ok poetry (2006)
‘OK Poetry’:
Original Research and Criticism Concerning the Usage of Accessible Pop Music as a Path to Success for the Modern Poet, Specifically Citing Thom Yorke and Radiohead’s “OK Computer.”
by
Michael Alahouzos
Presented to the Faculty of
Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Bachelor of Creative Writing
Pepperdine University
January, 2006
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank first my family for offering me peace and solitude as I write ‘OK Poetry’ while locked in a hotel room at the Ritz Carleton in Maui, HI for the next six days this winter. Thanks also to my supporting girlfriend Diep Dao and my mentors Dr. Michael Collings, Dr. Michael Gose and Dr. Michael Jordan (The Three Mikes), whose collectively insightful critique has pressured me to continue my original research. Thanks to friends, classmates and colleagues who have enhanced this experience: Matthew Highfield, Karl Lutz, Gabe Durham and Justin Whiting. Thanks also to my father, John Alahouzos, who gave me the gift of music in the first place, and my mother, Diane Alahouzos, who gave me the gift of poetry.
Preface: I will be presenting and critiquing the works of such modern poets as Thom Yorke (Radiohead), John Lennon (The Beatles), Paul McCartney (The Beatles), Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison (The Doors), Brandon Boyd (Incubus) and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) in an effort to understand and intimate the techniques that today’s songwriter-poets use to get their self-created poetic works published and read. I will be using the topics we discussed through the Communications and Creative Writing majors - specifically, word choice, word order, tone, imagery, symbols, allegory, irony, sound, pattern, rhythm, rhyme, meter, as well as the critical thinking works of Michael Meyer’s Poetry and Dr. Michael Collings’ The Art and Craft of Poetry - to discuss the styles of poetry seen in these artists’ published poetry... more specifically - parody, pastiche, the sonnet, free verse, beat, slam, the repetition poem, the sound poem, the found poem, and the concrete poem.
Thesis: See below.
‘OK Poetry’:
Original Research and Criticism Concerning the Usage of
Accessible Pop Music as a Mode of Success for the Modern Poet,
Specifically Citing Thom Yorke and Radiohead’s “OK Computer.”
Michael Alahouzos, B.A., B.Comn.
Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, 2006
Supervisor: Dr. Michael Collings
Elvis Presley killed William Shakespeare. There’s no literal proof, but it’s fairly obvious. Elvis Presley killed Shakespeare. Thom Yorke murdered Walt Whitman. Loretta Lynn whacked in Emily Dickinson and N.W.A. pulled a hit on R.W. Emerson.
Pop music killed poetry.
Just as the last great poet of the English Renaissance was John Milton, so was Langston Hughes the last great poet in the late 1960’s and for the rest of English-speaking history. Poetry has faded to an infinitesimal level of reading, listening and comprehension compared to the vast scale on which global society today absorb pop music today. On radios, televisions, in print and even in bookstores – the most popular form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in metric form is pop music.
So that makes pop music the new poetry, right? Not exactly. Long before songwriters were aspiring to be poets, the poets were aspiring to be anything but. On the timeline of history, the shuffling of economies and economic systems has created many professions and also made other’s redundant. The poet, as it were, was one of the first professions to disappear - not out of a change in global style, but out of necessity.
The feudal system that once protected servitude also protected the lives, well-being and crafts of poets and their poetry. Today, there is no equivalent. Poets went from being some of the most well-protected and highly paid creators in entertainment (akin to musicians or Hollywood writer/directors of today). However, in the western 20th century, without a system built to protect that craft and craftsman, poetry quietly floated into redundancy, only to be kept alive by either a) those who had other professions to keep them afloat (i.e. playwriting or taking on a role as a scenarist) or b) those who starved.
Because the system broke, these poetic writers began to branch off and use their talents in any way that they could. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Langston Hughes wrote screenplays, which then consumed the bulk of their work and time. And so died the lifestyle of the true poet. Today, poets still exist, and many still claim poetry to be their true profession. The truth is though - like the Hollywood waitress who calls herself an actress - these poets are required by our society to have much more real, profitable jobs. For example: rock star.
