A
junior high school friend had very advanced tastes in music and much else. In
seventh grade he explained the difference between “sensual” and “sensuous”
after using the latter in a poem to describe the sound of a sitar (a very
advanced instrument in 1965, the year George Harrison began abusing it). He was
the first person I knew to own a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book and the first to mention Herbert Marcuse in my
presence. Steve introduced me to Tim
Buckley, Phil Ochs and the United States of America (the band, that is), but
his taste wasn’t uniformly bad. The first time I heard a John Fahey (1939-2001)
record was in Steve’s room, and half a century later I still listen to Fahey. An even more dedicated listener and acolyte is Norm Sibum, the
American-born poet in Montreal who studies guitar at the digital feet of the
master. His “Open G for Blind Joe Death” is the final poem in Sub Divo (Biblioasis, 2012). It’s useful
to know that Fahey’s first album, recorded in 1959, was titled Blind Joe Death (after a fictional
bluesman created by Fahey).
“In
a California coffeehouse
You
struck the strings of a big guitar.
Finger
rolls and slides and strums,
Judgment
Day in the whisky jar,
And
love and falling out of love.
And
now your music comes around again,
Your
marches, your waltzes – time’s cotillion.
You
in your grave, I hear you once more
In
the lacunae, the lacrimae,
In
all the spent dreams of life.
You’d
been far-seeing with your
Fingerpicking
style—
“—John
Fahey, of all the exponents of your instrument
America
in her blisses and agonies spawned,
The
most Arcadian, the most caustic of them,
You
orchestrated for our delectation
An
American Dis in seventh chords,
You
Mississippi John Hurt and Theocritus,
Blind
Blake, Bukka, Patton and Virgil
Of
the Eclogues messianic and otherwise,
Your
years, what else? bittersweet:
1939
– 2001.”
A
consistent source of pleasure in Sibum’s poetry is the way he quietly blurs so-called
high and pop culture. He hardly recognizes the distinction, so long as the work
is good. Here he mingles country bluesmen (John Hurt, Arthur "Blind" Blake, Booker "Bukka" White
and Charley Patton) with country poets (Theocritus, Virgil). Fahey wrote his master’s
thesis on Patton at UCLA, and an English publisher brought it out in 1970. (On
Amazon it goes for a tidy $1,898.98.) The book is simultaneously legitimate scholarship
and a parody of same. This is drawn from Fahey’s final chapter, in which he
looks at Patton’s lyrics:
“Patton
uses the words `Lord’, `Lordy’, and `babe’, `baby’ in most cases for metrical
reasons to fill in a portion of the melody. An outstanding example of this is
in `Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues’, in which `Lordy’ or `Lord’’ occurs 28 times.
In no case is either of these words essential to or even a rational part of the
text. In `It Won’t Be Long’ there are 14 occurrences of `baby’. This word is
not essential to the text. In fact, the use of it in this song creates
confusion by giving the impression that the singer is speaking to someone. But
the stanzas indicate that he is not.”
Fahey
frequently shows up in Sibum’s contributions to the Ephemeris blog at Encore
Literary Magazine. In 2012 he wrote this:
“There is in Fahey’s Americana compositions a
quality that reflects high spirits, a near unbearable lyricism, and - well -
eventually, one is going to sound on the word `brutality’; or, if that is too
over the top as a word, the ever-present hint of menace that I will always
associate with the `American’ segment of my life offers itself as a candidate
for the melange. Is the mix of high spirits, near unbearable lyricism and
brutality to be found, say, in Chopin’s etudes? Perhaps.”
To use Louis MacNeice's words in "The Casualty," Sibum is "outside the cliques, unbothered with the fashion," and fortunately,
Fahey and Chopin are not mutually exclusive indulgences.
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