Make Poetry Fun Again—Listen to the Music

Yes poetry is a fine venue to explore our emotions, make sense of past pains, scream creatively about government oppression. But there can also be joy in poetry, just as in music, which also has its pain and catharsis

With Dreaming to a Click, the emphasis is on the joy of both language and music. Chris Stroffolino and Steve Carll employ various approaches and formats to this language-music relationship.

Are these poems “about” music?

What do we mean by “about”? I take that to mean descriptive, recreating. Like poetry called ekphrastic. “Chamber of Sighs,” a suite of three poems, is closest to that. And a couple poems early on describe more the experience of hearing music:

“no drums ear, ear strings
                             standing musicians 
                             twerking trapezius
polyrhythms
                              bowed with right hands
countermelodies
                             plucked with the left”   (“…hammer, anvil spirit”)

Overall, though, Chris and Steve play with and explore the various ways poems can engage with music in our minds and our lives.

There are tons of song references here. While the book itself can be viewed as a jukebox, some of the poems have enough song references in them to stock a jukebox by themselves. In some places they can be scattershot, or obligatory, but overall it’s enjoyable.

One example, where the references have a thematic focus, is “Take the Mods Thrifting”:

“what goes better with the blue suede shoes:
the pink peg slacks or the red blue jeans
 
This raspberry beret matches the pants,
or I could do the fez and switch
to the boogie shoes with the diamonds on the soles.”

The song references can jog memories, and can sometimes be a slog, or lead to the frustration of not knowing what references you’re missing, but Steve and Chris are skilled with language, employing a variety of forms and angles, too many to catalogue here. Rooting all this is the language, including the very start of the book:

“a slow rhapsody 

touches the ear
and prisms into harmonies
that shine off the page
 
forever’s blink a blend of atavism
and abandon
               that elation is the spacing of notes”

One of my favorite poems, “Blackout Killed the Video Star,” near the end of the book, may be the most personal about how music has been a part of Chris and Steve’s lives:

“I’m holding a client with CP horizontally in the warm indoor pool to loosen her stiff limbs alongside a team of other leisure service providers with clients in Albany in the early 90’s and the radio is playing Everybody Hurts by R.E.M. No, I don’t want to see the official video.”

Words and music are always with us, whether we’re conscious of them or not, and we can take their presence and their abilities for granted. In Dreaming to a Click, Steve and Chris throw open the doors and windows of the complex where music lives. Whether we walk right in, stand in the shadows and sing along, or just walk on by, we’re energized and more open to move and hum with what comes next.