Singers like Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Brandon Boyd of Incubus and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco have published books of poetry using their celebrity attention to attract readers, and each of them has used their accessible rock/pop music to write down carefully chosen and scrutinized-over words, singing these words to generations of ears that have refused to read and appreciate poetry. While pop music and pop culture may have destroyed the way the youth recognizes, feels about and reacts to poetry, these artists have used their celebrity statuses to market poetry to an audience that they could never have reached without their music’s fan base.
It wouldn’t be far fetched to say that your local Barnes & Noble’s Bookstore carries more compact discs than books of poetry. It would also be truthful to say that a person who hasn’t sold a single CD is still making more money than a person is aspiring to have, or has had, his or her poetry published. This is simply because of the live entertainment aspect to each respective art. The poet has poetry readings in coffee shops or at open mic nights; the musician has local tours of clubs and a merchandise table.
So who said being a rock star isn’t a real job? The truth is, that person could be John Doe or Johnny Cash. The difference is, John Doe has a lot on his plate to do - make money, make a career, and build a fan base, but a Johnny Cash already has the cash in-hand; he is the one who has the wealth and the popularity to sit back, write poetry to his fan base, and actually have it be read. The up-and-coming John Doe whose poetry collection is on the shelf at Barnes & Noble’s may be the best writer in the world, but it’s Cash and those alike who are getting their works sold because of their existing popularity. And how do you become popular in the entertainment world today? You act, you model, or you make music first. Bob Dylan, Jeff Tweedy, John Lennon and Jim Morrison have all published books of poetry not because it was necessarily great poetry, but because they have/had successful and marketable careers funded by legions of fans who will read anything they commit to song or paper. These examples are the exact opposite of the waitress who calls herself an actress - these examples are today’s only true poets, guised with glamorous jobs.
In particular, Tweedy and Boyd’s books are purchased mostly by fans that have done a decent job of spreading the word about the books. There is no question as to whether or not these men would have been published poets in this century had they not been in successful bands - they wouldn’t be on bookshelves.
Bob Dylan is a different story - because of the time he was living in, he may have been published had he never been a songwriter first, but we certainly still wouldn’t be reading him. In no small feet for Dylan had he been just a poet, he has published nine books of free verse and lyric poetry that have been absorbed by the masses.
Wilco’s Tweedy’s is a slightly different story. His book of poetry, Adult Head, was published at the beginning of 2004, and towards the end of the year as Wilco’s newest album, A Ghost is Born, was released, initial reader’s of Tweedy’s book soon found out that eight of the record’s twelve songs were derivatives of poems from this book. Many stanzas changed, titles were reworded, and some metered poems were mixed and matched with free verse to form single songs for the band’s late 2004 release, but the process of transforming a poem into a Wilco song was unveiled right before the reader’s eyes in Adult Head, as was the process of shifting from rock star to poet. Music, in this case, and in many other cases, becomes the vehicle for these poets to do what they really want to do with their creativity. An artist’s record deal soon becomes their modern-day feudal system - the financial backing and freedom of pursing the thankless and wage-less life of being a poet. It’s men like Tweedy who know that if this poetry-thing doesn’t quite work out for them, they always have that record deal to fall back on.
If earlier we asked, ‘is music the new poetry?’ then now we ask, ‘how does it survive?’ If public readings were where poems became classics and new poets, laureates, then the DJ is the key guarantor of a record’s survival in today’s day. It would seem that, either in radio or in clubs, the DJ’s main priority to the artists and writers is to ensure that the best songs become classics. If a poem were measured as a great poem strictly by its popularity, then this would always be the case. However, just like with the song, it is almost never the case.
Still, there are ways to ensure that the good songs are remembered. After a songwriter dies, it is up to other singers to remind audiences of why this one piece of work was worth repeating. Dai Griffiths, Head of the Department of Music at Oxford Brookes University writes in his book, 33 1/3, that “the protectors are other singers – the song’s ability to be ‘covered’ or ‘continued by others’ becomes an important element.”
Bob Dylan said it best in his song “Forever Young” when he sang ‘may your song always be sung,’ making good use of a consonant rhyme and also making good use of a very good point. He may as well have sung “may your poem always be heard,’ because Forever Young gives a voice to Dylan’s great hope that his words will always be remembered among the classics, John Lennon and William Shakespeare included.
