Jim Morrison

[JBI]

I think Morrison is one among a dozen of the lead singers of the '60s who were also poets--Paul Simon and John Lennon among them. All of them were limited in that they had to force their poetry into rock lyrics that could be sung to the accompaniment of lead guitars and drums. Paul Simon was probably the best poet of them all.

What constitutes poetry, or makes one a poet? And beyond that, why should I, as a poetry reader, regard them as of the same tradition? You, I think, mistake Folk and earlyish Rock music for poetry - I could say any number of musicians are poets - what is gained by that - the whole idea that good song writers are good poets is complete crap. Simply put, it's been discussed to death how some of the most mediocre lyrics can become the best music, and some of the best lyrics can become the most mediocre music. Jim Morrison is another mediocre poet, but alright musician - he isn't readable the way someone like even the poet-songwriter Bob Dylan is, nor is he as mediocre as the lyricists of any other number of rock bands. That doesn't mean I should read him next to Wordsworth.

I guess we give anybody who can pen five lines of music the title of poet - even John Lennon, great musical voice that he was, as purely text, is rather meh, bordering on complete mediocrity.

[breathtest]

JBI - i agree that a lot of lyrics to music don't read well. However, Jim Morrison was a poet before he was a singer. He'd been writing poetry since he was very young, and his poetry is not simply rock lyrics put into writing. And no, you shouldn't read him next to Wordsworth, but neither should you read Wordsworth next to Rimbaud or Rimbaud next to ee cummings. Poets are poets in their own right and should be judged based on their own work, not based on another persons.

[JBI]

JBI - i agree that a lot of lyrics to music don't read well. However, Jim Morrison was a poet before he was a singer. He'd been writing poetry since he was very young, and his poetry is not simply rock lyrics put into writing. And no, you shouldn't read him next to Wordsworth, but neither should you read Wordsworth next to Rimbaud or Rimbaud next to ee cummings. Poets are poets in their own right and should be judged based on their own work, not based on another persons.

Meh, his work was mediocre - he also was into film before forming the Doors, but we don't go calling him a renowned director. He was mediocre, and some people, generally those who like his music, have a problem seeing that.

Pope's Dunciad still holds true today I guess.

[breathtest]

'real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilites. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you.
...and that's why poetry appeals to me so much - because it's so eternal. As long as there are people, they can remember words and combinations of words. Nothing else can survive a holocaust but poetry and songs. No one can remember an entire novel. No one can describe a film, a piece of sculpture, a painting, but so long as there are human beings, songs and poetry can continue' Jim Morrison, 1971

Meh, his work was mediocre - he also was into film before forming the Doors, but we don't go calling him a renowned director. He was mediocre, and some people, generally those who like his music, have a problem seeing that.

Pope's Dunciad still holds true today I guess.

we don't call him a renowned director because he never actually made and released a film. He made one in college but that was lost, and then he was part-way through filming a long movie when he died in '71. However, he did publish two books of poetry, and there are poets such as michael mcclure who praised and supported his poetry. But i get what your driving at. His poetry doesn't do anything for you and that's cool.

[JBI]

we don't call him a renowned director because he never actually made and released a film. He made one in college but that was lost, and then he was part-way through filming a long movie when he died in '71. However, he did publish two books of poetry, and there are poets such as michael mcclure who praised and supported his poetry. But i get what your driving at. His poetry doesn't do anything for you and that's cool.

Meh, Michael McClure was also mediocre, so that doesn't do anything for me - as for the above quote, that isn't very interesting either I can paraphrase it in 5 words.

Songs, Poems stick in memory.

[Alexander III]

JBI not to sound offensive but you have spent the entire thread stating he as a poet is meh, thus I presume you have read his works, so would it not add to the conversation more if you gave a basic outline of why for you he is only meh ?

[mayneverhave]

No one can remember an entire novel.

Autistic savants perhaps?

[Scheherazade]

R e m i n d e r

Please do not personalise your arguments.

Post containing off-topic or personal/inflammatory comments have been

and

will be removed without further notice.

[Alexander III]

This is one of his which I really like



The Desert

Roseate metallic blue
& insect green
blank mirrors & pools of silver
a universe in one body

[breathtest]

Meh, Michael McClure was also mediocre, so that doesn't do anything for me - as for the above quote, that isn't very interesting either I can paraphrase it in 5 words.

Songs, Poems stick in memory.

you can pretty much paraphrase and simplify anything though. By your logic, there was no need for Shakespeares sonnets or Chaucer's canterbury tales or for that matter any poem or novel or essay ever written. Everything can be simplified into two or three words. I think the beauty is in how you arrive at that succint conclusion/summary. Talking about how poetry and songs are the only things that can survive a holocaust...that is a beautiful way of saying that they stick in memory.

[Jassy Melson]

Jim Morrison was a poet and a songwriter. Some of his poems he was able to fit into song; some he was not. He was a poet before he was a songwriter.

