“beauty” and poets
Saeed Jones responds measuredly and eloquently to Jameson Fitzpatrick’s Lambda essay on Anne Sexton, beauty, and privilege in the gay poetry community.
This is a discussion that should be had, and it extends beyond queer writing and the bodycult/fashioncult that roils up from it: the self-consciousness of external performance is something that many poets (I would toss myself into that category) feel strongly about.
Anne Sexton was physically beautiful. But it is generally not our bodily beauty that propels us write. Beauty is a tool of power, but reducing a poet to that tool of power — by leaving out any mention of her poems, however unintentionally — is like saying that a poem is the pen that wrote it. Quoting Jones’ essay:
”[…] I have a sneaking suspicion that a discussion about the poetics of beauty isn’t really about poetics at all. Once we face that, what are we left with? An article about a beautiful dead woman, a Latino man who makes people ‘bristle,’ and a young ‘pretty’ New York-based poet. And, besides, what good did Anne Sexton’s beauty do her?”
“When the body of the young girl is discovered, her body glows angelically through the water that fills the trunk of the car just pulled from the bottom of the lake. The position of her body — curled up in the fetal position — is meant to imply lost innocence and highlight her childish state. With the dramatic lighting and the Twin Peaks-ish score droning in the background, she’s shot more like a misplaced water nymph than a dead teenage girl.” From “The Female Body” by Jessa Crispin (at The Smart Set)
I think I’ve linked to this essay before, but Roxane Gay mentioned it last night at her reading at Center for Fiction, and made me want to revisit. It’s really so good.
Back to Black & 2012 pop music
We know that Amy Winehouse’s darkly retro loneliness anthem album Back To Black inspired many, many pop acts with its luscious Motown-reworked sound. She was the rebellious older sibling that cleared the path for the Adeles, Duffies, and all their 2.0s, along with those supervintages like The Pipettes, whose sound was less reworking/’modern take’ and more pure revival.
But Amy is still influencing music, as I have realized, listening to two pop albums this weekend: Electra Heart by Marina & the Diamonds (the project of one Marina Diamandis), and Born To Die by Lana Del Rey (shut up, I was doing research). Rohin has written already to dismiss the false connection that critics tried to force between these two albums, which I think is fair, because the albums themselves are two very different beasts. Nevertheless, I think Back to Black is the thing that comes in to complete the gestalt of their relationship. The connection comes lyrically and thematically — it’s all in the content, not the packaging. Let’s examine!
“Lies” by Marina & the Diamonds / ”Just Friends” and “Love is a Losing Game” by Amy Winehouse. The Marina song, in summary, is about two lovers living a lie. They don’t like each other and are too proud to admit it. But the narrator is a little bit more invested than the other party. Tragic? Sure. And maybe we’ve all been there.
But the Amy connection is obvious in these lines: “You only ever touch me in the dark / Only when we’re drinking can you see my spark.” The saddest love affairs are the chemically induced ones, when we are nothing to each other but drunken fumblings, miserable BAC-powered attempts to stave off the lonely. The Winehouse narrator is familiar with the other side of this, as we can see in “Just Friends” — ”It’s never safe for us, not even in the evening / Cause I’ve been drinking.” She is the flip side of the story in “Lies,” the one who swills the vodka, then turns to the other, whom she would, in sobriety, see platonically.
The opening couplet of “Lies” also features a note to another Winehouse song. “You’re never gonna love me, so what’s the use? / What’s the point in playing a game you’re gonna lose?” laments the speaker; in 2005, Winehouse’s song “Love is a Losing Game” had already made the same observation. Although they both acknowledge a loss, both also imply that we’ll always continue to play the game. Love as a gamble is not really a new idea, but I have to mention it since the song already houses another Winehouse reference.
(“Lies” video here | “Just Friends” here | “Love is a Losing Game (live)” here)
“Dark Paradise” by Lana Del Rey / “Wake Up Alone” by Amy Winehouse. The Lana Del Rey album sometimes lacks narrative coherence — it relies heavily on breathless observations about the beloved, and also about outfits — but on a couple of tracks a consistent story exists. “Dark Paradise” is one of these. However, the thesis of the song is pretty much the same as in “Wake Up Alone” by Winehouse. “Everytime I close my eyes,” croons del Rey, “It’s like a dark paradise, / I’m scared you won’t be waiting on the other side.” The beloved has died or otherwise disappeared, and the narrator is holding on to dreams of him, but is also fearful that she can’t continue on. Winehouse’s “Wake Up Alone” relies on the same desperate dreams of vanished love: “This face in my dreams seizes my guts / He floods me with dread / Soaked in soul / He swims in my eyes by the bed / Pour myself over him, moon spilling in / And I wake up alone.” Winehouse’s imagery is far more evocative, but the message is the same — except that there’s no ghostly hope of an ”other side.”
(“Dark Paradise” here | “Wake Up Alone” here)
And actually the thing I love about Back to Black is that there’s a kind of redemptiveness in the loneliness that the narrator experiences because the voice is so consistent and powerful. The songs are all first-person and do not assume a character (like Diamandis) or an affectation (like del Rey).
Perhaps irrelevantly, I’d like to say that of the two newer albums, in my opinion the Marina album is the superior, in that she has created an entirety that’s listenable by using a narrative identity that is distinguishable from her own. I also believe it’s very possible that she is making reference to del Rey with her Electra Heart look on purpose. But those are other posts!
