Playlist: Poetry
- jamesgeraghty
- Jul 20
- 7 min read
We recently had a very pleasant afternoon out at a large country estate we had never been to before. The added incentive was that they are hosting a Poetry Trail around their beautifully landscaped eighteenth century grounds - one that features the work of their Poet in Residence and some of her workshop students, who just so happens to be a good friend of ours! So if you happen to be in the vicinity of Painshill Park (Surrey) this summer, do consider checking the park and trail out.
Anyway, all that poetry got me thinking about music - and as we have discussed before, there are many songwriters who could be considered poets themselves (including a few
featured on this playlist). However, the main focus of songs on this list is times where acts have incorporated elements of other people's poetry into one of their songs. There is certainly some eccentric choices among this selection...
1. Johnny Tillotson: Poetry In Motion
Having said all that - our first song has nothing much to do with poetry beyond the title! Poetry In Motion was written by Paul Kaufman and Mike Anthony and interestingly (or not) the session musicians in Nashville for this recording included the renowned saxophonist Boots Randolph, who also had a hit with Yakety Sax, which would eventually become the Benny Hill Show theme tune.... Back to Poetry In Motion - it was a big hit for Johnny Tillotson, the Florida born pop and country singer (who died this April, aged 86), reaching the two spot in the States and number one in the UK.
Johnny Tillotson: Poetry In Motion (Audio only)
2. Dead Can Dance: How Fortunate The Man With None
Australian gothic / darkwave band Dead Can Dance have been based around Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard since the early '80's and who started out in Melbourne, but relocated to London early in their career. How Fortunate The Man With None, from their sixth album Into The Labyrinth, uses four stanzas from Bertold Brecht's 1928 poem Die Ballade von dem Prominenten. Perry gained permission from the Brecht estate to set the words to music, which was initially used in a play put on by the Temenos Academy in London, before it ended up on the record. This is a beautifully atmospheric song and is the first of our extra long tunes...
Dead Can Dance: How Fortunate The Man With None (Audio only)
3. Violent Femmes: I Danced
This track from the seventh Violent Femmes LP, Rock!!!!! (1995) includes lyrics from a poem by Irish born Australian poet and writer, Max Dunn. It comes from his poem called I Danced Before I Had Two Feet, and has only minor changes to the original words, made by lead singer Gordon Gano.
Violent Femmes: I Danced (Audio only)
4. Iron Maiden: Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
Featured on the Iron Maiden 1984 album Powerslave, this epic re-telling of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic poem of the same name from 1798. Clocking in at a whopping (gulp) 13 minutes and 45 seconds, you will be forgiven if you don't make it through all of this one! Maiden's version draws from Coleridge's own gloss for the poem, written later in 1816, and directly quotes two passages, including that famous line, "water, water everywhere - nor any drop to drink." As it goes through all those minutes, the song cycles through multiple sections and a range of moods.
Iron Maiden: Rime Of The Ancient Mariner (Live in New Jersey, 2008)
5. The Cure: How Beautiful You Are
The 1869 poem The Eyes Of The Poor by French poet Charles Baudelaire begins, "Oh! You want to know why I hate you today. It will undoubtedly be less easy for you to understand than it will be for me to explain. I believe, the most beautiful example of feminine impermeability one could ever encounter." 118 years later, Robert Smith wrote How Beautiful You Are for The Cure's seventh album, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, with the opening lines (similar but different) "You want to know why I hate you? Well, I'll try and explain, you remember that day in Paris, when we wandered through the rain." As Rhiannon Skye-Boden said in Two Story Melody, that The Cure version of things "condenses the story and makes it easy to follow along, sure, but in the simplification, nothing is lost. The lyrics are still flowery, still laden with imagery, there are still phrases that seem grandiose and even a little pretentious. What makes Baudelaire's poem a classic isn't dumbed down to make things more radio ready, it's still there, only streamlined."