Dylan has always shown his understanding that the circulation of a song determines its survival chances. Dr. Griffiths writes that circulation is “a process in danger of being erased by technology, perhaps against the background of a free-market industrial attitude that couldn’t care less.” Today, listeners download music at fast and frenzied rates, absorbing all they can as quickly as they can and then moving on to the next hot track. This should not be alarming news; we do it every day with most media (news stories-of-the-moment, blockbuster films and the newest iPods), but somehow, it is.
It’s the album – a full length recording arranged and composed as a set – that is the real dying art as a result of this new fast-paced industry. In the poetic world, a poem would be the equivalent of a radio single. Generally, poems are not written in sets (many great, like Shakespeare’s Sonnets are). For an album to be written as a single whole (e.g. Sgt. Pepper & the Lonely Hearts Club Band, Dark Side of the Moon, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars), a lot more pre-planning and production must be put to work, and executed precisely, if the concept is to work.
The concept album, essentially a set of songs, poems or ideas put to music, is a dying art form in America today. Many American artists still uphold this tradition, although it is curious that the first three examples to come to mind were all created in the late 60’s/early 70’s and are British. Therefore, it should be established how much more difficult writing an album with recurring themes and motifs is than, say, writing a “concept” set of poems. Lyrics generally must match their music, which is why lyric poetry is generally short, redundant and focused almost entirely on one emotion. However, the concept album is used to convey an array of emotions - including the ones that preceded each new emotion in the album’s story - song after song.
Thom Yorke, however, fails as a lyric poet. The man is less a songwriter than some abstract designer - an idea-led word-producer. Yorke does not write words and feelings that are meant to ‘fit’ a song; Yorke appears to write down phrases and clichés that cook in his mind long before his band Radiohead’s fingertips squeeze notes out of their instruments. Yorke is an emotion-producer who creates words and feelings that become important to him and his audience by being at once submissive and fire-breathing.
Having established Yorke’s motives for writing OK Computer, let us begin to dissect his work. The 1997 twelve-page companion booklet to the CD containing poetry and thank-you’s will be the main focus of this research as opposed to the actual music encoded on the compact disc.
Yorke takes free verse and typographical poetry for granted in OK Computer. The harsh and abrasive-looking poems are written in such mangled form that, if read without listening to the music, the pieces look to be entirely different works of art.
Being the second free verse poem in the set, but containing much more substantive work to discuss than its predecessor, “Airbag,” we will begin by discussing Paranoid Android. In full:
7yuc zhd2**paranoid android.
please could you stop the noise im tryin a get some REST?
from all the unbornchikkenVoicesin my head?
huh whats's that??
when i am king you will be first against the wall
with your opinions which are of no consequence at all
huh whats's that??
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaambition makes you look very ugly
k ic k i n g s q u e e l i n g g u c c i l i t t le p i g g y
"you dont remember "why dont you remember my name? off with his head. off with
his head man. why wont he reme mber my name? "
""i guess he does_ "
raindownraindown come on raind down on me
from great height. from a gra\eeaa haaaeeeeeiii. haaaaeeeeeiiii
rain down rain down come on rain down on me
froma great height. from a great aaaaaaeeeeee
raindownrain down come on raindown onme.
froma great heightfrom a great
""thats it sir youre leaving " the crackle of pig skin
the dust & the screaming the yuppies networking
the panic the vomit
the panic the vomit
Without even reading the poem one might easily think that Yorke is out of his mind. Without a doubt he has suffered many troubles and losses in his life (such is life), but we will specifically pinpoint why OK Computer is written this way later on. First, we will cover another question that must be answered: were the lyrics originally written in free verse or were they transformed into this form afterwards?
We have to consider that Paranoid Android may actually have been transformed into free verse after its initial writing (and could have been created in this way specifically for the production of this booklet). In that case, then this specific re-telling of Paranoid Android would be what is called a ‘found’ poem, or an unplanned poem discovered in a non-poetic context. This means that a conversation, story, news piece, advertisement or another poem may be turned into a found poem by any poet who wanted to immortalize the words in another context. It is a reminder than our everyday language contains poetry – it only needs a poet to unlock that magic.
