SEMI-FINALS IN SONG

April 2, 2022 at 10:25 pm (Carl Sigman, Danville Girl, March Madness Poetry, Pete Seeger, T.S Eliot, Tommy Edwards, Woody Guthrie)

Carl Sigman—at the piano—wrote the lyrics for It’s All In the Game

Love is when music stops being background music.

Let’s focus a little. We have two match-ups before the final. “The Good Life” by Nancy Wilson vs. “Shaman’s Blues” by the Doors and this one—“It’s All In the Game” (Tommy Edwards) against “Danville Girl” (Pete Seeger).

Final Four contestant, “It’s All In the Game,” tune written in 1911 by Calvin Coolidge’s Vice President Charles Dawes, with lyrics added in 1951, opens with: “Many a tear has to FALL, but it’s ALL in the game,” a hack rhyme, some might think, but “fall” and “all” both fall at the end of an anapest—da da DA.

Carl Sigman’s lyrics:

(C) Many a tear has to fall (Am) but it’s all (F/G) in the game, (C)
All in the wonderful game that we know (F/G) as love. (C)
You have words with him and your future’s looking dim
But these things your hearts can rise above (G7)

Once in a while he won’t call but it’s all in the game.
Soon he’ll be there at your side with a sweet bouquet.
And he’ll kiss your lips and caress (Em) your waiting fingertips (D)
And your hearts will fly (F/G) away (C)

Musically, we notice the following: According to a popular chord chart site, “It’s All In the Game” opens in C with “Many a tear has to,” switching to A minor on “fall,” and as the lyric lands on “all” the F chord is played, letting us know we are in the key of C major (the A minor detour—appropriately on the word “fall” had us in doubt) and then, to be doubly sure, G comes in immediately after, just as “all” is leaving the singer’s lips—making the rhyme “all” even more important, since the music establishes the key for the first time in the song—first with the F (the 4th) and then, even more conclusively, with the G (the 5th).

F is mischievous and all-important in the song, since with C and A minor (the first two chords) F could have belonged to the key of A minor—and it feels right that the word “fall” is with an ambiguous chord.

But it is the G which follows quickly on the F which confirms for the listener (whether they are aware of it or not!) that the F belongs to the key of C major; the 1-4-5 of the song = C-F-G.

The second line of the song (which repeats the same chord sequence) now does something marvelous. “All in the wonderful game, that we know as love.” The word “know” receives the crucial F-to-G chords, the chords which let us “know” the key of the song! We “know” the true harmony (“love”).

The song’s bridge “You had words with him and your future’s looking dim, but these things your hearts can rise above” ends on G7—a G chord with an added F. The “all” rhyme in the beginning of the song greeted us with an F chord followed by a G chord (establishing the key of the song) and the song’s first variation re-visits the F and G, but this time with the G7 chord. Brilliant.

The part of the song which goes “And he’ll kiss your lips, and caress your waiting fingertips” moves to E minor after the A minor and then back to A minor—luxuriating in the minor which was hinted at in the beginning of the song when we first heard the A minor. After all, the song plays with sadness (“many a tear has to fall”) even as happiness prevails.

With “fingertips,” we get a D chord, which has 2 of the same notes as the G chord—plus our friend the F note—but as an F sharp, which contributes to the gently rising finale of the song and that lovely trope—“And your hearts will fly away” returning to the sequence which began the song: C/Am/F/G/C.

Frankly, I don’t know if Carl Sigman, the lyricist, was consciously aware of these things (probably not) but I’m willing to bet it’s one of the reasons “It’s All In the Game” was a no.1 hit when it was released in 1958.

The singer of “It’s All In the Game” is not the lover; he observes the action of the lovers, like T.S. Eliot in “The Waste Land,” which adds to the classic perfection of the song, whose lyrical/musical profundity is largely hidden from us in the form of a ‘mere pop number.’

Can “Danville Girl” hope to beat a recording as good as “Its All In the Game”? The chords of “Danville Girl” are simple; it uses the common pop chord sequence 1-4-5. The pattern is: 1-4-1/1-4-5//1-4-1/1-4-5-1. The “Danville Girl” story, unlike “It’s All In the Game”—featuring a love-tension which resolves—spotlights a first-person hobo pursuing a survival life—stoicism is paramount, so the simple chord structure is appropriate. Pete Seeger, with just the right vocals, and banjo, sings a self-made version (1950) of the Woody Guthrie song.

Who wins?

#marchmadnesssongs

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SCARRIET POETRY BASEBALL ALL-STAR-BREAK STANDINGS AND STATS!

July 13, 2020 at 1:39 pm (Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, Francois-Rene Chateaubriand, G.W.F. Hegel, Garcia Lorca, Garrison Keillor, George Bernard Shaw, George Harrison, George Washington, Goya, Hafiz, Hans Holbein, Heinrich Heine, Hilda Dolittle, Homer, J.S. Bach, James Joyce, James Tate, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jim Morrison, John Ashbery, John Crowe Ransom, John D Rockeller, John Dewey, John Donne, John Gould Fletcher, John Keats, John Ruskin, John Stuart Mill, John Updike, Jonathan Swift, JP Morgan, Kanye West, Karl Marx, Kolkata Cobras, Lao Tzu, Leonardo da Vinci, Li Po, Longfellow, Lord Byron, Lucien Freud, Ludovico Ariosto, Mao, Marcel Duchamp, Mark Twain, Martin Luther King, Mary Angela Douglas, Mick Jagger, Mozart, Muhammad Ali, Nahum Tate, Napoleon Bonaparte, Paul Celan, Paul McCartney, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Picasso, Plato, Queen Victoria, R. Jarrell, Rabindranath Tagore, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ravel, Richard Wagner, Robert Browning, Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Rousseau, Rumi, Salvador Dali, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Scarriet Baseball Poetry League, Shakespeare, Sharon Olds, Stephen Spielberg, T.S.Eliot, Theodore Roethke, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Nashe, Victor Hugo, Vikram Seth, Virginia Woolf, W Churchill, W.H.Auden, William Blake, William Butler Yeats, William James, William Wordsworth, Wittgenstein, Woody Allen, Woody Guthrie, Yone Noguchi)

An Essay on Modern Education-Jonathan Swift-1740 – Advocatetanmoy ...

Swift. The Dublin Laureates are only 2 games out of first in the Glorious Division—thanks to his 12-1 record.

MODERN DIVISION

NEW YORK BUYERS ROCKEFELLER  43 37 –
PHOENIX UNIVERSE SPIELBERG   42 38 (1)
MANHATTAN PRINTERS WARHOL 40 40 (3)
PHILADELPHIA CRASH BARNES 36 44 (7)
ARDEN DREAMERS HARRIMAN 36 44 (7)

WINS

Hans Holbein Printers 5-1
Marcel Duchamp Printers 6-2
Mark Twain Buyers 11-6
Paul Engle Buyers 10-7
Margaret Atwood Dreamers 9-6
John Crowe Ransom Crash 7-5

Relief

Pablo Picasso Crash 9-3
Jean Cocteau Universe 3-0
Czeslaw Milosz Universe 5-2
John Cage Printers 5-2

HOME RUNS

Elizabeth Bishop Buyers 22
Sharon Olds Dreamers 19
Aristophanes Printers 19
John Updike Printers 19
Dylan Thomas Buyers 18
Edna Millay Dreamers 17
Juvenal Universe 15
Bob Dylan Universe 14
Robert Lowell Buyers 14
Louis MacNeice Dreamers 14
Stephen Spender Crash 14
Paul Celan Universe 11
Garcia Lorca Printers 10