The Cure: How Beautiful You Are (Audio only)
6 The Waterboys: Lake Isle Of Innisfree
The Waterboys did not just make one reference to William Butler Yeats on their tenth studio album, the made the whole record about him. An Appointment With Mr. Yeats (2011) contains fourteen tracks, all based on his poems. Yeats had long been an influence on lead singer and songwriter, Mike Scott, and the album also contains interpretations of The Song For Wandering Aengus, September 1913 and An Irish Airman Foresees His Death. The Lake Isle Of Innisfree is perhaps his most well known poem though, and comprises just three quatrains, or twelve lines, and was written in 1888. It is about the uninhabited island in Loch Gill, in the area he often holidayed as a child, and the poem is considered as one of the key works of the Celtic Revival (it is also included in the Irish Passport). The Waterboys give it some low-down blues treatment.
The Waterboys: The Lake Isle Of Innisfree (Audio only)
7. 10,000 Maniacs: Anthem For Doomed Youth
10,000 Maniacs would draw on two poems by noted First World War poet Wilfred Owen in their early years. An interpretation of The Latin One appears on the first LP, Secrets Of The I Ching (1983), while Anthem For Doomed Youth had cropped up on debut EP, Human Conflict Number Five (1982). This remains unique in being the only song where founding guitarist John Lombardo, rather than Natalie Merchant, sings lead vocals. The sessions for this EP were funded by the parents of keyboard player Dennis Drew, and recording took place at the State University of New York - Fredonia.
10,000 Maniacs: Anthem For Doomed Youth (Audio only)
8. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: We Call Upon The Author
This comes from The Bad Seeds fourteenth record, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!, a record that takes the biblical story and move it to New York. In We Call Upon The Author, Nick Cave refers to several writers, particularly - "Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was the best," refering to Charles Bukowski (who wrote about poverty, alcohol, relationships and drudgery of work) and John Berryman (whose life and work was informed by his fathers suicide, and ultimately contributed to his own death aged 57). The song, depending on who you listen to is about God and asking why he hasn't fixed things, and/or it's about writing and poetry (Cave's father was also a writer). It also includes the line, "the waves were soldiers moving" was from the poem Dry Loaf by modernist poet, Wallace Stevens.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: We Call Upon The Author (Live in London for BBC4)
9. The Beatles: Golden Slumbers
This is part of the medley that helps build 1969's Abbey Road towards its climax, paired with (and recorded at the same time as) Carry That Weight. It is based on a poem called Cradle Song, by Thomas Dekker, from his 1603 play Patient Grissel. Paul McCartney had seen the sheet music for it at his father's home, where it had been left by his stepsister Ruth. He was unable to read the music, so he set his own tune to go with the words - he kept the first stanza of the poem intact, repeating a single line with minor variations. As an aside, John Lennon was not present for this recording (2 July), as he had been injured in a car accident the previous day.
Paul McCartney: Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End (Live for SNL50, 2025)
10 Marillion: Script For A Jester's Tear
I have never really been one for prog-rock, with its propensity for noodling and over-complication, and yet Marillion (specifically the Fish-era version) has always been my exception, with some interesting lyrics and Steve Rotherey's hugely under-rated guitaring. This is a bit different as the link between this song and a poem is slightly less direct, and yet very direct at the same time!?! Fish, a.k.a. Derek Dick, once wrote a poem on the back of his copy of Genesis's Duke album. It was a poem inspired by the death of Keith Moon and was written for a woman who was the flatmate of his then girlfriend. He gifted her the album with the poem, called The Allotment, and forgot all about it. He would soon leave his job as a forestry worker in his native Scotland, move down to Aylesbury, where he would soon join Marillion, and the rest is (prog-rock) history. The poem was significant for his future band, because it was the first writing of his that referred to The Jester, a character that would crop up on Marillion's first record. Then, a few years ago, a fan found that very record in a Salvation Army charity shop in Stirling. He sent Fish a scan of it to confirm it was definitely his - and there was the poem still on it (and the sticker confirming he had bought it in Woolworths, Galashiels) including the line, "Will I savour the flower of fulfilment, or will I remain another crying jester caught forever, in these brambles of malice." We move from that poem, to the title track of that debut album, A Script for A Jester's Tear.
Marillion: Script For A Jester's Tear (Live in Germany, 1987)
Comments