Having established this, if Paranoid Android is indeed a found poem, it is a damn smart one. If it is in fact the genuine manuscript of the poem, then Yorke has opened up a part of himself that may never be understood, for each song in the OK Computer booklet is written in this jarring and rude form.
The language Yorke uses is conversational, but is sung with such emphasis that when one listens to the song and then follow the lyrics, they may think, ‘all of that for just this?’ The line “huh what’s that??” drags out for 11.4 seconds each time it is sung. Though Yorke has only written the phrase down twice, it appears four times, accounting for almost an entire minute of the song.
What is also curious is how much freedom Yorke has with his words; “huh what’s that” is really sung as “huh what’s this” every time it’s belted aloud in Paranoid Android. Furthermore, from looking at the lyrics, you would be hard pressed to actually recreate each of those sounds written down, especially “from a gra\eeaa haaaeeeeeiii. haaaaeeeeeiiii,” but, God bless him, he somehow does it perfectly.
Lastly, if Paranoid Android is indeed not a found poem, and is instead a work of poetry that existed long before words like “ aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaambition” turned to “ambition” in fans’ ears, then the poem has an added amount of significance in the following matter.
Consider typographical poetry. Words are arranged in such a way as to reflect their subject; a poem about coke shaped into a Coca-Cola bottle.
Paranoid Android is indeed one of those poems. Go back to the previous sheet of paper that the poem appeared on, and turn it upside down. Paranoid Android now mirrors its subject: a paranoid android. The lines starting with “thats it sir youre leaving “ build up the eyes of this figure, the “rain down” segment his large and oblong nose, and the “you don’t remember my name” quote is snarling straight out of this character’s teeth, buried between quotation marks. The rest of the poem, and the rest of the foul words resting atop the paranoid man’s nasty tongue, roll out like a tongue bit between his teeth, spouting spit and filth. This man is angry, as the name in the “you don’t remember my name” section should be on the tip of the readers tongue, but the “k ic k i n g s q u e e l i n g g u c c i l i t t le p i g g y” doesn’t remember it.
Finally, it is not written here in this poem, but an android’s voice breaks through during the “huh whats that??” lines on the audio recording, buried deep under the track and nearly inaudible, to say, “I may be paranoid but no android/I may be paranoid but not an android.” A reason for the line’s omission may be because it was either an afterthought, or it ruined the typographic look to the poem. It can then be assumed that if Yorke really meant for this to be in the poem he would have added it, and it would have had some pretty poor spelling to go with it.
Yorke embraces a lot of different poetic tactics, but none so much as the letters he uses in his words. “You’re” becomes “youre.” On the band’s website for their new record, their “Dead Air Space” blog contains casual writings from Yorke. Not surprising, each post of his contains just as many typos and spelling errors as can be seen in his lyrics. In a portion of the blog dedicated to his decision on whether or not he should meet with Tony Blair (the Prime Minister has requested that they speak about climate change), he closed the entry with a request for decision-making assistance from the fans and ended with a fashioned statement, “politics is poision.”
Yorke is not the first poet to have such terrible spelling. Ezra Pound, today considered one of the most formidable free verse poets to have ever lived, had just as many problems with his spelling as Yorke. “Should” turns to “shd.” “Could” turns to “cld.” For decades, Pound fooled people with his spelling, leaving most of them to believe that he spelled his words wrong on purpose to get across the urgency of the writing, or to convey a specific sound. The truth is not so dramatic; Pound just really ‘cldn’t’ spell, using these abbreviated words in all of his manuscripts since childhood.
The difference between Yorke and Pound is that we know Pound couldn’t spell. Yorke should be able to - he graduated with degrees in English and Fine Arts from the University of Exeter in Cornwall, England. Yorke may just use his spelling to tease us, or perhaps to draw comparisons (such as this one) to the “In A Station of the Metro” poet. Either way, he should have been afforded enough opportunities growing up in Britain in the 70’s and 80’s that he could have learned to read and spell. The Dead Air Space blog may just be a reflection of the urgency and spontaneity in Yorke’s OK Computer booklet... a sentiment that computers are indeed NOT OK, and are both destroying society and Yorke’s desire to type correctly. For Yorke, I am certain that it consciously happens (at least in his free verse) because of speed, and he chooses to keep it.