The closest race in the league is the dogfight in the Modern Division between Rockefeller’s Buyers (who once led by a wide margin) and Spielberg’s Universe—a game apart, and the Printers are only 2 games away from the Universe. Robert Lowell has been hot at the plate for the Buyers, Bob Dylan for the Universe. Pitching-wise, Mark Twain has been hot again for the Buyers (and leads the division in wins), and Raymond Carver (replacing Randall Jarrell in the rotation) has been hot for the Universe (4-2). MLK Jr is 3-2 in his 8 starts since joining the Universe, and Spielberg has added Jean Cocteau (3-0) to the bullpen, a move he feels will put the Universe over the top. But Andy Warhol’s Printers made moves, too. Hans Holbein the Younger joined the rotation, and is 5-1. Paul Klee is a new lefty starter (3-3). Toulouse Lautrec (3-2) filled in admirably for the injured Duchamp (a toilet fell on his toe). Aristophanes and John Updike have both slammed 19 homers for manager Brian Epstein and his Printers. John Ashbery, who has seven homers from the lead off spot, and is one of the best fielding third basemen in the league, predicted the Printers would win it all. “Why shouldn’t I say that?” he asked. The Crash and the Dreamers, tied for last, are not that far out (seven games) and so every team is truly in the hunt in this division. John Crowe Ransom of the Crash did not win his first game until the end of May, and now at 7-5 he’s among the pitching leaders. John Dewey is 3-0 in July, Wittgenstein and Pater are 2-1 in July. Has the moment arrived for the Crash? Picasso has won 9 games for the Crash in relief. Franz Werfel has replaced the injured John Gould Fletcher in left, and has already begun hitting homers. Stephen Spender leads the Crash in that category. Stevie Smith, playing for the hurt Louis MacNeice, clubbed four homers for the Dreamers, and the home run power of Edna Millay (17) and Sharon Olds (19) has been on display all year for Pamela Harriman’s club. MacNeice himself has 14. The Dreamers have been doing everything they can to fix their bullpen (Germaine Greer has been a huge disappointment) but relief pitching is a tricky affair. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera have joined the team, but all sorts of off-the-field issues have resulted in not much action—a blown save by Kahlo.  Jean Paul Sartre, however, has gone right to work—he’s 2-3 in relief in some very close games. As for the starting rotation, William Godwin pitched well but went 1-4 filling in for Simone de Beauvoir (2-7), losing to Ransom 4-3 on her first start back. Mary Wollstonecraft has joined the Dreamers and is 3-1 in 8 starts. Anais Nin is 8-8. Margaret Atwood has regained her early season form, and is 9-6. Don’t count out the Dreamers!

PEOPLES DIVISION

KOLKATA COBRAS S. RAY 47 33 –
SANTA BARBARA LAWS DICK WOLF 41 39 (6)
BEIJING WAVES MAO 39 41 (8)
TOKYO MIST KUROSAWA 36 44 (11)
LA GAMERS MERV GRIFFIN 35 45 (12)

WINS

Jalal Rumi Cobras 11-3
Rabindranith Tagore Cobras 11-7
Mahatma Gandhi Cobras 10-6
Lao Tzu Waves 10-6
Yukio Mishima Mist 9-6
Yone Naguchi Mist 8-5
Oliver Wendell Holmes Laws 8-6

Relief

Confucius Waves 7-2
Mark Van Doren Laws 4-1
Menander Gamers 6-3

 

HOME RUNS

John Donne Laws 18
Vikram Seth Cobras 18
Li Po Waves 17
Jadoo Akhtar Cobras 16
John Lennon Mist 15
Billy Collins Gamers 15
Hilda Doolittle Mist 15
George Harrison Cobras 14
Eugene Ionesco Gamers 14
Thomas Hardy Laws 14
Karl Marx Waves 13
Tu Fu Waves 13
Sadakitchi Hartmann Mist 11

The Kolkata Cobras have 3 good hitters and 3 good pitchers, and a six game lead in the Peoples Division. Vikram Seth is tied with the division lead in homers with 18, Jadoo Akhtar has 16 round-trippers, and George Harrison, 14 (though Harrison strikes out way too much). We could also mention Allen Ginsberg of the Cobras, batting .301 with 7 homers. The three big starters for the Cobras are Rumi, Tagore, and Gandhi. Kabir Das has improved in the bullpen; the Cobras have been healthy, and don’t plan on any big moves. The Laws, in second place, are also healthy; they added Ferdinand Saussure to their relief corps, but otherwise are staying with the team they’ve had since the beginning, and has arrived at the all star break 2 games over .500: Martial, Donne, and Thomas Hardy with 40 homers in the middle of the lineup, Aristotle, their ace who was hot, but lost 4 straight as they hoped to close in on the Cobras, Bacon, 10-4 since going 0-5 to start the season, Horace 4-2 in the last 5 weeks, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, pitching well, but not getting run support lately, as is the case with Aristotle. Donne is the only one hot at the plate right now. The Waves are 8 back, and slipping a bit lately, as Lao Tzu has been their only consistent pitcher; Confucius made a big splash in the beginning of the year, winning all sorts of late inning games—he’s just 1-0 in the last 5 weeks; Voltaire and Rousseau continue to disappoint. Tu Fu and Karl Marx have cooled off at the plate somewhat. Brecht and Neruda are not hitting. “The whole team has dropped off,” Jack Dorsey, the Waves manager said, “and it’s time we get back in this. We have an amazing team.” The Tokyo Mist got a boost when Yukio Mishima (9-6) replaced Heraclitus, and Yone Naguchi has quietly compiled an 8-5 record, but the two top starters for the Mist, Basho and Issa, have been a study in frustration. Issa gets no run support; Basho’s ERA is too high. Haruki Murakami (2-1) may be the bullpen ace they need, but it’s too early to tell. The Mist would love to have some of relief pitcher Kobe Abe’s (2-7) losses back. The Mist are not really hitting right now. John Lennon and Hilda Doolittle lead the team with 15 homers apiece—but most of those were hit in May. The Mist are a game out of last place—occupied by the LA Gamers. Billy Collins is probably the hottest hitter for the Gamers right now, which isn’t saying much; he has 15 dingers (We can imagine Collins writing a poem on the word ‘dinger’) and Ionesco is right behind him on the team with 14. Collins, the left fielder, and Joe Green, the third baseman, came within an inch of a nasty collision chasing a pop foul down the left field line last week. “We almost lost 20 homers,” manager Bob Hope said. And maybe 20 errors. Collins has been a circus in the field. If a last place team is going to make a run, it will be the Gamers. Merv Griffin’s club has added the following to their pitching staff—Democritus (5-5) is now starting for E.E. Cummings. Charlie Chaplin (2-1) is now starting for Garrison Keillor (1-2), who replaced James Tate (5-5).  Woody Allen (2-2) has replaced Antoine de Saint Exupery (0-1), who replaced Derrida (1-6). Muhammad Ali (2-1) and MC Escher, a lefty relief specialist, have joined the Gamers bullpen, which has been mostly patrolled by Menander (3-2) and Morgenstern (2-2). Charles Bernstein is 0-4. Clive James joined recently, and is 1-1. Gamers fever is still high!

SOCIETY DIVISION

BOSTON SECRETS BEN FRANKLIN 51 29 —
NEW YORK WAR JP MORGAN 42 38 (9)
WESTPORT ACTORS WEINSTEIN 40 40 (11)
FAIRFIELD ANIMALS PT BARNUM 38 42 (13)
VIRGINIA STRANGERS DAVID LYNCH 31 49 (20)

WINS

Alexander Pushkin Secrets 10-1
Amy Lowell Animals 11-2
Plato Secrets 13-5
Walter Scott War 11-5
George Byron Actors 7-4
Moliere Secrets 8-5
Chaucer Actors 8-5
Erich Remarque War 10-7
Alexander Pope Strangers 8-7
Gaius Petronius Actors 8-7

Relief

Thomas Jefferson Secrets 4-1
HP Lovecraft Strangers 4-2
Sade Actors 6-4

Home Runs

Emily Dickinson Secrets 19
Thomas Nashe Actors 18
Theodore Roethke Strangers 18
Stephen Crane War 16
Hafiz Actors 14
Arthur Rimbaud Strangers 14
Robert Frost Secrets 14
Harry Crosby War 13
Francois Rabelais Strangers 11
Wallace Stevens Animals 11
Woody Guthrie Secrets 11
Seamus Heaney Animals 10
Amiri Baraka Actors 10

Ben Franklin’s Secrets own the best record in the league (51-29) and have the biggest division lead (9 games). Pushkin and Plato have nearly half the Secrets wins, while Moliere, their fourth starter, has a nifty 8-5 mark, as Poe, their ace continues to struggle (6-7)—but most of it is due to low run support. Poe threw his first shutout right before the all star break. The Secrets’ Emily Dickinson leads the Society Division with 19 homers; Frost has 14, Woody Guthrie 11, and Kanye West leads the team in homers over the last couple of weeks; he now has 7, as does Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Secrets lead off hitter (.299, 9 stolen bases, 6 triples). With a solid, Founding Father, bullpen, the Secrets have no real weaknesses, and Boston has got to feel happy about the way things are going—although manager George Washington never looks happy. The second place War are 4 games over .500, have been getting good starts from Walter Scott and Erich Remarque, and manager Machiavelli is hoping Shakespeare (7-7) will come back stronger after his rehab (newly signed Julius Caesar is 2-2 with a shutout in his absence). The War’s Stephen Crane leads JP Morgan’s club with 16 homers, and Harry Crosby has been a surprise with 13. Jack London is new in the Wars bullpen, which has been shaky. The two Connecticut teams, Harvey Weinstein’s Actors (Byron and Chaucer their best pitchers, Nashe and Hafiz their best hitters) and PT Barnum’s Animals (Amy Lowell 11-2 the only star so far; they’ve added AA Milne in the bullpen) have some catching up to do, eleven and thirteen games back, respectively. Norman Mailer (3-3) is a new pitcher for the Actors.  Finally, the Strangers. They are 20 games out. David Lynch and manager Bram Stoker made a big move and got Franz Kafka. He’s 0-2 in relief and 0-6 as a starter. Salvador Dali is new, and he’s 1-2, stepping in for Becket (3-8). The Strangers ace, Alexander Pope, is either brilliant or so-so; he has 4 shutouts, but he’s 8-7. Theodore Roethke has cracked 18 homers for the Strangers (Rimbaud has 14, Rabelais has 11) but the team strikes out too much and hits into too many double plays. Twenty games out in this division may be too big a climb for David Lynch’s Strangers. Manager Bram Stoker merely stared at us coldly when we mentioned this.

