Songs & Poetry: Cross the Great Divide! (Part 3)

Richard Marx & Luther Vandross  vs. Theodore Roethke

The final piece of the exercise from the original post Songs & Poetry: Cross the Great Divide! (Part 1) when we began a discussion of the elements of poetry used in Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz" and a Richard Marx / Luther Vandross song entitled "Dance With My Father". The following addresses items #3 & #4 in the post:

(#3) How are the the poem and song different/the same?

 

(#4) How do the poetic devices influence those things?

For this one I thought I would use a tip Jimmy Webb gives in his book Tunesmith for understanding your song concept, and finding the idea. He suggests writing a letter. This is similar to Pat Pattison's process of object writing (Chapter 1 of his book Writing Better Lyrics). The goal of both is to be in the moment. If you're going to find images and a title to bring your concept full circle, these are the two best and easiest ways to accomplish that goal.

So - let's write a letter for both the poem and the song.

"My Papa's Waltz"
Dear Dad,
I remember when I was small and you'd come home from work at the mill. I could tell you'd been drinking, but I wanted to spend time with you, to be held by you, I never really cared. You would dance with me - probably not the best dancing - it was more of a pounding romp than a dance, but it was with you, so I was happy. When we'd get tired (probably more you than me since you had been working all day), you would carry me upstairs to bed, clinging to your shirt - I was always happy to dance just to be held. We never shared much, and now, as I look back, I know you were trying to connect with me the only way you knew how: showing me you cared, but being uncomfortable I might see too much.


"Dance With My Father"
Dear Heavenly Father,
One of my most precious moments as a child was when my father would cradle me in his arms, hold my mother close, and we would spin around the room. We danced together until I was tired, and then, he would carry me up the stairs to my bed. That was a moment I'll cherish forever now that he's gone. But the hardest loss isn't mine - it's my mother's. He was the only man she ever loved, and I remember how sad she was when he died. She would cry in her room so I wouldn't see, but I knew. I just want her to be happy again - he was taken too soon. I know you can't bring him back, but can you do something for her - to let her dance with him again?

Clearly - very different!

• When you write a letter you have to decide who is being addressed. The song and poem speak to a very different audience. The poem is talking to the speaker's father, while the song is speaking to a higher power - a prayer if you will.

• One is a reflection on a moment and the realization of the father/son relationship (poem), and the other is a prayer for the mother (song). The beauty of "Dance With My Father" is the song itself: it answers the question in the letter, which is why it resonates so well with an audience.

• While these two ideas may have started out in a very similar way, i.e., I remember when my father would dance with me then carry me to bed. Neither are ideas - they're general concepts around an event - and I would argue a common one. The ideas are brought to their individual focus (or angle) by staying in the moment, and the speaker understanding it from their perspective.

• Another thing worth noting in terms of similarity is neither is sentimental. Oscar Wilde once wrote, "A sentimentalist is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it." Yeats wrote, "Rhetoric is fooling others. Sentimentality is fooling yourself." Despite each being a tender moment, neither tries to use the sweetness of tucking an infant into bed, or in the case of the song, the death moment of the father, to bring heightened, unearned emotional response to the work.

 

The poetic devices used in both help craft each into a very different work. The primary differentiation when looking at the two is the point of view taken by the speaker/singer in each, which creates a very different angle on the subject matter. Neither is common. Both help us understand a bit more about ourselves - always the ultimate goal.

More Songwriting Tips:

• Songs & Poetry: Cross The Great Divide (Pt 1) Richard Marx vs. Theodore Roethke
• Songs & Poetry: Cross The Great Divide (Pt 2) Richard Marx vs. Theodore Roethke

Direct Address: When it's not "You" but "It"

This post has moved to SongChops.com:  http://songchops.com/2009/02/direct-address-when-its-not-you-but-it/

Songs & Poetry: Cross the Great Divide! (Part 2)

Richard Marx & Luther Vandross vs. Theodore Roethke

Here's my completed work on the exercise from last week's post. The below reflects questions asked in #2 of the post entitled Songs & Poetry: Cross the Great Divide! (Part 1):

1. Point of view (who is speaking and telling the story)


• "My Papa's Waltz" - the speaker is an adult male. Written in second person/direct address and describes a single scene. Mother is present as a bystander.
• "Dance With My Father" - the speaker is an adult (not gender specific). Written in first person and describes multiple scenes. Mother is present as a bystander until bridge.

