reason I had in mind was not the
stature of the poet and playwright as a star in the popular culture unreleased
charts of the Renaissance. But just as I mentioned I firstly remarked certain
prosodic and euphonic qualities and a certain diction that recommended
those lines as possible rock poetry – in the sense of rock lyrics. The popular
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