Yorke also is quite familiar with the rare ability that the keyboard brings to poetry... that is, the ability to write entire poems without using words - only letters, symbols and justification. An entire section of his work “Climbing Up the Walls” is written in jumbled words. It almost looks as if Yorke is having a panic-attack halfway through writing the words. This section of the poem incorporates the typewriter’s rare abilities quite well. In part:
i am the pick in the ice
do not cry out or hit the alarm
we are friends till we die y
either way you turn ill be there open up your skull ill be there climbing up the walls
cvvudidsridfidfidfivdfikbdgfjkxdvmjdsvfkjvsdmjdv fsmnfdmxdvfj,xdvmdvxmncv
jmxvcmnvxfmxvcjxvdfjsvfmndvmnxdvmnvxc kjdkjdfxdkk
fxcgok sdfdnbhxz bhv rejky gsdzf.i c
its sss always best wwwhen the light
is off
its always better on the outside
<iticfubiflpfibnofns in ttttttttttthe crack of your waning smile>
15BLoWS to the sKKKKKKull
The reading is dark, frightening and disturbed. Now, if the work were to be written by hand with a pen and a pad, this section of “Climbing Up the Walls” might look something like this:
I am the pick in the ice
Do not cry out or hit the alarm
You know we're friends till we die
And either way you turn
I'll be there
Open up your skull
I'll be there
Climbing up the walls
It's always best when the light is off
It’s always better on the outside
In the crack of your waning smile [written here, but never sung]
Fifteen blows to the skull [“to the back of your head” is actually sung]
The poem has essentially lost the feeling it created – the jittery paranoia behind the words, the unsteady cracks in the skull creating them. The original “Climbing Up the Walls,” as published, is a much more convincing piece than this reproduction. There is little paranoia left to be interpreted in this made-up hand-written version of the poem. “Climbing Up the Walls,” which trails behind Paranoid Android in OK Computer contains a lot of the same repressed feelings as the latter. The poems come across as Yorke’s uncensored feelings as if he has uncorked years and years of torment and anguish only to explode on the page with fervor and anger. Unfortunately, there is no way to pronounce the urgency in this writing. (Although the future is limitless - popular electro-funk group !!! has found a way to pronounce its band’s name: by repeating any three one-syllable words in sequence. “Uh uh uh” is one example. “Bang bang bang” is another. Record store chains have recently chosen to label them under another name: Chk-chk-chk.)
Apart from jumbling and justification, symbols can also bring new meaning to already existing words. In Yorke’s free verse composition of “Airbag,” he writes, in part:
>in a deep deep sssleep of tHe inno$ent/completely terrified
am born again
By replacing the ‘s’ sound in ‘innocent’ with a U.S. dollar sign, Brit Yorke has made clear his word’s entire meaning - but you wouldn’t get it by simply listening to the song. You have to read his texts; Yorke is implying that, by buying into the safety (or supposed safety) of an automobile, he is essentially buying his innocence as opposed to being born with it like most people. Since ‘completely terrified’ has been crossed out intentionally in the poem, we can deduce that the once completely terrified speaker paid so well for his innocence that he can now revel in his “deep deep sssleep” once again. Furthermore, by crossing out the text, which is a function of poetry that is rarely (if ever) used, Yorke has gone out of his way to show off his chicken-scratches which would normally end up solely on scrap papers. The reader’s eyes, possibly used to glazing over cross-outs when handwritten on paper, nearly gloss over ‘complete terrified’ part simply by habit or instinct before it’s realized that Yorke intended for his omitted phrase to be shown.
It is also ironic that Yorke has written as series of poems using a computer’s word processor (made obvious by the strikeout line through “completely terrified,” which is never sung), given his Luddite complex which yields his utter discontent with anything technological. Perhaps the meaning behind this blatant revelation on his part is to highlight the fact that he cannot escape using computers for work or music - no matter how hard he tries - in either for his poetry or for his band Radiohead’s records. Existing on the edge of a catch 22, he simply chooses to abuse the privileges afforded by typing in a word processor by writing in an urgent, schizophrenic and random-appearing form.