2. What is the scene? Describe it in prose or draw a picture.

• "My Papa's Waltz" - a man is recounting a common scene from his childhood to his father ("you"). It's clear the father had been drinking i.e., "whiskey on your breath" and this was a "waltz" they did together, the father leading. Lines like "...battered on one knuckle ..."; "... my ear scraped a buckle ..."; and "... you beat time on my head ..." indicate the stoic relationship they shared, but are balanced with lines like "we romped until the pans/slid from the kitchen shelf"; "... but I hung on like death ..."; "... then waltzed me off to bed/still clinging to your shirt." While the father was probably not the most emotionally expressive, the son found a way to connect with him through their "waltz."
• "Dance With My Father" - an adult is looking back on events during their childhood, with the chorus indicating a loss of the father at some point. However, this one's tricky: most of the song is written as if the adult is looking back at events during their childhood. Verse 1 makes it clear i.e., "back when I was a child." The song stays in a reflective mode until the very last chorus, when it shifts into the immediate present. It uses the bridge to move from hearing the mother cry when they were young, to their ongoing desire for their mother to be happy. Even as an adult, the speaker/singer prays for the father to come back and make their mother happy. Which makes the last line even more powerful when you consider the present moment: "But Dear Lord she's dying . . ." the double meaning is made possible by the shift in the chorus. This is very well done without being awkward.

3. Write a short bio of the father in each.

• "My Papa's Waltz" - he's probably a blue collar worker, i.e., " battered on one knuckle," and drinks before coming home but not so much he's angry ("romped" isn't an angry word "crashing" would have been better and Rhoethke would have known the difference). They probably don't have much, but the father works to support his family as best he can - working long hours arriving home just before bedtime. He probably is from a time when men were men, and showed very little emotion toward their sons. This may be the only way he can show his son he loves him or cares about him.
• "Dance With My Father" - this father is very different from the father in Roethke's poem. He is able to express himself to his child. He openly showed affection and caring for both the mother and the child. These are two very different households.

4. Write a short bio of the speaker/singer in each.

• "My Papa's Waltz" - is a grown man who, in looking back realizes his father couldn't show how he felt, and recognizes the details that defined his father's nature. Maybe he wanted more affection from his father, and is telling his father now because the father's life has come closer to the end, and the son now sees they were as close as his father was capable of - then and now.
• "Dance With My Father" - is an adult who in suffering a loss is reflecting on their father, his legacy, his powerful actions that helped shaped both their life as well as their mother's. The speaker understands how the loss of their father is far more destructive for their mother, and in the bridge shifts away from focusing on the "me," and shifts to giving up the chance they've yearned for throughout the song in order to make their mother happy again.

5. Rhyme scheme of each and how it is working to tie with the idea

• "My Papa's Waltz" - the rhyme scheme is A/B/A/B and is consistent throughout the poem. The rhyme scheme creates a flow through the story, while making each stanza unique from the others. There is no linking across stanzas except via the story itself.
• "Dance With My Father" - the rhyme scheme in the song works off a predominate sound, a long "e" as in the word "me." You'll notice verse 1 is A/B/A/C/C/C/D. I dropped the "and then" since it's really used as a post rhyme phrase, as is "with him" in the chorus. The long "e" sound appears again in verse 2 with words like "disagree," "me," "asleep," "sheet," and again, "me"; then in the bridge "even more than me" two times, and again in the final chorus and last two lines as "usually," "asleep," and "dream." The song uses this rhyming device to tie together lines which seem to have no rhymed partner, like verse 1/line 2 "innocence"; verse 2/ line 2 "from her to him." While orphaned within the verse, they are surrounded by a similar sound throughout the song. Again, hard to do well, but done very well here without sounding contrived.

6. Punctuation - if you added it to Dance with My Father, how would it compare to the poem?

• "Dance With My Father" - the two are very similar in how the first verse of the song and the first stanza are structured. Each is focused entirely on a single scene, and both use a colon and/or semi-colon to describe the scene in flowing detail. The song uses this punctation technique throughout the song to bring a general calmness and sensitivity to the language. The melody line and accompaniment are also devoid of harsh, stopping type notes or rhythms, paralleling the punctuation.