GLORIOUS DIVISION

FLORENCE BANNERS DE MEDICI 46 34 —
DUBLIN LAUREATES NAHUM TATE 44 36 (2)
LONDON CARRIAGES QUEEN VICTORIA 43 37 (3)
BERLIN PISTOLS EVA BRAUN 34 46 (12)
DEVON SUN JOHN RUSSELL 34 46 (12)

WINS

Jonathan Swift Laureates 12-1
John Ruskin Sun 6-1
Andrew Marvell Carriages 12-3
Virgil Banners 10-4
Percy Shelley Banners 11-5
William James Pistols 9-5
Leonardo da Vinci Banners 8-4
Virginia Woolf Carriages 9-8

Relief

Livy Laureates 9-3
Bertrand Russell Sun 6-3
Richard Wagner Pistols 5-3

HOME RUNS

William Yeats Pistols 25
Friedrich Schiller Banners 18
Charles Dickens Laureates 18
Henry Longfellow Carriages 17
William Wordsworth Sun 17
Aphra Behn Laureates 17
James Joyce Pistols 15
Ted Hughes Pistols 14
Alexandre Dumas Laureates 13
Robert Browning Carriages 13
Arthur Tennyson Carriages 11
DG Rossetti Banners 11
HG Wells Sun 10
Matthew Arnold Sun 10
GB Shaw Carriages 10

Right now the Glorious Division is a 3 team race—the Banners, led by the bat of Friedrich Schiller (Keats is finally starting to hit a little) and a great starting rotation, led by Virgil and Shelley, are in first. But right behind the Banners are the Laureates, who now have Pascal (3-1) and Robert Louis Stevenson (4-1) in their starting rotation to go with Jonathan Swift (12-1), and they’ve picked up JD Salinger and Hans Christian Anderson in relief, just in case they need them. Charles Dickens, Aphra Behn, and Alexandre Dumas are smashing homers for Nahum Tate’s Dublin club, who were playing quite well even before they made these changes. Watch out for the Laureates. Some see them as a populist joke. Especially since they’ve added Pascal, and with the way Swift is pitching, they are not. The Carriages are in third, and in the thick of it, too. Paul McCartney has smashed 9 homers from the lead off spot (and is batting .340), George Bernard Shaw has clubbed 10 off the bench, and then you have Tennyson, Browning, and Longfellow belting out 41 between them in the middle of the order. Andrew Marvell (12-3) is London’s towering ace, but after that, including the bullpen, the pitching is thin. To remedy a weak bullpen, they just added Descartes. In limited use, Charlotte Bronte and Charles Lamb haven’t been too bad in relief. Virginia Woolf (9-8) has tossed a lot of innings as their no. 2 starter. If the Carriages keep hitting (and they do win on the road) they can take this thing. The Devon Sun and Berlin Pistols, tied for last at 34 and 46, and 12 games out of first, have pretty good bullpens (Bertrand Russell anchors the Sun pen, Richard Wagner, the Pistol’s) they can hit the ball out of the park (Yeats, Joyce, and Ted Hughes for the Pistols, Wordsworth, HG Wells and Matthew Arnold for the Sun) but starting pitching is their doom. The Pistols’ T.S Eliot lost his first five starts and has battled back to 9-9. The Pistols’ Ezra Pound began the year at 1-3, including losses of 27-3, 24-7, and 22-14. Pound was replaced by Hemingway (0-2) and then Horace Greeley (3-6). Maybe they will try Pound, again. The moody William James is the Pistols best starter. He’s 9-5.  After Santayana won 3 in a row in May, he can’t win. The Sun’s woes are similar. Emerson is 6-10. John Stuart Mill (4-6)—spelled by Ruskin, the Sun’s best pitcher so far—Aldous Huxley (6-8), and Thomas Carlyle (5-10) have been no better than Emerson. Ruskin, who helps Thoreau and Russell in the bullpen, has 4 shutouts (his phenomenal run when he briefly replaced Mill); the rest of the staff has one (Emerson). Maybe it’s time to put Ruskin back in the starting rotation. “I will pitch where the manager [Winston Churchill] wants me to pitch,” said Ruskin. Churchill, and the Sun’s owner, John Russell, likes Emerson, Mill, Huxley, and Carlyle. So we’ll see.

 

EMPEROR DIVISION

Rome Ceilings Pope Julius II  44 36 —
Paris Goths Charles X  41 39 (3)
Corsica Codes Napoleon Bonaparte 41 39 (3)
Madrid Crusaders Philip II 40 40 (4)
Rimini Broadcasters Fellini 38 42 (6)

WINS

Francisco Goya Goths 7-2
Ludovico Ariosto Ceilings 9-4
George Orwell Broadcasters 7-3
Homer Codes 10-5
GWF Hegel Codes 9-5
George Friderik Handel Crusaders 8-4
Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand Goths 10-6
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Broadcasters 6-4
John Milton Ceilings 8-7
Oscar Wilde Goths 7-6
Wolfgang Goethe Goths 7-6

Relief

Maurice Ravel Broadcasters 4-0
JS Bach Ceilings 9-5

HOME RUNS

WH Auden Codes 20
Anne Bradstreet Crusaders 19
Sophocles Goths 19
Heinrich Heine Goths 18
Victor Hugo Codes 18
Aeschylus Crusaders 16
Euripides Ceilings 14
Mary Angela Douglas Crusaders 13
Rainer Maria Rilke Broadcasters 12
Robert Burns Broadcasters 12
Jean Rancine Codes 12
Edmund Spenser Ceilings 11
Torquato Tasso Goths 10
Anne Sexton Broadcasters 10

The Ceilings still lead the Emperor Division, with a 3 game lead over the recently surging Goths—tied for last not long ago. The Ceilings once invincible starting pitching has faltered, and they look human and beatable. Milton went 7 straight trips to the mound without a win; Dryden got hurt and has only won once since early June; Augustine is win-less in his last nine starts; Ariosto, however, continues to pitch well, Bach is still a miracle in the bullpen, and Euripides and Blake are hitting and scoring runs. Goya came out of the pen where he was 3-0 and has won 4 as a starter for the Goths, replacing Baudelaire (2-9) in the rotation.  Thomas de Quincey is a recent bullpen acquisition. Tasso, playing for the hurt Ronsard, has 10 homers, adding to the melancholy duo of Sophocles (19) and Heine (18) for the Goths. W.H. Auden has smashed a division-leading 20 for Napoleon’s Codes, 41-39—like the Goths, and Homer (10-5) and Hegel (9-5) have emerged as their lethal starting duo. In a tight division race, Madrid’s Crusaders (4 games out) and the Remini Broadcasters (6 games behind) are in striking distance. The Crusaders, a .500 team for a while now, are being lifted by music: Handel (8-4) leads the team in wins; Mozart (3-2) and Beethoven (4-1) who joined the team in June, hope to eventually push them over the top. Joan of Arc is the new lefty in the bullpen. The Crusaders have plenty of pop with Anne Bradstreet (19 homers), Aeschylus (16 homers) and Mary Angela Douglas (13 homers)—the contemporary poet who won a starting job off the bench—replacing an injured Saint Ephrem at shortstop—when she starting hitting homers. The Broadcasters are Fellini’s team, and this currently last-place team is difficult to define: Rilke and Burns lead them in homers, Mick Jagger leads them in stolen bases, Jim Morrison leads them in doubles, Anne Sexton leads them in batting average, George Orwell, who is both starter and reliever, leads them in wins, Samuel Taylor Coleridge is their best starting pitcher right now, and Maurice Ravel is slowly becoming a star in the bullpen. “The musicians are beginning to change Scarriet Poetry Baseball,” Ravel said. “A memorable phrase of music is just a good as an epigram.”

