watching good television


if you watch this vid of television performing their song 'foxhole' you'll see a crawl that tells viewers that tom verlaine started out as a poet who often collaborated with his old friend richard hell. the next crawl says, thankfully they ditched poetry in favor of rock&roll.

fuck that shit. now that patti smith won the nba for her memoir of her friendship with robert mapplethorpe, also richard hell published novels and poems and book reviews of novels and poems, i think it's high time for verlaine to write his own book. i'd like to see an omnibus collection of lyrics, poems, sketches and other miscellany.

while i'm on a kind of wishlist of literate rock&rollers i'd like to see shane macgowan concentrate on writing poems and publish a collection or two.

i'm interested in the cross-pollination of poetry, music, movies, to name just a few disciplines. most poets are indeed influenced by music and movies, i am for sure as you probably are too, who then learn from and use various techniques from these disciplines in our writings. the same for musicians who are influenced by poetry or are or were poets themselves. jim carrol for example, patti smith, richard hell. others of course like bob dylan. no need to denigrate poetry pop cultural critics, please. i'm puzzled why poetry gets, in the phrase of rodney dangerfield, no respect from the general pop culturalists [is that even a word?!], but the same have absolutely no difficulty with the lyrics of say radiohead as printed in their albums. ever see radiohead lyrics? they look almost like concrete poems. but as tom verlaine is a proof that poetry influences his music, i want to see verlaine write some poems and publish a collection.