But what does it all mean? Well, for starters, Yorke has joked in the past that his song Paranoid Android is about the fall of the Roman Empire. Given the references to yuppies, networking and Gucci, the Roman Empire reference can be a nod to the fall of the American Empire.
John Lennon (another subject of our focus here) once said, “Today, America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself.” Since Yorke, a fellow Brit who is publicly heavily influenced by Lennon in the music he writes has studied Lennon’s music so much (as seen in evidence put forth by the easy comparisons to be made between Radiohead’s “Karma Police” and The Beatles’ “Sexy Sadie”), it can be believed that Paranoid Android is about just what John Lennon once loved so much - New York City. Where else in the nation can you find yuppies networking feverishly, where rain pours down on Gucci suits and noise keeps its inhabitants up all night?
Other than Lennon and Pound, Yorke appears to receive a majority of his influences from other poetic backgrounds - for example, Gwendolyn Brooks. On Radiohead’s 2003 album Hail to the Thief (created six years post-OK Computer), each song has not one but two titles, oddly enough. The alternate subheading for the album itself is, including the parenthetical, (The Gloaming.). Brooks was one of the early authors to have made a subheading of a piece of work (specifically, poetry) popular and meaningful to the poem’s message in “We Real Cool”:
We Real Cool
THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.
The subtitle sets the stage for what is to come. We have the characters and the context they are in. Each of Yorke’s subtitles carries just as much meaning to the pieces as Brooks’ subheading did, like in the following (as titled on the album Hail to the Thief).
Sail to the Moon.
BRUSH THE COBWEBS OUT OF THE SKY.
and another example:
There There.
THE BONEY KING OF NOWHERE.
Note that these are not typical Song Name (Parenthetical) titles; Yorke’s titles are clearly marked not by parenthesis - as the album’s dual title does - but by subheading denotations.
In “We Real Cool,” Brooks gives the reader her main characters, where they are, how they feel (‘real cool’) as well as what walk of life they are from (revealed in the in the golden shovel reference). Yorke’s subtitles set his stages just as Brooks’ do. In There There, the subheading notes the name of Yorke’s character, his despondent and apathetic feelings towards others concerns (‘there, there’) and the place of his action (‘nowhere’). Hail to the Thief is full of great poetic devices like this one, but Yorke’s album six years prior is where his most noteworthy and revelatory contributions lie.
Returning to OK Computer and the important role that typographical poetry plays in it, large sections of the booklet’s free verse poetry take the shape of what Yorke is preciously talking about. Like the man/android’s face in Paranoid Android, the poem/song “Lucky (Waster)” has a similar occurrence.
The middle section of “Lucky (Waster)” has Yorke writing about his airplane crashing into a lake. As he drowns, he writes about how he doesn’t have time for anybody else, because, as he says, “its gonnabe a glori us day!” In part:
the head of state
has called for me
by name
but i dont have time for him.
its gonnabe
a
glori us day!
i
feel my
luck
could
change.
pull
me
out
of
the
aircrash
pull
me out of the lake
im
your
superhero
weare standing on the edge
weare standing on the edge
What is most important here is how, as the narrator sinks into the lake, his words sink down with him. The words don’t just fall straight, either – they hit the water and begin to sink at the steep angle of the plane crash as he writes.
More evidence of poetic influence, and possibly the most important moment in OK Computer, can be found in the album’s centerpiece “Karma Police.” For this work, Yorke will borrow heavily from Walt Whitman’s poem, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.”
In Whitman’s poem, after listening to a droning, self-indulgent speech given by the title character, Whitman’s character stands up, exits the auditorium, walks out under the moon, and - with a breath of relief - looks up at the stars in silence. In full:
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the
lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
What is most important to note about this work is how Whitman’s long-windedness changes. His prose becomes longer and longer with each successive line until, suddenly, he wakes up from how the learn’d astronomer’s diatribe affected him and begins speaking in smaller lines, complete with a lightheartedness that is both different from the first four ‘when’ lines and freer than those that preceded them.