[Jay on blues]

I'll always think of Jim Morrison first and foremost as the frontman for The Doors, because with all due respect to his poetry, it pales in comparison to his music. But I have read some of his poetry and I've mildly enjoyed a few of his poems. But most of them are just so out there it's hard to get into it.

[stlukesguild]

As JBI has noted this subject... the notion of song lyrics and song writers as poets... has been done to death. It is continually those who have little or no experience reading poetry that make the inflated claims for the poetic genius of Morrison or Lennon or Robert Plant, etc... and it certainly frustrates those who are deeply enamored of poetry as much as inflated claims of the artistic genius of John Lennon or John Mellencamp might frustrate an artist or art lover.

This has nothing to do with a snobbism or inability to appreciate contemporary achievements in poetry. The same may be said about many of the lyrics of classical music. Most opera librettos read as mediocre dramas... but the music is able to infuse this with an aesthetic beauty that transcends the mere text. Gustav Mahler's great song cycle, Das Lied von der Erde, sets a mediocre German translation of Chinese poems... but the result is one of the most moving and harrowing compositions. Poetry has its own "music"... a rhythm, beat, rhyme, emphasis, etc... Most song lyrics lack this because the music itself establishes it. Read as poetry without the music, it often comes across as awkward, unstructured... even comical.

JBI and I have read a great wealth of poetry... including the great poets whom Morrison built his amateurish efforts upon: Blake and Rimbaud. Morrison's poetry reads like "snapped prose" to employ critic/poet/novelist/short story writer Thomas Disch's terminology:

Take any piece of prose you like
and snap it into lines of verse
like this, using the end of the line

as a kind of comma. You can create
a further sense of shapeliness
by grouping the snapped prose in stanzas, so.

Sounds an awful lot like:

The hour of the wolf
has now ended. Cocks
crow. The world is built
up again, struggling in
darkness.

The child gives into night-
Mare, while the grown
Man fears his fear.

Quite different from:

As I came down the impassible Rivers
I felt no more the bargeman's guiding hands,
Targets for yelling red-skins they were nailed
Naked to painted poles.

What did I care for any crews,
Carriers of English cotton or of Flemish grain!
Bargemen and all that hubbub left behind'
The waters let me go my own free way.

In the furious lashings of the tides,
Emptier than children's minds, I through that winter
Ran! And great peninsulas unmoored
Never knew more triumphant uproar than I knew!

This is perhaps the only poet I know of who achieved something of real genius while yet a teenager.

Morrison may have a vocabulary beyond the average teen... and he can create some interesting images... but this is not enough. And no... I am not arguing that poetry must follow some dated formal structure... but those poets who shattered the conventions actually knew what the conventions were... and had already mastered them... before composing something like this:

As soon as the idea of the deluge had subsided, A hare stopped in the clover and swaying flower-bells, and said a prayer through the rainbow to the spider's web.

Oh! The precious stones that began to hide- and the flowers that already looked around.

In the dirty main street, stalls were set up and boats were hauled toward the sea, high-tiered as in old prints.

Blood flowed at Bluebeard's- through slaughterhouses, in circuses, where the windows were blanched by God's seal. Blood and Milk flowed...


Again... no one is suggesting that you must like this or that poet or that you shouldn't like someone else... but he and I are both saying that inflated claims for the poetic ability of pop stars come off as somewhat comical when you consider the actual achievements of true poets.

[Jay on blues]

@stlukesguild

But aren't you going a little too far when you say what he writes isn't true poetry? Or it's comical and offense to the "real poets?"

He's just a different poet, and one that can be more easily enjoyed without a requirement of having to be in the know of the poetry world. I agree that just because he is a celebrity he shouldn't be raised to the upper-echelon of the art. And there are examples that work in your favor. The pop singer Alicia Keys describes herself as a poet and has published a collection of them, but they are nothing more than a page ripped out of any 16 year old girls diary after a bad day at school. Her poetry is plain bad. Anyone with any kind of appreciation for words, even people who don't go on forums to discuss books like us, can see it. Bob Dylan's book of prose-poetry-ish things(it's quite the mess) Tarantula is horrible.

But to say someone like Morrison or Lennon are an insult to the art, and exclude them from the conversation is snobbish to say the least. Just because they don't follow suit with the greats shouldn't discount any of their work. Or god forbid their writing is accessible to the masses. I've heard poems that are written by the contemporary masters that I've laughed at because of the steaming self-importance that almost visibly drips from the page. People run away screaming from that kind of stuff, myself included. It's a huge turn off.

Poetry shouldn't be something that impresses itself with it's understanding of what it is. It's no use then. Morrison and Lennon's poetry is worth talking about because along with precise, intriguing language, it can keep people in the room, unlike the second one you posted where half the people just decide not to care about it or worse, run away with their fingers jammed in their ears and begin to hate poetry because they feel like they are foolish for not knowing at all what is going on.

[Jassy Melson]

I will repeat: Jim Morrison was a poet. Just read some of his poems.