The Academy of American Poets has recently overhauled its website Poetry.org, which is where I found an article by Chad Davidison called Got Punked: Rebellious Verse.
The title caught my eye, and I was looking forward to reading it. As it happens, it's way too cerebral for my liking.
Punk, though it celebrated its own death, is constantly reborn. Poetry, too, is continually redefining itself, continually resisting its own intelligence. Iggy Pop pops up in Jim Jarmusch films. Ziggy Stardust might be dead, but Bowie isn’t. And the artistic androgyny Bowie embodied? What better way to represent Keatsian "negative capability" or Eliotic "extinction of personality"? Punk lives long enough to annihilate itself, then repeats the feat like a god at the center of a harvest myth.Mmm. I'm guessing Davidson's never seen a punk poet like John Cooper Clarke in action.
The Rough Guide to Rock described Clarke's high-speed delivery as being "based on the rhythms of rock and amphetamine sulphate rather than any conventional poetic metre" - that about captures it. Stark and direct, it was "the verbal equivalent of the headlong musical thrill of punk."
John Cooper Clarke is better heard than read: if you get the chance to see him live, take it - it's an experience. In the meantime, try "Beasley Street".
In the cheap seats where murder breedsLike they say, read the whole thing.
somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don't need
... a sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter is your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
on the edge of Beasley street
