Lyrics That Hit Different Quotes

The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time. The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is. There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside. Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn't move. All that and a town square where public executions took place. In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds. Spirit empire. Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon's generals, Lallemaud, was said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The devil comes here and sighs. New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you'll get smart - to feed pigeons looking for handouts

Marcus ran up to her then fell to his knees. “Please take me back. I miss you. I promise it will be different this time. No more cheating, no more hitting you and no more disrespect from here on out,” he proclaimed.

They thought they’d completed their assignment when the studio asked for one more, something punchy for a big production number. So they returned to the piano in their office on the Paramount lot. Several unproductive hours later, they gave up and took a drive in the Los Angeles hills, each of them in an irritable mood. Mercer, trying to think of something cheerful, remembered an “offbeat little rhythm tune”8 he’d heard Arlen humming a few days earlier, one that brought to mind a three-word phrase that had long intrigued him, “Accentuate the Positive.” Later, he gave differing accounts of where he’d first heard that phrase. One was that he’d been in an African American church in Savannah when the preacher, Bishop Grace—called Daddy Grace by his congregation—used it in a sermon. The other was that he’d been told that Father Divine—a Harlem preacher who claimed to be God—had used it. Either way, it was perfect for a song, which he and Arlen created by singing to each other as they continued their drive. Given the source of its lyric and the music’s gospel feel, it’s ironic that it was used in a racially offensive way. In the movie, Bing Crosby and Sonny Tufts performed it in blackface. But “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive” became a jukebox hit and an enduring pop classic.

A final point on this poem, & RH as a poet. 1 of the great conflation made in criticism of poetry is the terms great & important. They are 2 different things. There are great poets who are not particularly important. In this camp would be an Edgar Allan Poe, Pablo Neruda, Emily Dickinson, Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound, Robinson Jeffers, & Countee Cullen, among some others. These are poets for whom there is no doubt that great poetry sprang from. BUT, their work did not have a profound effect on the advancement of the art form of poetry. They were either technically superb craftsmen who were the best at their craft but wrote on things, & in ways, similar to others. They were simply better. Here would be Poe, Kipling, & Cullen. Or they were inventive & unique, but while inspiring devotees, never gave rise to poetic heirs. Here is Dickinson. Or they were hit & miss poets who often set back the art. Here are Neruda- whose great personal, lyric, & love poems in a traditional vein were counterbalanced by his atrociously puerile political & ‘experimental’ poems. Also in this category- despite his High Modernist credentials, is Ezra Pound. Most of his great poems are in ancient forms, in mock fashion. An envelope-pusher he was not- although he spurred TSE to greater heights than he was capable of by himself. Then there is a Jeffers- a poet who was superb; yet mystifyingly left little impact- most likely due to his reclusive personae & political prophesying. Yet all these poets touched the ineffable at least a few times in their careers. A 2nd camp are those poets who are important but not really great poets. Their poems had significant impact on the art, but the poets’ work, overall, rarely touched greatness. In this camp would reside a T.S. Eliot- whose whole career consists of 5 or 6 near-great to great poems & a passel of shit, William Carlos Williams- whose prosaic approach to poetry overshadowed the fact that he only had 10 or 12 good 10 line or less poems in his arsenal, Arthur Rimbaud- whose impact was more on the ‘cult of the poet’ than on the art form, Anna Akhmatova- whose import was more as ‘functional state treasure’ than persuasive writer, Allen Ginsberg- who has 12 or so great poems that showed new boundaries & subject matter could work in poetry, but also wrote a passel of utter doggerel, & Derek Walcott- who, despite early promise, has a body of banal poetry, yet opened the way for several generations of non-European poets’ poetry to find a Western audience. None of these poets will stand too tall in the coming centuries for their work, but- their impact on varied aspects of the art is undeniable. This is the difference between the 2. Greatness is about how much the art succeeds & stands alone, Import is on the non-artistic aspects of the work & poet. Of course, a 3rd category exists for those poets that were great & important. Whose excellence & import is undeniable. In this camp would reside John Donne- the 1st English language poet with a Modern mindset, if not vocabulary, Walt Whitman- whose work revolutionized subject matter, & led to the war against formalism, Charles Baudelaire- who did the same as Whitman in French, Stephane Mallarmé- whose fragmenting of form led directly to Eliot, but whose work has held up far better despite being older, Hart Crane- who created lyric epopee, & whose verse reached in new directions in new ways- cracking the ekstasis of poetry open & truly inventing the REAL Language poetry of the 20th Century, Marina Tsvetaeva & Sylvia Plath- the 2 women who became iconic Feminist heroines with legions of acolytes worldwide, yet wove together brilliant poetry despite mental illnesses, & Wallace Stevens- whose great poetry has given heart to legions of poetry lovers who appreciate games played with beauty & philosophy.