7. How is the poem using punctuation to tie the rhyme together?

• "My Papa's Waltz" - each of the phrases ends with either a colon or semi-colon, however, a period does not appear until the last line of each stanza. Only then does a complete stop in flow occur. A complete, connected thought of all four lines, or in the case of a waltz, all four sides. The rhyme emulates this structure.

8. What is the song's structure. What about the poem?

• "My Papa's Waltz" - is written in four line groups or quatrains. The flow is consistent, much like the waltz, which is essentially dancing in the shape of boxes. There is no shift or major change in the pattern.
• "Dance With My Father" - Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Bridge/Chorus/Out. The structure involves a longer verse in terms of lines than the chorus, and in doing so creates a very tight chorus to allow a focus on the hook "to dance with my father again." The rhyme scheme in the chorus is E/E/F/F, which creates a very strong emphasis on the two line couplets, particularly the last couplet containing the hook.

9. How does the meter, or rhythm, compare?

• "My Papa's Waltz" - the meter, or rhythm, replicates the actual dance motion of the waltz and the 3/4 pattern: long step, short step, short step with a measure of the music - or line in this case.
• "Dance With My Father" - as you're listening to the song, you can feel how it blends with the first image of the family spinning around to some unheard music: not too fast, not too slow. This sets up the rhythm of the song, which results in a chorus that is slightly faster in phrasing, which creates a rhythmic change to help differentiate the verse from the chorus, but it never leaves the tempo created in the first verse. So, while very different in the type of "dance," both the poem's and song's writers are very cognizant one is taking place.

In Songs & Poetry: Cross the Great Divide! (Part 3) we'll complete the final two questions from the exercise. If you did the exercise and would like to share with those reading this blog, please post it in the comments, or send me a copy for posting on the blog.

More Songwriting Tips:

• Songs & Poetry: Cross The Great Divide (Pt 1)  Richard Marx vs. Theodore Roethke
• Songs & Poetry: Cross The Great Divide (Pt 3)  Richard Marx vs. Theodore Roethke

Songs & Poetry: Cross the Great Divide! (Part 1)

Richard Marx & Luther Vandross vs. Theodore Roethke

At the last NSAI meeting I attended, the lesson we discussed was lyric writing and finding an original angle. One of the examples given by Sara Light in the materials she provides to NSAI was a song called "Dance With My Father," written by Richard Marx and Luther Vandross. The song won a Grammy in 2004 for Song of the Year (it hit #34 on the pop charts).

One of the things that struck me about the song as I was reading the lyric was how much the song concept, or idea, mirrored a poem by Theodore Roethke called "My Papa's Waltz." In his book Tunesmith, Jimmy Webb makes a great observation about what an "idea" is not.

"The following is not an idea:
I want to write a song about someone who goes through acute mood swings - from euphoria to emotional exhaustion. I love this person and want to address the song to him.

If, however, you add the following sentence: 'I want to call the song "Problem Child,"' then you have an 'idea,' even though the song may not end up being called 'Problem Child.' "
So, while the Marx/Vandross song "Dance With My Father," may revolve around a similar concept as the poem "My Papa's Waltz," the unique angle, or idea, changes slightly with the titles. I would argue "Dance With My Father" is inclusive of the speaker/singer. They sound as if they are part of the dance, while "My Papa's Waltz" sounds as if the speaker is watching their father and perhaps commenting on how the waltz is symbolic in some way of their relationship.

The language of each also takes the song and poem in very different directions. Jimmy Webb also says in his book that ". . . all great lyrics use the devices of poetry." I tend to agree, and believe poetry can teach songwriters a lot about rhyme, metaphor, personification, imagery, meter/rhythm and above all else, the power of words used well.

I've included a video of "Dance With My Father" and a link to the full lyrics. I've included the first verse and chorus, as well as the complete poem "My Papa's Waltz" below. Go ahead and listen to the song and read through the poem, and I'll meet you on the other side for more discussion!