 

 

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SECRETS INCREASE LEAD, STRANGERS MAKE PITCHING CHANGES

July 2, 2020 at 11:26 pm (Bram Stoker, Byron, Emily Dickinson, Francis Scott Key, Harry Crosby, HP Lovecraft, John Prine, Johnny Depp, JP Morgan, Kanye West, Mary Shelley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Paul Simon, Plato, Pushkin, Robert Tonucci, Scarriet Baseball Poetry League, Seamus Heaney, Shakespeare, Stephen Cole, Wallace Stevens, Woody Guthrie)

Bram Stoker - IMDb

Bram Stoker, manager of the Strangers. “We’ve got to do something.”

~~~

Ben Franklin’s Boston Secrets 41 23 —
Harvey Weinstein’s Westport Actors 33 31 (8)
P.T. Barnum’s Fairfield Animals 31  33 (10)
J.P. Morgan’s New York War 31 33 (10)
David Lynch’s Virginia Strangers 26 38 (15)

~~~

Ben Franklin’s Boston Secrets are pulling away from the pack in the Society Division.

Emily Dickinson is hitting with power, and also hitting close to .400.  Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Woody Guthrie in the middle of the Secrets lineup have been relentless. Especially in the clutch. They are confident and clear-eyed, seeing right through any philosophical obscurities the opposing pitchers might bring. And every time one looks up, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the lead-off hitter, is on base, a statue in a dream.

The rest of the lineup: Cole Porter batting second, moves runners over, always making contact; Carl Sandburg handles everything hit his way at third; Paul Simon and Kanye West draw walks, and patrol their outfield positions with risk, recklessness, and brilliance.

George Washington, stolid in the dugout, sees everything, calmly watching, inspiring his players in an almost preternatural manner.

Washington is ably assisted by his coaching staff: Winfield Scott, JFK, Clarence Thomas.

The Secrets bench is deep: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, John Prine, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Bob Tonucci, Stephen Cole, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson.

The pitching staff is doing its job.  Poe, Plato, Pushkin, and Moliere represent the scientific ingenuity, passion, and virtue of the artificial republic which Ben Franklin, owner of the Secrets, helped create, a method of society delicately balanced between loyalty and deal-making, a reality which not does not merely think—but out-thinks the enemies amassed around it.

Edgar Poe is 5-2 in his last 9 starts. He didn’t win his first game until the middle of May.  Plato has been good from the start, with 4 shutouts and a record of 11-4.  Pushkin is 8-1 and has only walked 10 batters in 121 innings. Moliere had a rough start to the season, but is 3-1 in his last 6 outings. The bullpen by committee is getting the job done: Francis Scott Key, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

David Lynch’s Strangers are now fifteen games out of first.

Replacing Samuel Beckett (3-8) in the starting rotation will be Salvador Dali.

One can see why Camus might pitch for a team called the Strangers. But Camus is 2-11.

Camus will be dropped from the rotation in favor of Franz Kafka.

“Sometimes minimalism and existentialism work in sports competition, and sometimes they don’t.”

So David Lynch began his remarks announcing the changes—team moves Strangers fans are divided on. Many love Camus and Beckett. But the Strangers are in last place in the Society Division, and falling fast.

Bram Stoker, the Strangers manager, agreed it was time for a change.

“How restless I’ve felt, these last few weeks,” Stoker said. “I’ve struggled with these changes! How fast the summer is moving, a summer of poetry and philosophy in the misty shadows of the plunging blood red sun! How much longer can we stand this torture! Something must be done!”

Franz Kafka was brought on board a week ago, where he is 0-2 in relief for the Strangers, losing one run games to new bullpen aces for the Animals (A.E. Milne) and the War (Jack London). But Kafka showed he has the stuff, fanning 12 in the 7 innings he worked. Let’s see how he does as a starter.  This will leave a hole in relief, and the Strangers have had a shaky bullpen: H.P Lovecraft, Antonin Artaud, Robert Bloch, Philip K. Dick, Shirley Jackson.

The Strangers can hit. Power comes from the “PoweR BRotheRs”—Rimbaud, Rabelais, and Roethke. Theodore “Ted” Roethke just went on a tear, hitting 7 homers in 15 games—he now has 14, putting him among the Poetry League leaders. The lineup is good from top to bottom: Mary Shelley leading off, Fernando Pessoa batting second, then the 3 Rs, Paul Verlaine Weldon Kees, and Laura Riding, one of the best fielding shortstops in the league.

You can have a great lineup, but if your pitchers aren’t throwing strikes, no team can win.

Alexander Pope has won 7, and Nietzsche, 6—the no. 1 and 2 starter for the Strangers.  They will have to turn things up a notch if they’re going to catch the Secrets.

J.P. Morgan, who owns the War, was not expecting his nephew, the poet Harry Crosby, to hit home runs. He was just hoping he would hold down left field and get on base, occasionally.  But he’s belted 10 home runs, and may be moved up in the order—he currently bats seventh. The War trails the Secrets in the Society Division by 10 games. Stephen Crane, 359. 16 homers, is producing from the cleanup spot, but much more was expected from Philip Sidney (.224 4 homers) batting third. Apollinaire only has 5 homers and a .220 batting average batting fifth, and Rupert Brooke is striking out way too much in the lead-off spot.

Shakespeare, the War’s ace, has hit 4 homers, but in a terrible blow to the War’s fortunes, he will be out for 3 weeks, and up until now he only owns a 7-6 record with a 4.11 ERA.  The expectations were so high, and out there on the mound he sometimes uses comedy when he should use tragedy, a speech when he should use a song, a stage direction when he should use a dance. Walter Scott, as the War’s no. 2 starter is among the league’s leaders in wins (8), Erich Remarque, the no. 3 starter has won 7, but David Hume is 5-8.

Jack London (2-0 0.00 ERA) has just been signed to anchor the bullpen and may be what the War needs.  He joins RIchard Aldington, Edward Gibbon, and Giordano Bruno in the relief corps. Edward Gibbon will start a few games for the injured Shakespeare.

P.T. Barnum’s Animals are tied with the War for third. Wallace Stevens is finally starting to hit from the cleanup spot and Amy Lowell continues her amazing run; she lost her first game of the season just this week, when Moliere of the Secrets matched her pitch for pitch, strikeout for strikeout, until the bottom of the ninth when Paul Dunbar homered to win it for the Secrets, 1-0.  Amy gave Animals fans a scare when she winced in pain surrendering that home run—she will have to miss a start, but the doctors say it’s not serious. A.A. Milne has been added to the Animals bullpen, and he’ll pitch in Amy’s spot next week. Verne has won 8 games for the Animals, but Ovid and Melville have been struggling—much of it due to lack of run support; this lineup needs to do more, offensively—Jack Spicer, Edward Lear, Seamus Heaney, Stevens, Marianne Moore, Robinson Jeffers, Mary Oliver, and Larry Ferlinghetti.

That leaves Harvey Weinstein’s Actors, in second place, the closest team in the Society Division to the Secrets, at 8 games back. “They’re (the Secrets) too comfortable,” Actor manager Johnny Depp said; “we’ve got to put some pressure on them, let them know we’re here, make them look back.”

Norman Mailer replaced Henry Beecher in the starting rotation for the Actors, and dazzled in his first three starts (2-1 0.40 ERA). Petronius is starting to win (5-2 in his last 7 starts, including a 3-2 loss to Amy Lowell) and if streaky Byron and Chaucer can be more consistent (both have 3 shutouts), the Secrets can certainly be caught. Sade, Flaubert, Gide, and Richard Rorty have been good but not great in relief.

Thomas Nashe has 16 home runs for the Actors and Hafiz and Amiri Baraka have both hit 10. At the top of the Actors order, John Skelton and Langston Hughes will have to get on base more, if Westport is to really turn into an offensive machine.

Scarriet caught up to Lord Byron, pitching ace for Weinstein’s Actors, for a few words.

Scarriet: Hey, George, how’s it going?

Byron: Pardon?

Scarriet: Scarriet. May we get a quick interview?

Byron: Pardon? Oh (looking closer) Scarriet. Yes. Sorry. How are you?

Scarriet: What’s it been like to be in this league?

Byron: Like? Why does everyone use that word? It’s been wonderful. Yes, I enjoy it.

Scarriet: Do you like the States? The world, now?

Byron: No, yes. No. It’s vulgar. It’s too vulgar for me. Americans are intelligent, but they use their intelligence for all the wrong things. (Pause) They have no sense of—it’s hard to describe. Well, they’re all pigs, actually. There. I’ve said it. Is that alright?

Scarriet: Sure.

Byron: But I love this league. The game is great.

Scarriet: Your team isn’t exactly scoring a lot of runs when you pitch.  And you pitch against the best. Plato.

