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

culture dimension is still there in this evaluation – since imagining the lines
as potential lyrics means to operate with the pop culture concepts of the
rock band, its songs and the words to those songs – but it is now refined
by certain formal aspects that do not consist of any strict rules but rather of
some intuitive and pragmatic guidelines that may be applied to or recognized
in certain poetic pieces.
Such a loose formalism is present also in rock poetry not also as potential
or actual rock lyrics but also as poetry on/ inspired by rock. We have already
looked into David Wojahn’s sonnets and analyzed the free uninhibited way in
which he tackles the form by fusing it with rock, rock culture and various other
ingredients. In the other poets we have briefly scanned we have also noted
such concerns with certain formal aspects – not always strictly or consistently
and very rarely in a standard handbook of prosody fashion – that actually
mirror a certain loose and unconventional, sometimes completely innovating
and improvisational formalism in rock music itself. Such a loose formalism –
or better, for certain poetries, heterodox formalism – would involve, besides
personal treatment of a fixed form (the above mentioned case of Wojahn, or
Dana Gioia’s ‘quasi-ballade’ in Elledge p 163-164), the cunning use of pararhymes
(hence a sort of loose rhyming) and liberal employment of rhythm as
for instance accentual verses with alternating number of beats (very much
blues and rock like) or various feet concatenated with little or no consideration
to measure.
I have tried to applied such criteria myself to poems that have not been
recommended before as rock poems and I will just present here one of my
significant results and its implications. Gregory Corso has never been quoted
or anthologized to my knowledge as a rock poet or an author of poetry about
rock or inspired by rock and roll. As a Beat he has been sometimes naturally
mentioned in connection with jazz, just as the Beat movement as a whole
has been associated with that music, in his case an association that seemed
so much natural as he also sometimes gave some riveting poetry readings
on stage. Still, once in a while, the effect on the audience during his readings
was rather paralleled to the impact of rock bands live rather than jazz, as I
have discovered in 1994 New York Times article for instance:
The audience at Town Hall on Thursday night punctuated the performance by
applauding, laughing and shouting requests. There wasn't a rock band on stage, though,
just a jovially disheveled, white-maned, 64-year-old poet, Gregory Corso.
(Pareles 13)
Ex Ponto nr.2, 2008
And then again in a New York Times article Stephen Holden comments
upon the formative influence of the Beats on certain outstanding figures of
rock music and on rock culture in general. But Holden refers only to the “Beat
generation literary trilogy” (Holden 39) of Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs
and Allen Ginsberg who as the author argues set a “fervent, iconoclastic tone
for younger generation” (idem) and especially for legendary figures like Bob
Dylan, Patti Smith and Lou Reed who are “still carrying on the Beats’ mission
of crying out from the urban wilderness” (idem).
Besides the fact that Corso is not included in such an analysis, the question
under discussion is the impact of the Beats on certain rock artists and poets, i.e.
lyrics writers, whereas what I have in view here is the possibility to read certain
established or (at least professional) poets’ poetries, particularly Corso’s, as
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