Van Morrison - Poetry (A Compilation 2010) The Idea - Quotes - Info and Research In WAVELENGTH magazine No. 1 there was an article by the leading Irish poet Paul Durcan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Durcan called "The Drumshambo Hustler" which was first printed in the litery magazine MAGILL in May, 1988. The article attempts to put Van's poetry into a modern Irish context and he contends that Patrick Kavanagh and Van Morrison are the two finest poets in Ireland in his lifetime. He goes to offer the following Top Thirty of Van Morrison's poems: 01 SUMMERTIME IN ENGLAND 02 ROLLING HILLS 03 IN THE GARDEN 04 CLEANING WINDOWS 05 LISTEN TO THE LION 06 SNOW IN SAN ANSELMO 07 RAVE ON, JOHN DONNE 08 ALAN WATT'S BLUES 09 A SENSE OF WONDER 10 HARD NOSE THE HIGHWAY 11 MADAME GEORGE 12 QUEEN OF THE SLIPSTREAM 13 GLORIA 14 INTO THE MYSTIC 15 IF YOU AND I COULD BE AS TWO 16 INARTICULATE SPEECH OF THE HEART 17 TORE DOWN A LA RIMBAUD 18 CYPRUS AVENUE 19 FOREIGN WINDOW 20 TIR NA NOG 21 IRISH ROVER 22 BALLERINA 23 AND IT STONED ME 24 THE STREETS OF ARKLOW 25 T. B. SHEETS 26 IVORY TOWER 27 HEY GIRL 28 SAINT DOMINIC'S PREVIEW 29 AND THE HEALING HAS BEGUN 30 FULL FORCE GALE 31 IN THE DAYS BEFORE ROCK n ROLL (Bonus) A Quote by Van Morrison on lyrics, music, people, poetry, and words in lyrics music people poetry words. "There's no difference between lyrics and poetry. Words are words. The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance. They've got something to lose if they say it's all poetry; if there's not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind of checkered shirt or something like that. It's all the same. Lyrics are lyrics, poetry is poetry, lyrics are poetry, and poetry is lyrics. They are interchangeable to me." Van Morrison Source: Performing Songwriter, March/April 2009 Contributed by: ingebrita http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/van-morrison In 1974 Time magazine placed Van Morrison fifth in a curious little league table of ‘Greatest Living Songwriters’ behind Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen. "You have to understand a bit about the poetry of the blues to know where the references are coming from. I write songs. Then, I record them. And, later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do. That's my job. Simple." Quotation of Van Morrison _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “Won’t you meet me in the country, in the Summertime in England….” Van Morrison In 1980 Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners went searching for the young soul rebels. He went to bars and pubs and cafés, even libraries and old people’s homes, but he could not find them anywhere. He gave up his search, trudged slowly home. Maybe if he had headed for the countryside he might have been in luck. For there, amongst the woods, the rivers, the fields, the hills, the stumbling waterfalls, he might well have come across one of the great soul rebels of our time, Mr Van Morrison reading nature poems by Alfred Austin and dreaming up the music that would create a landmark album in his career. http://caughtbytheriver.net/2010/06/van-morrison-the-common-one/ By Paolo Hewitt. Summertime In England Morrison originally wrote the song as a poem about William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge making a literary trip to the Lake District in England where they worked together on the poems that were to become their landmark joint venture, Lyrical Ballads. Morrison has been quoted as saying, "['Summertime in England'] was actually part of a poem I was writing, and the poem and the song sorta merged... I'd read several articles about this particular group of poets who were writing about this particular thing, which I couldn't find in the framework I was in." The lyrics also refer to Jesus walking down by Avalon — an allusion by William Blake with the lines: "And did these feet in ancient time/Walk upon England's mountain green?" The lyrics verge between several layers of consciousness but always return to the central occurrence of a holiday in the country that the singer spent with his sweetheart (the "red-robed" Toni Marcus)[citation needed] and/or daughter.The song ends with the lines: Put your head on my shoulder and you listen to the silence Can you feel the silence? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Van Morrison The Irish singer-songwriter has identified himself with poets from Blake to Yeats, and like those "poetic champions," he has searched for the right words, the right feeling, as if for the Holy Grail. "It's all based on spontaneity," he said at the time, "and that's my trip from beginning to end, whether it's writing a song or playing a guitar or a particular chord sequence, or blowing a horn, or whatever it is, it's based on improvisation and spontaneity, right? And that's what I keep trying to get across in interviews and it's very hard because the process is beyond words!" Morrison defends most of his work with a poet's pride, but can crank out an instant standard like "Have I Told You Lately (That I Love You)" He has walked out on audiences without warning, but can still hold them in his thrall. He sometimes wanders through his own lyrics like a man looking for his keys, picking up this, discarding that, but knows a good phrase when he coins it: "I want to rock your gypsy soul," "Torn down � la Rimbaud," "You don't pull no punches, but you don't push the river," et al. And like Bob Dylan, to whom he owes such a debt and with whom he shares so many characteristics (paranoia, inarticulateness, divine inspiration and maddening inconsistency), he found out "when you reach the top you're on the bottom." - - - - - - - - - - - - And if you get it right this time You don't have to come back again And if you get it right this time There's no reason to explain -- "Foreign Window," 1986 It has been said that in Morrison's music one finds questions rather than answers. Searching, seemingly unsatisfied, he has identified himself with poets from Blake to Yeats -- often to an embarrassing extent. (When Yeats' estate initially refused to let Morrison record the poem "Crazy Jane on God," the singer sulked, "My songs are better than Yeats!") But like those "poetic champions" he drops the names of, he has searched for the right words, the right feeling, as if for the Holy Grail. Even his return to Ireland, and then Great Britain, follows the primal path he laid out for himself in the 1972 song "Listen to the Lion." In 11 minutes of scatting and primal growling Morrison recounts how "we sailed and we sailed and we sailed/Away from Denmark/Way up to Caledonia. .. All around the world ... Looking for a brand new start." The lion that he seeks -- and that he flees -- is inside of him. Cliff Richard, the durable British pop singer who dueted with Morrison on the 1989 U.K hit "Whenever God Shines His Light on Me," said he thought Morrison was "filled with self-loathing." Certainly no one would call him a happy chappy, and photos of Morrison smiling are as rare as hen's teeth. But as his prodigious musical output reminds us, his restlessness is one with his nature. Nothing, especially him, is good enough. There's a song on "No Guru" called "Foreign Window" in which the singer watches a pilgrim's progress, "bearing down the sufferin' road." No telling who the wayfarer is -- it might be him, it might be you -- but the burden sounds familiar. "I saw you from a foreign window," Morrison sings, You were trying to find your way back home You were carrying your defects Sleeping on a pallet on the floor In the palace of the Lord. Rest easy now. -- "Foreign Window," 1986 - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Sean Elder is a frequent contributor to Salon and a consulting editor to Premiere magazine. http://www.salon.com/people/bc/2000/09/19/morrison/print.html Into the Mystic The Aural Poetry of Van Morrison Peter Mills Popular Music, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Jan., 1994), pp. 91-103 (article consists of 13 pages) Published by Cambridge University Press Stable URL httpwww.jstor.orgstable852902