Byron: Oh God. He shut me out.

Scarriet: Pope.

Byron: He shut me out.  But then I got under his skin. I teased him.  He loses to me now. Three in a row.  The Strangers. We always beat them. We’re stranger than they are.

Scarriet: Shakespeare.

Byron: He’s on a lousy team. The War. The first time I faced him, I was nervous, and pitched badly, and he won. But now it’s alright. It was great. My best game when I beat him.

Scarriet: I remember. You struck out—

Byron: 13! 11?

Scarriet: You struck out 13 and—

Byron: I didn’t walk anybody. I was a beast.

Scarriet: You beat Shakespeare 1-0, and allowed 2 hits.

Byron: Two hits from a perfect game. Crosby, that snotty brat, got a hit.  And Philip. The great one. Sidney. A ground ball up the middle.

Scarriet: Ovid.

Byron: I shut him out twice! But then he beat me, 3-2. Just this week. I don’t like him. He’s vulgar. Poetry as sex advice! Really?

Scarriet: Will the Actors catch the Secrets?

Byron: I don’t care. Maybe, yes… I wish I played for the Secrets. Plato, Pushkin, Poe. Have you read Poe?  A master. How is it that Poe’s an American?  What happened to America? You guys are disgusting now.  I guess it’s bound to happen. Successful country. Too much leisure. The sellers crowding in. The modern world. Who could have imagined. Frightfully pleasurable. I must say. But the individual is what matters. I suppose. (pause) Good music. Fresh air. I’ve got to go now. Bye.

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SCARRIET POETRY BASEBALL—HERE WE GO!

April 12, 2020 at 10:54 am (A.C. Barnes, A.E. Housman, Adil Jussawalla, Alan Seeger, Aldington, Aldous Huxley, Aleister Crowley, Alexander Pope, Alfred Tennyson, Alice Walker, Allen Ginsberg, Allen Tate, Amelia Welby, Amiri Baraka, Amy Lowell, anais nin, Anand Thakore, Andre Gide, Andrew Marvell, Andy Warhol, Anne Sexton, Anne Waldman, Aphra Behn, Aristotle, Arthur Rimbaud, Audre Lorde, Basil Bunting, Baudelaire, Ben Franklin, Ben Johnson, Ben Mazer, Bertolt Brecht, Billy Collins, Bob Dylan, Boccaccio, Byron, Camille Paglia, Carl Phillips, Carl Sandburg, Carolyn Forche, Catullus, Charles Bernstein, Charles Bukowski, Charles Dickens, Charles Simic, Christopher Isherwood, Christopher Marlowe, Chuck Berry, Claudia Rankine, Cole Porter, Czeslaw Milosz, D.H.Lawrence, da Vinci, Daipayan Nair, Dante, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Delmore Schwartz, Derek Walcott, Donald Hall, Donald Justice, Dorothy Parker, Dylan Thomas, E.E. Cummings, Edgar Allan Poe, Edmund Burke, Edmund Wilson, Edna Millay, Elizabeth Barrett, Elizabeth Bishop, Emerson, Emma Lazarus, Erich Remarque, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, Francis Scott Key, Frank Bidart, Frank O'Hara, Fred Seidel, Friedrich Schiller, G.E. Lessing, Garcia Lorca, Gary Snyder, Geoffrey Hill, George Harrison, George Santayana, Gerald Stern, Gertrude Stein, Glyn Maxwell, Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Gregory Corso, H Bloom, Hafiz, Harold Bloom, Harriet Monroe, Harry Crosby, Hart Crane, Heinrich Heine, Helen Vendler, Henry David Thoreau, Heraclitus, Herman Melville, Hilda Dolittle, Homer, Horace, Howard Nemerov, HP Lovecraft, Jack Kerouac, Jack Spicer, James Joyce, James Merrill, James Tate, Jeet Thayil, Jim Morrison, Joe Green, John Ashbery, John Berryman, John Betjeman, John Crowe Ransom, John Dewey, John Dryden, John Gould Fletcher, John Kerry, John Lennon, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, JRR Tolkien, Jules Laforgue, Kanye West, Karl Marx, Kay Ryan, Kenneth Koch, Khomeini, Lao Tzu, Larry Levis, Longfellow, Louis Simpson, Louise Bogan, Madame De Stael, Mao, Marcel Duchamp, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Fuller, Marilyn Chin, Marilyn Hacker, Marjorie Perloff, Mark Rothko, Mark Twain, Marla Muse, Mary Angela Douglas, Mary Oliver, Mary Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Maya Angelou, Michelangelo, Mick Jagger, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nietzsche, Noel Coward, Ogden Nash, Oscar Wilde, Ovid, Pablo Neruda, Paul Engle, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Pete Seeger, Petrarch, Philip Larkin, Philip Levine, Plato, Poetry Baseball, Pushkin, R.H. Horne, Randall Jarrell, Richard Howard, Richard Wagner, Rimbaud, Robert Bly, Robert Browning, Robert Burns, Robert Creeley, Robert Frost, Robert Graves, Robert Herrick, Robert Lowell, Robert Penn Warren, Robert Southey, Rod McKuen, Rousseau, Rudyard Kipling, Rumi, Rupert Brooke, Rupi Kaur, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sappho, Sara Teasdale, Scarriet Baseball Poetry League, Seamus Heaney, Shakespeare, Sharon Olds, Sigmund Freud, Simone de Beauvoir, Stanley Kunitz, Stephen Burt, Stephen Cole, Stephen Crane, Stephen King, steven spielberg, Sylvia Plath, T.E. Hulme, T.S.Eliot, Ted Hughes, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Hood, Tishani Doshi, Tony Hoagland, Victor Hugo, Vikram Seth, Virgil, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Voltaire, W.H.Auden, W.S. Merwin, Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman, Walter Pater, Wendell Berry, William Alexander Percy, William Blake, William Burroughs, William Butler Yeats, William Carlos Williams, William Cullen Bryant, William Logan, William Wordsworth, Wittgenstein, Woody Guthrie, Wyndham Lewis, X.J. Kennedy, Yoko Ono, Yvor Winters)

Lord Byron In Albanian Dress - 1813 Painting by War Is Hell Store

George Byron in a pensive mood, before taking part in the opening day Scarriet baseball ceremonies.

Happy Easter!

Scarriet has expanded and restructured its baseball league!!

Gone the 2 leagues of 20 teams led by 20 American poets—Eliot, Pound, Frost, Poe, Williams, Stevens, Moore, Dickinson, Millay, Jorie Graham, Ginsberg, Ransom, Cummings, Whittier, Whitman, Bryant, Longfellow, James Lowell, Ashbery, and Emerson.

Now poets like Emerson, Eliot and Poe can be player/managers—to contribute to their teams both at the plate and in the field.

The field is more international—Scarriet Poetry Baseball is now 25 historical teams from all over the world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The gods and muses must be pleased with our ten years of Poetry March Madness and our first Poetry Baseball season, where poetry is worshiped through time and space in a manner which no one has ever seen.

Fortunately one of the Muses has always been here to help us, Marla Muse.

Marla Muse: They are indeed pleased, Tom!

You have spoken to the other muses who live in other realms, in those shadowy timeless realms where time is one and poetry lights up suns distantly—

Marla Muse: Yes, and they approve! The stars in the heavens love you more than you know… I would rather die than see poetry die.

This baseball season is different. Mysterious and wealthy owners throughout time and space are bidding, some in secret, for players to fill their rosters.

In the Great Emperor League, we have the Broadcasters. Their motto is “Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name” and they feature Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Gregory Corso, Anne Sexton, Bobby Burns, Omar Khayyam, Rilke, Coleridge, Leopardi, Anacreon, Sappho, and Ingrid Jonker.  They are rumored to be owned and funded by a business group led by Federico Fellini, and their ballpark is in Rimini, Italy.

These ballclubs are timeless, in every sense of the word (these teams compete, with actual statistics, where chance unfolds out of space, out of time) but real money, blood money, purchases these players.  We know JP Morgan, for instance, wanted Shakespeare and bid heavily to get him.

The Pistols, who play in Berlin, are said to be associated with Eva Braun, but this cannot be confirmed; one older muse claims to have overheard Eva say, “I take care of this. Adolf is too busy talking to bankers and architects. He doesn’t have time for poetry.” But honestly we cannot say who owns the Pistols.

Nahum Tate, owner of the Laureates, for those who do not know, re-wrote a popular King Lear with a happy ending (after Shakespeare’s death when, for a long period, the Bard was out of fashion,) and was chosen as Poet Laureate of England in 1692. 

Dick Wolf produces Law & Order on television, and appears to have a controlling interest in the Laws, playing out of Santa Barbara.  He’s got Aristotle, Lord Bacon, and Horace.