Dance With My Father [full lyrics]
Verse 1:
Back when I was a child,
Before life removed all the innocence
My father would lift me high
And dance with my mother and me
And then spin me around 'til I fell asleep
Then up the stairs he would carry me
And I knew for sure I was loved

Chorus:
If I could get another chance,
Another walk, another dance with him
I'd play a song that would never, ever end
How I'd love, love, love to dance with my father again.

Now, Theodore Roethke's poem. If you visualize the scene that's taking place, I think you'll immediately hone in on how this song and poem, while being similar in terms of a concept, are very different ideas.

My Papa's Waltz
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

The imagery in both are stunning, and because the speaker is so much "in the moment," the emotional connection for the listener of either is there. Before we analyze these too much in the blog, let's complete an exercise first. I'll post my results, and you can compare yours.

Songwriting Exercise (Using Poetic Device In Songwriting):

1. Print a copy of the full lyrics for the song, as well as a copy of the poem on different sheets of paper. [Printable version]
2. Now go through each and write down things like:
• Point of view (who is speaking and telling the story)
• What is the scene? Describe it in prose or draw a picture.
• Write a short bio of the father in each.
• Write a short bio of the speaker/singer in each.
• Rhyme scheme of each and how it is working to tie with the idea
• Punctuation - if you added it to Dance with My Father, how would it compare to the poem?
• How is the poem using punctuation to tie the rhyme together?
• What is the song's structure. What about the poem?
• How does the meter, or rhythm, compare?
3. Make a list of how the two are the same, and how they are different.
4. Try to connect what you wrote down in #3 with the items you've listed in #2 to explain why the song and poem are really two different ideas.

 

More Songwriting Tips:

• Songs & Poetry: Cross The Great Divide (Pt 2)  Richard Marx vs. Theodore Roethke
• Songs & Poetry: Cross The Great Divide (Pt 3)  Richard Marx vs. Theodore Roethke

Song Analysis: Adele's "Chasing Pavements"

A recent comment on the blog got me thinking (yes - it takes prodding). The comment was downplaying the songwriter's lyrics, mentioning they sounded as if they were written by a 17 year-old, because, well, they were.

I know when I was 17 I felt most of what I needed to know I had already learned, and by that time (probably around 15), I had out-paced my parents in terms of worldly knowledge. Now that I'm "my parent's age," I've come to realized I was perhaps a bit misguided.

However - that does not mean a 17 year old can't write a song that transcends their life experience, and speaks to many. To illustrate my point, rather than delve into Janis Ian's "Society's Child" (she was 13 when she was inspired to write it), I thought I would go with something more contemporary the kids might know: Adele's "Chasing Pavements." She was 19 when she wrote the song, and while the melody and her vocal phrasing certainly adds to the power of the song, we'll stick to the lyrics and her silver bullet device for not sounding 19.

Verse 1:
I've made up my mind, / don't need to think it over.
If I'm wrong I am right, / don't need to look no further.
This ain't lust - / this is love. But -

Verse 2:
If I tell the world, / I'll never say enough,
'Cause it was not said to you, / and that's exactly what I need to do,
If I'm in love with you.

These verses seem honest. Paul Simon once said in an interview "It's good to start with something that's true." All eleven of these lines ring true for the listener and speaker/singer. She's resolved herself to loving this person, and realizes the fair thing to do is to tell them. However, in the eleventh line (which seems unresolved since it has no partnered pair), the word "If" creeps in - "If I'm in love with you." Hmmm . . . not so confident now. Which leads us to the chorus:

Chorus
Should I give up, / or should I just keep chasing pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?
Or would it be a waste, / even if I knew my place,
Should I leave it there?
Should I give up, / or should I just keep chasing pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?

The whole chorus is a question - not for the listener, but the speaker. Questioning whether or not you're making the right decisions is not something only a 19 year-old does. It's something we all do. This song transcends the age of the writer because the language is simple but rhythmic, the words aren't trendy (so timeless), and the song revolves around a question rather than delivering a great insight.

I have to admit, this is one of my favorite songs recently. The vocals are no doubt phenomenal, but the songwriting is very strong. As you start peeling the layers you can see elements of the craft which are often left unattended. This one is worth studying.

One extra item: a good trick is to include punctuation when you're transposing or writing. It's amazing what a single punctuation mark can tell you!