Yorke recreates this whimsical feeling in the published lyrics to his international hit with Radiohead, “Karma Police.” In full:
karma police**??id6890
karma police arrest this man he talks in maths he buzzesLikeAfridge hes like a detuned radio.
karma police arrest this girl her hitler hairdo is making me feel ill
&we
have
crashed
her
party.
tHis is what you get. tHis is what you get. tHis is what you get when you mess with us.
karma police ive given all ican its not enough ive given all i can but were still on the payroll.
tHis is what you get. tHis is what you get. tHis is what you get when you mess with us.
(phew
for a minute there
i lost myself ilost myself
Each line before the last drones on, save for the “we have crashed her party” segment, and all but the one above that segment are forced to wrap down a line due to their great length. But when Yorke has listened to all the lecturing and bashing he and others received from the karma police, when he has become absorbed in their hateful dialectic, when he felt himself succumb to their level of banality in the line, “tHis is what you get,” something changes in him and his writing.
How soon unaccountable Yorke becomes as he takes a step out of his daydream with a sigh of relief (‘phew’) and composes himself. Contradicting Whitman, instead of loosing himself in the stars, he admits that he has lost himself completely. He has one final moment of relief as his lines shorten to a crawl and he finally gets a grip on himself again.
That halfway mark in the album (”Karma Police” is track six of twelve) is when everything for OK Computer changes. Nearly halfway through the song at 2’30”, Yorke’s spirits lift. His last seven words, beginning with ‘phew,’ take him nearly two entire minutes to say, and he repeats them eight times between instrumental breaks.
Musically, there is a noticeable schism between the heavy hitting and constrained first half, and the loose, free-flowing and airy second half. The key changes along with the changing of Thom’s mood (from E minor to B minor), taking Yorke’s voice high into the atmosphere with reverb where it can hardly breathe, and slowly brings it back down to earth like an angel, hot air balloon or Mary Poppins. As Dr. Griffiths points out in his book 33 1/3, “Texturally, there’s a big shift, with all the instruments doing lighter things.” Even the band’s fingertips attempt to follow Yorke’s words and peaceful, easy feeling as they flutter about the key of B minor with free reign over the territories where the song can reach now that is has broken out of its original and constraining key (E minor and B minor share similar chords, but B minor reaches for a high E major chord that breaks apart the low, heavy E minor feeling and sound).
Looking back, Yorke’s newfound outlook on his life in the second half of “Karma Police” is brought on by one simple word that he utters: ‘phew.’ Phew is the perfect word for this moment in the poem; ‘phew’ is a comical word, like ‘yelp’ or ‘pffpt.’ There is basically no seriousness to it at all - it’s easily the lightest word that comes to mind because of both what it signifies and because is breathed rather than spoken. However, Yorke chooses to write AND properly pronounce the word when sung as opposed to breathing a sigh of relief in its place. What happens then is a beautiful thing; the “Karma Police” have gotten Yorke so down on himself that he has lost either his sense of who he is or his sense of who he should act like. ‘Phew’ is a word you can say in either a light whisper or in heavy breath in virtually any situation, whether narrowly escaping death or simply letting stress get the better of you. In Yorke’s case, his stress caused by the banal words of the the “Karma Police” has consumed him similarly to how the learn’d astronomer’s jargon consumed Whitman. Upon arising and walking out of the stiff lecture hall, anybody else like Whitman would have sighed ‘phew,’ too.
Whitman wasn’t a rock star. This is obvious, but I don’t believe Yorke is either. He’s an artist who failed as both a writer and a poet, but managed to excel as an idea rather than a voice. These idea men - Yorke, Dylan, Tweedy, Lennon and Boyd - are the men who give you the fix of poetry you never knew you craved. They are the men sneaking their verbose culture into your stereo headphones. They are men who still believe in something that you don’t: a dying art form.
The irony is, of course, that these artists are employees of the movement that effectively killed poetry in western culture. Yet, they consciously try to breath new life into it all the time.