John Rockefeller opened his purse to get Walt Whitman, and he thinks that will be enough to win a championship.  We don’t know.  We do know baseball is all about pitching.  All you need is a few good arms which dominate, defense behind them, and some clubhouse chemistry, and not too many injuries. It’s a crap shoot, in many ways, and this is why Rockefeller grumbled he wasn’t going to waste money on superstars who hit home runs and have a high batting average. He’s probably right.  A team that wins 2-1 is better than a team that wins 7-4, by pure mathematics, even though the former score wins by 1 and the latter by 3 runs. It’s the ratio that counts.  2-1 = 2. 7-4 = 1.7  This simple reason is why defense wins in every sport. Rockefeller is using this formula, and the oil baron was also advised that you can’t buy a pennant—throwing money at sluggers doesn’t do any good; it’s 90% pitching and luck. Just put a a poet with critical depth on the hill and three good versifiers in the infield and sit back.

Some of the rosters might have some question marks, but that’s what happens in a free market.  It’s an historical fact that Longfellow did meet Queen Victoria in person. But no one expected him to play for her!

And W.H. Auden just “wanted to play for Napoleon, I don’t why.”

Marla Muse: I can’t wait for the season to begin!  Spring is in the air! Around Rome, and in those still fairer isles… Let’s forget about plagues and the starvation for awhile. Songs are going to sing.

Here then, are the Teams, their Mottoes, and the preliminary rosters—they are always changing (there’s a big minor leagues!)

~~~~~~

THE GREAT EMPEROR LEAGUE

Federico Fellini, Rimini  The Broadcasters [Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name]
-Mick Jagger, Sappho, Gregory Corso, Charles Bukowski, Paul Valery, Anne Sexton, Omar Khayyam, Robert Burns, Ben Jonson, Coleridge, Jim Morrison, Edmund Waller, Nabokov, Rilke, Giacomo Leopardi, Anacreon, Ingrid Jonker, Swinburne

Napoleon, Corsica The Codes [Let the more loving one be me]
-W.H. Auden, Homer, Hesiod, Racine, John Peale Bishop, Edmund Wilson, Mina Loy, William Logan, Irving Layton, Villon, Jean-Baptiste Tati-Loutard, Wole Soyinka, Jules Laforgue, Derek Walcott, Callimachus, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius

King Philip II, Madrid The Crusaders [If in my thought I have magnified the Father above the Son, let Him have no mercy on me]
-Saint Ephrem, G.K. Chesterton, Tolkien, Thomas Aquinas, Hilaire Beloc, John Paul II, Saint Theresa of Lisieux, Joyce Kilmer, Saint John of the Cross, Mary Angela Douglas, Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Countee Cullen, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Aeschulus

Charles X, Paris  The Goths [Every great enterprise takes its first step in faith]
-A.W. Schlegel, Baudelaire, Goethe, Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Madame de Stael, Chateaubriand, Sophocles, George Herbert, Heinrich Heine, Robert Herrick, Clement Marot, Ronsard, Saint-Beuve, Catulus, Thomas Gray, John Clare, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Theophile Gautier

Pope Julius II, Rome  The Ceilings [They also serve who only stand and wait]
-Milton, Michelangelo, William Blake, Robert Lowell, Petrarch, G.E. Lessing, John Dryden, Klopstock, GE Horne, Ferdowsi, Ariosto, Luis de Camoens, Swift, Tulsidas, Edmund Spenser, Kwesi Brew, Pindar, Euripides

~~~~~

THE GLORIOUS LEAGUE

Eva Braun, Berlin The Pistols [A life subdued to its instrument]
-Ted Hughes, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Hugh Kenner, Wyndham Lewis, DH Lawrence, Alistair Crowley, George Santayana, F.T. Marinetti, Giacomo Balla, Richard Wagner, Jung

Queen Victoria, London The Carriages [Theirs but to do and die]
-Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning, Longfellow, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, Hazlitt, Paul McCartney, Geoffrey Hill, Henry James, Andrew Marvel, John Suckling, Virginia Woolf, Theocritus

Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence The Banners [The One remains, the many change and pass]
-Percy Shelley, Dante, William Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, DG Rossetti, John Keats, Marlowe, Guido Cavalcanti, Glyn Maxwell, Ben Mazer, Friedrich Schiller, Thomas Moore, Philodemus, Virgil, Stefan George, Boccaccio, Leonardo da Vinci

P.M. Lord John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, Devon The Sun [A good indignation brings out all one’s powers]
-Emerson, Horace Walpole, Thomas Carlyle, Thoreau, Wordsworth, Rudyard Kipling, Aldous Huxley, Matthew Arnold, Sir John Davies, Margaret Fuller, Robert Southey, Marilyn Chin, Joy Harjo, Basil Bunting, Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

Nahum Tate, Dublin  The Laureates [Luck is bestowed even on those who don’t have hands]
-Ghalib, Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens, Peacock, Leigh Hunt, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Sara Teasdale, Pasternak, Louis Simpson, Dana Gioia, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Aphra Behn, Rod McKuen, JK Rowling

~~~~~

THE SECRET SOCIETY LEAGUE

Harvey Weinstein, Westport CT The Actors [I am no hackney for your rod]
-John Skelton, Langston Hughes, Henry Ward Beecher, Chaucer, Amiri Baraka, Lord Byron, Hafiz, Thomas Nashe, Marilyn Hacker, Petronius, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jim Carroll, Lucille Clifton, Etheridge Knight, Audre Lorde, Jimmy Page, Andre Gide

David Lynch, Alexandria VA  The Strangers [So still is day, it seems like night profound]
-Jones Very, Alexander Pope, William Burroughs, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Robert Graves, Laura Riding, Weldon Kees, Berryman, Mary Shelley, Rabelais, Charles Simic, Eric Satie, Labid, Roethke, Camille Paglia, HP Lovecraft, Nietzsche, Samuel Beckett

P.T. Barnum, Fairfield CT  The Animals [Majesty and love are incompatible]
-Ovid, Gerald Stern, Robinson Jeffers, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Seamus Heaney, Jack Spicer, Kay Ryan, Leslie Scalapino, Mary Oliver, W S Merwin, Melville, Camille Saint Saens, Edward Lear, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Gerard de Nerval, Robert Bly

J.P. Morgan, Madison Avenue  The War [The fire-eyed maid of smoky war all hot and bleeding will we offer them]
-Shakespeare, Louis Untermeyer, Apollinaire, T.E. Hulme, Richard Aldington, Rupert Brooke, Sir Walter Scott, Philip Sidney, James Dickey, Harry Crosby, Keith Douglas, Wilfred Owen, Howard Nemerov, Stephen Crane, Erich Remarque, Alan Seeger

Ben Franklin  Philadelphia  The Secrets [We come in the age’s most uncertain hour and sing an American tune]
-Paul Simon, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Edgar Poe, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, F. Scott Key, Cole Porter, Plato, Hawthorne, Pushkin, Walter Raleigh, Moliere, William Cullen Bryant, Amy Lowell, Emma Lazarus, Carl Sandburg, Pete Seeger, Natasha Trethewey, Amelia Welby, Woody Guthrie, JD Salinger, John Prine, Kanye West, Stephen Cole, Bob Tonucci

~~~~~

THE PEOPLE’S LEAGUE

Sajyajit Ray, Calcutta The Cobras [Is it true that your love traveled alone through ages and worlds in search of me?]
-Tagore, Allen Ginsberg, Jeet Thayil, Rupi Kaur, Anand Thakore, Dhoomil, G.M. Muktibodh, Rumi, A.K. Ramanujan, Samar Sen, Daipayan Nair, R. Meenakshi, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Hermann Hesse, Persius, George Harrison, Adil Jussawalla, Tishani Doshi, Sushmita Gupta, Vikram Seth

Kurosawa,  Tokyo  The Mist [In Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo, I long for Kyoto]
-Basho, Hilda Doolittle, Robert Duncan, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, D.T. Suzuki, Yone Noguchi, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, Kobayashi Issa, Lady Izumi Shikibu, Cid Corman, Sadakichi Hartmann, Heraclitus, Richard Brautigan

Chairman Mao, Beijing  The Waves [Death gives separation repose. Without death, grief only sharpens]
-Tu Fu, Lucretius, Karl Marx, Voltaire, Rousseau, Guy Burgess, Amiri Baraka, Brecht, Neruda, Li Po, Li He, Bai Juyi, Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Ho Chi-Fang, Yen Chen, Billie Holiday, Khomieni, Lu Ji , Wang Wei, Lao Tzu, Gary B. Fitzgerald, Wendell Berry

Dick Wolf, Santa Barbara  The Laws [In poetry everything is clear and definite]
-Ajip Rosidi, Aristotle, John Donne, Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, Donald Justice, Anna Akhmatova, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Campion, Frederick Seidel, Antonio Machado, Mark Van Doren, David Lehman, Lord Bacon, Martial, ML Rosenthal, Horace, Gottfried Burger, Yvor Winters

Merv Griffin, Los Angeles  The Gamers  [He thought he saw an elephant that practiced on a fife]
-Lewis Carroll, James Tate, E.E. Cummings, Tony Hoagland, Ogden Nash, Billy Collins, Eugene Field, W.S. Gilbert, Thomas Hood, Noel Coward, X.J. Kennedy, John Betjeman, Wendy Cope, Tristan Tzara, Heather McHugh, Charles Bernstein, Jack Spicer, James Whitcomb Riley, Joe Green, Menander, Morgenstern

~~~~~

THE MODERN LEAGUE

Pamela Harriman, Arden NY The Dreamers [not the earth, the sea, none of it was enough for her, without me]
-Sharon Olds, Edna Millay, George Dillon, Floyd Dell, Dorothy Parker, Stanley Burnshaw, Richard Lovelace, Stevie Smith, Louis MacNeice, Louise Bogan, Louise Gluck, Jack Gilbert, Marge Piercy, Carolyn Forche, Muriel Rukeyser, Jean Valentine, May Swenson, Propertius, Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir

Andy Warhol, East 47th St The Printers [the eye, seeking to sink, is rebuffed by a much-worked dullness, the patina of a rag, that oily Vulcan uses, wiping up.]
-John Updike, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, James Merrill, Hart Crane, Lorca, Thom Gunn, Stephen Burt, Frank Bidart, Mark Rothko, Marjorie Perloff, John Quinn, Duchamp, Aristophanes, Christopher Isherwood, Andre Breton, Lou Reed, John Cage

John D. Rockefeller, Chicago The Buyers [Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?]
-Walt Whitman, Alcaeus, Edgar Lee Masters, Kenneth Rexroth, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Helen Vendler, Jorie Graham, Franz Wright, Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren, Paul Engle, William Alexander Percy, Richard Hugo, Carl Philips, Harriet Monroe, Duke Ellington, Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac, Sigmund Freud

A. C. Barnes, Philadelphia  The Crash [But for some futile things unsaid I should say all is done for us]
-Allen Tate, John Gould Fletcher, John Crowe Ransom, John Dewey, Cleanth Brooks, Donald Davidson, Merrill Moore, Walter Pater, Wittgenstein, Andrew Nelson Lytle, Archilochus, Anne Waldman, Stanley Kunitz, Jackson Pollock, WC Williams, Luigi Russolo, Stephen Spender, Richard Howard

Steven Spielberg, Phoenix AZ  The Universe [I know why the caged bird sings]
-Maya Angelou, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bob Dylan, Margaret Atwood, Paul Celan, Czeslaw Milosz, Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, Anthony Hecht, Galway Kinnell, Philip Levine, Larry Levis, Claudia Rankine, Harold Bloom, Alice Walker, James Wright, Juvenal, Chuck Berry, Stephen King

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Ballpark Road Trips in Review: 2018 - Ben's Biz Blog

 

 

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ONE HUNDRED GREATEST FOLK SONGS (PERFORMANCES) OF ALL TIME

November 17, 2014 at 1:44 pm (Alfred Deller, Arlo Guthrie, Barry Sadler, Beatles, Bee Gees, Bob Dylan, Buffy St. Marie, Donovan, Elliott Smith, Eric Bogle, Folk Songs, Hermes Nye, Joan Baez, John Jacob Niles, John Prine, Josh White, Kingston Trio, Leadbelly, Led Zeppelin, Malvina Reynolds, Mick Jagger, Nana Mouskouri, Neil Young, New Lost City Ramblers, Nina Simone, Pete Seeger, Robert Johnson, The Doors, The Seekers, The Weavers, Woody Guthrie)
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pete-seeger

Pete Seeger: Song owes more to him than anyone else.

It is fitting this Scarriet List of Greatest Folk Songs should appear in the wake of Pete Seeger’s passing (January 27, 2014). Folk music (who has done more for it than Pete Seeger?) occupies a stronger place on the other side than any other kind of art: the dead, the ignored, the forsaken, live heroically in the music of people like Joan Baez, Buffy St. Marie, and Bob Dylan.

All 100 songs listed here can be heard on the web—this is democratic, and Pete would approve, though he would encourage lovers of music to play, not just listen, and the simple playing: the singing, the strumming of chords on a simple instrument, is what allows anyone to enter simply into this heroic world of folk, and make its music, its words and feelings, its story-telling, morals, myth, poetry, and truth their own.

We should say right from the start that this list is a typical Scarriet project, stamped by our now famous anti-bullshit animus. We delight in smashing common wisdom on our way to the truth: truth naturally begins with opinion, even stupid opinion, as it makes its glorious way forward; minds held by stupid opinion are the greatest obstacle to truth, and moving them is rare, for to move them is usually to offend them, and no one wants to offend— and this is the reason truth hides. Sometimes it is wise for the truth to hide, for offending someone can be unforgivable, and may undo more than it mends. But truth starts with opinion and we start with the opinion of this List.

It is our opinion that good folk music has nothing to do with the trappings commonly associated with folk music: the horribly scratchy fiddle, the whiny hillbilly vocals, and all those “genuine” quirks that get in the way of real expressiveness and smoothness and emotion. We simply do not abide these traditional “folk” qualities, for they are not necessary, and chase modern audiences away from the true glory of the art: poignancy, an underrated sense of humor, melody, elevated dramatic feeling, the nobly human uncannily expressed in an orderly and devotional display of simplicity and sincerity.

Pete Seeger brought two important things to the art: 1. an actor’s sensibility and 2. clarity.

We cannot emphasize the latter virtue enough, for nothing has spoiled folk music—as it is popularly known, than a certain muddy and whiny quality—which Seeger demolished: listen to Pete Seeger’s recordings and hear the beautiful simplicity and clarity of the song’s forward movement, the melodic precision, the lovingly articulated coherence of story-message, the unobtrusive, never fussy, and yet dramatically insistent banjo or guitar, the never over-emoted emotional quality, the balance of all the elements, all the while respecting the intangible roughness and depth of the song itself. A child can appreciate these songs, even before knowing all the adult facts of the lyrics.

Seeger never hung around in a song too long, showing off licks or lyrics or mannerisms, trying the patience of the listener—important in a genre which features ballads of sometimes great length and the almighty guitar.

Seeger always kept two things in the foreground: the listener and the song. This paid enormous dividends; Seeger had a tremendous underground influence on the renaissance of melodic, clear-as-a-bell-chiming, sweetly emotional, 60s popular music.

One might put it crudely and simply this way: Pete played hillbilly music without trying to sound hillbilly. Pete was a self-conscious outsider: he approached Appalachian music, black people’s music, poor people’s music, gospel music, world music, whatever you want to call folk music, from a Collector’s point of view; Pete Seeger came from a wealthy, well-connected, accomplished family, approaching the work of poorer families from an archeological point of view, and his privileged position easily could have damned him had he been less naturally talented and less astute. But he “got it,” and he “owned it” (his song-writing just one of the ways he showed it) and did it with taste, kindness and élan—and the rest is history.

Pete Seeger was not precisely original. But that’s what Folk Music is about.

This is also what Folk Music is about:

Cares about history.

Great songs written by Nobody (anonymous).

Hides inside Rock/pop/ jazz.

Songs that make you hunch forward and listen (not background music).

Many voices/versions/styles of the same song.

Story and feeling over style.

THE LIST

1. Barb’ry Ellen –John Jacob Niles.   The Ballad of Barbara Allen (Anonymous) as lo-fi Wagnerian opera.

2. When I Lay Down To Die –Josh White.  Threatens to turn into a jazz or a blues standard, but plaintively refuses.

3. Danville Girl –Pete Seeger.  This is what Country, Jazz, Rap, Rock, and Classical can’t quite do: poetry nonchalantly humanized.

4. The Whistling Gypsy Rover –Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.  Irish exuberance. Joy with almost nothing.

5. House of the Rising Sun –The Animals. Just so we know: the best of rock music comes from folk music.