It’s a horrible thing that happened - that Bob Dylan killed Shakespeare, that Thom Yorke killed Walt Whitman - because in all artistic-purveyors’ efforts to breathe poetry back into our culture’s lungs, with poetry books, blogs and readings, not one example of their published works will ever achieve the level of greatness that the likes of Shakespeare and Whitman enjoyed. Maybe that will change in time. Maybe it won’t. It rests on the shoulders of what they do for a living and how they present themselves to the world and their media... Are you a singer/songwriter, or a poet? Are you a guitarist, or a wordsmith? Are you wearing flashy pants, or your heart on your sleeve? These questions are easy to answer - and as long as that remains true, the poetic artform will never again be taken as seriously as it was in the moments before pop and rock music euthanized the movement.
Yet despite all of this, Yorke appears to have a pretty good head on his shoulders. He has worked to change pop music and lyric-poetry for more than a decade now so, in a sense, he’s gotten a good head start at it. OK Computer was just the beginning; Radiohead’s synth and-space epic Kid A, by some standards, is ten times the album OK Computer was upon its release in 1997. If OK Computer is the poetic-concept album that Yorke always wanted to write, then Kid A and its followers Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief are the albums that Yorke needed to write in order to have OK Computer taken seriously.
To finally and simply answer the first question posed by this discussion: is music the new poetry? Enormously so, as long as Thom Yorke has fingertips for typing.
Appendix: Radiohead Discography
1993 Pablo Honey (Capitol CDP 0777 7 81409 2 4)
1995 The Bends (Capitol CDP 7243 8 29626 2 5)
1997 OK Computer (Capitol CDP 7243 8 55229 2 5)
2000 Kid A (Capitol CDP 7243 5 27753 2 3)
2001 Amnesiac (Capitol CDP 7243 5 32764 2 3)
2003 Hail to the Thief (Capitol CDP 7243 5 84543 2 1)
Bibliography:
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Dr. Griffiths, Dai. 33 1/3. London: Continuum, 2004.
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Boucher, David. Dylan and Cohen: Poets of Rock and Roll. London: Continuum, 2004.
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Tweedy, Jeff. Adult Head. Lincoln: Zoo Press, 2004.
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Hinchey, John. Like a Complete Unknown: The Poetry of Bob Dylan's Songs, 1961-1969. Stealing Home Pr., 2002.
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Collings, Michael. The Art and Craft of Poetry: Exercise Toward Mastery (Third Edition). Thousand Oaks, 2004.
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Meyer, Michael. Poetry (Fourth Edition). Boston: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2004.
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Dylan, Bob. Tarantula. Scribner (ISBN-0743230418), 1971.
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Dylan, Bob. Chronicles: Volume One. Simon & Schuster (ISBN-0743244583), 2005.
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Yorke, Thom. OK Computer (CD companion sleeve). Los Angeles: Capitol Records (Capitol CDP 7243 8 55229 2 5), July 1, 1997.
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Yorke, Thom. Hail to the Thief (CD companion sleeve). Los Angeles: Capitol Records (Capitol CDP 7243 5 84543 2 1), June 10, 2003.
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Pound, Ezra. “In A Station of the Metro.” Poetry (Fourth Edition). Ed. Meyer, Michael. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2004. P. 130.
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Brooks, Gwendolyn. “We Real Cool.” Poetry (Fourth Edition). Ed. Meyer, Michael. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2004. P. 97.
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Whitman, Walt. “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” Poetry (Fourth Edition). Ed. Meyer, Michael. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2004. P. 532.
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Lennon, John and Aldridge, Alan (Editor). The Beatles: Illustrated Lyrics. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 1990.
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Yorke, Thom. Kid A (CD companion sleeve). Los Angeles, Capitol Records (Capitol CDP 7243 5 27753 2 3), October 2, 2000.
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Yorke, Thom. Amnesiac (CD companion sleeve). Los Angeles, Capitol Records (Capitol CDP 7243 5 27753 2 3), June 4, 2001.
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Yorke, Thom; Greenwood, Colin; Greenwood, John; O’Brien, Ed; Selway, Phil. Dead Air Space. September 28, 2005. October 28, 2005. <http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace>
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michael alahouzos
2006
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