6. Goodnight Irene –Leadbelly.  Folk music is the poignant attempt to fix life’s wrongs with a few chords.

7. When First Unto This Country –The New Lost City Ramblers.  The Beatles conquered the world with hooks like this.

8. St. John’s River — Erik Darling. Unspeakably poignant and clear in guitar and voice.

9. The Three Ravens –Alfred Deller. A counter-tenor for the ages, a slain knight, loyal beasts, an immortal tune.

10. Turn, Turn, Turn –Pete Seeger.  Wisdom and song, why not?

11. Deportees –Cisco Houston.  Social commentary never had a smoother voice.

12. Ananias —Buffy St. Marie.  This Native American woman has one passionate and powerful voice.

13. Rags and Old Iron –Nina Simone  An old man selling old scraps and she makes it immortal. How’s that?

14. 500 Miles –Joan Baez.  This whole list could just be her.

15. Pretty Polly –The Byrds.  Doesn’t end well for Polly, presumably because she is pretty and is dating someone named Willy.

16. Down on Penny’s Farm –Bently Boys.  “Hard times in the country, down on Penny’s farm.” Very melodic hard times.

17. Pretty Peggy-O –Bob Dylan.  From 1962, before he was an icon, and he’s really having fun. One of his best recordings.

18.  East Virginia –Pete Seeger.  Compare this version with Buell Kazee’s (a master) and you can hear why Pete Seeger is so good.

19. Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies –Pete Seeger.  Such a beautiful song and sung with a melancholy swiftness.

20. She Moved Through the Fair –Anne Briggs.  A slow folk masterpiece where the voice and the lyrics do it all.

21. King of the Road –Roger Miller.  This might not be real folk music to some, but I think the sheep can stray a little bit.

22. T for Texas. –Jimmie Rodgers.  The ‘Singing Brakeman’ was a TV star.  “I shot ol’ Thelma, just to see her jump and fall.”

23. The Wind And The Rain (from Twelfth Night)  — Alfred Deller.  Lovely, haunting.

24. Old John Hardy –Clarence Ashley.  One of the first “hillbilly” 1920s recording artists. Set the standard for Pete Seeger.

25. All the Pretty Little Horses  –Odetta.  The ultimate lullaby.

26. This Land Is Your Land  –The Weavers.  Woody Guthrie’s national anthem.

27. The Titanic  –Pete Seeger.  The best version of this great song. “It was sad when that great ship went down.”

28. Little Mattie Groves  –John Jacob Niles.  A long ballad sung by the master with the strange voice.

29. Wagoner’s Lad  –Joan Baez.  Mournful and melancholy, just like we like it.

30. How Can I Keep From Singing?  –Pete Seeger.  One of those ‘throw your head back and righteously sing’ songs that Pete does so well.

31. It Ain’t Me Babe  –Bob Dylan.  Dylan was a folk music sponge—as all the best are.

32. John Henry  –Big Bill Broonzy.  And of course Pete Seeger’s version is great, too.

33. Midnight Special  –Creedence Clearwater Revival.  A rock group that rocked folk.

34. Darling Corey  –Pete Seeger.  A perfect rendition of a perfect song.

35. Scarborough Fair  –Simon and Garfunkle.  Folk rock masters sing a folk classic.

36. Handsome Molly  –Mick Jagger.  If your heart is broke, keep movin’!

37. He Got Better Things For You  –Bessie Johnson’s Memphis Sanctified Singers.  A rousing gospel number. Where would folk be without gospel?

38. Bells of Rhymney  –John Denver.  Church bells in Welsh mining towns imitated by a 12 string guitar.  Pete Seeger wrote it.

39. Go Way From My Window –John Jacob Niles.   “You were the one I really did love best.” Bitter-sweet song.

40. Sitting On Top of the World. –Doc Watson.  A wonderful happy-sad song.

41. True Religion  –Erik Darling.  From the album of the same name which is one of the best folk records ever made.

42. Abolitionist Hymn  –Hermes Nye. The greatest Civil War Ballad balladeer.

43. When Johnny Comes Marching Home  –Nana Mouskouri.  A lovely melancholy version.

44. Blow The Man Down –Woody Guthrie.  Not too many good recordings by WG.

45. Santa Anna –Hermes Nye.  A pretty song about the Mexican General.

46. The Cutty Wren –Ian Campbell Group. One of the greatest British ballads.

47. Amazing Grace  –Judy Collins.  Classic song and singer.  Her 1966 “In My Life” album is underrated masterpiece.

48. The Ballad of the Green Berets  –Barry Sadler.  Five weeks at no. 1 in 1966. Tune borrowed from another folk song.

49. Sixteen Tons  –Tennessee Ernie Ford  “And what do you get?”

50. Shenandoah  –Pete Seeger. Just a timelessly great song.

51. Where Have All The Flowers Gone?  –Joan Baez    Pete Seeger based it on a Russian folk song.

52. Green Fields  –The Brothers Four  Languidly beautiful.

53. And I Love Her  –The Beatles  Paul’s glorious contribution to the genre.

54. O Mistress Mine Where Are You Roaming   –James Griffett The great sub-genre of Shakespeare tunes.

55. Eve Of Destruction. –Barry McGuire  Folk music always had something to say.

56. I Started A Joke  –Bee Gees.  They were folk crooners first and foremost.

57. If I Had A Hammer  –Peter Paul and Mary  They covered Seeger and Dylan.

58. Puff the Magic Dragon  –Peter Paul and Mary  Great harmonies and they wrote songs, too.

59. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue  –Bob Dylan  Dylan sings this to Donovan in “Don’t Look Back.”

60. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away  –The Beatles  John’s glorious contribution to the genre.

61. I’ll Never Find Another You  –The Seekers  Powerful song.

62. Tom Dooley  –Kingston Trio  “Hang your head, Tom Dooley, hang your head and cry. You killed poor Laura Foster, you know you’re bound to die.”  Morality.

63. Man Of  Constant Sorrow  –Bob Dylan. Another early 1962 gem of the folk genre.

64. All My Trials  –Joan Baez  This lullaby originally came from the Bahamas.

65. Rock Island Line  –Leadbelly “Oh the rock island line is the line to ride.”

66. Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream  –Pete Seeger  Composed by Ed McCurdy. Official anthem of the Peace Corps.

67. When The Saints Go Marching In  –The Weavers.  A rousing song by a group that could do rousing.

68. Lady Jane  –Rolling Stones.  A ‘fake’ old folk song?  Perhaps. But a good one.

69. Going To California  –Led Zeppelin  Underneath it all, this was a folk group.

70. Catch The Wind  –Donovan. The English Dylan has made a lot of great music.

71. Ramblin’ Boy  –Tom Paxton  A very sweet song.

72. Little Boxes  –Malvina Reynolds.  “And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.”

73. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down  –The Band.  Poignant anti-war number.

74. Alice’s Restaurant  –Arlo Guthrie. A long work by Woody’s son.

75. Suzanne  –Leonard Cohen. His singing is not for everyone, but that’s folk music for you. Singing in the shower music.

76. Angeles  –Elliott Smith.  He said he wasn’t a folk singer. He was. His album Either/Or is a must-own.

77. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald  –Gordon Lightfoot. A folk radio hit.

78. If I Were A Carpenter  –Tim Hardin. Drugs. Died at 39 after getting lost in the 70s.

79. Kisses Sweeter Than Wine  –The Weavers.  Jimmie Rodgers version is good, too.

80. Mr. Bojangles  –Jerry Jeff Walker.  Many a folkie wished they had written this.

81. Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright  –Bob Dylan. He could do protest. And love.

82. At Seventeen  –Janis Ian.  The 70s began in folk and ended in disco.

83. Hallelujah  –Leonard Cohen.  He produces iconic songs over decades.

84. Bridge Over Troubled Waters  –Simon and Garfunkle

85. Old Man  –Neil Young  A great folk voice and sensibility.

86. Big Yellow Taxi  –Joni Mitchell.  Her sweet grumble with the world.

87. City of New Orleans  –Willie Nelson.  Great lyrics. True American song.

88. We Shall Overcome  –Pete Seeger. Folk music as moral greatness.

89. Just Like A Woman  –Bob Dylan.  He had a great bedroom style, too.

90. You’re Lost Little Girl  –The Doors. Had a certain William Blake folk sensibility.

91. Crossroads  –Robert Johnson. Blues is folk at the crossroads.

92. To Love Somebody  –The Bee Gees. Written for Otis Redding right before he died.

93. One  –Johnny Cash. The ultimate unplugged voice.

94. Your Cheatin’ Heart –Hank Williams. Folk cheats with country.

95. That’s Alright Mama –Elvis Presley.  He was a folkie at heart, too.

96. Hello In There   –John Prine.  The saddest song ever?

97. And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda  –Eric Bogle.  Cry in your beer, laddie.

98. When This Cruel War Is Over  –Hermes Nye  A gentleman singer with a gift for melody.

99. She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain  –Pete Seeger.  He did a lot of children’s music. Which perhaps says a lot.

100. The Golden Vanity  –Pete Seeger  Great song. Great story.

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