Release the Bats: Notes on the Genre Distinction between Poetry and Pop

Release the Bats (4AD, 1981)

Click here to play on YouTube

As regular readers of this blog will know, I have a real penchant for poems about bats and have previously written about D. H. Lawrence's work in this area, as well as Theodore Roethke's (see links below). 

However - push comes to shove - I think my favourite lines on these fascinating creatures are found in a song written by Nick Cave and Mick Harvey as members of the seminal post-punk band The Birthday Party and released as a single in the summer of 1981:


Release the Bats

Whoooahh! Bite! Whoooah! Bite!
Release the bats! Release the bats!
Don't tell me that it doesn't hurt
A hundred fluttering in your skirt
Don't tell me that it doesn't hurt

My baby is alright
She doesn't mind a bit of dirt
She says horror vampire bat bite
She says horror vampire
How I wish those bats would bite
Whoooah! Bite! Whoooah! Bite!

Release the bats! Release the bats!
Pump them up and explode the things
Her legs are chafed by sticky wings
Sticky sticky little things

My baby is a cool machine
She moves to the pace of her generator
Says damn that sex supreme
She says damn that horror bat
Sex vampire, cool machine

Release the bats! Release the bats!
Release them!

Baby is a cool machine
She moves to the pulse of a generator
She says damn that sex supreme
She says, she says damn that horror bat
Sex horror sex bat sex horror sex vampire
Sex bat horror vampire sex
Cool machine
Horror bat. Bite!
Cool Machine. Bite!
Sex vampire. Bite!


Lyrically, things just don't get much better than this - even if, ironically, the song was written by Cave's own admission as a gigantic piss-take of those who reduced the queer and complex splendour of gothic horror (in art, literature, film and fashion) down to a few lazy stereotypes and tropes.

I could - and one day might - critically analyse these lines at length. But what I want to discuss here is a question that often arises in relation to the wider topic of genre distinction: What's the difference between poetry and a finely composed pop lyric?

It certainly seems to be the case that many people accept this distinction as a given and believe that the former, poetry, is not only more serious, but also inherently superior to any pop song. To me, however, this distinction is as dubious and as problematic as the one that others within the Academy would maintain between philosophy and literature.

It's patently absurd, is it not, to think that even a poorly written poem - and heaven knows there are many such in existence - is essentially more valuable in an ideal and rarefied cultural sense than even the greatest of pop songs. In the end, we are more often than not simply dealing with a form of snobbery that does a disservice to both poetry and pop.

Having said that, I agree with the American poet Matthew Zapruder that whereas the poem is born of (and aspires to) silence, the pop lyric is designed to unfold and communicate within a context of sound (i.e. it comes with a musical accompaniment or backing track). That's a real difference and an important difference. But it doesn't justify establishing a hierarchy of forms in which one is privileged over the other. 

In brief - and as we used to say in the old days: Fuck art - let's dance!

Notes

Matthew Zapruder 'The Difference Beween Poetry and Song Lyrics', Boston Review (06 Dec 2012): click here to read online.

Those who are particularly interested in this topic might also like to see Zapruder's book Why Poetry (Ecco Press, 2017) and/or Adam Bradley's The Poetry of Pop (Yale University Press, 2017). 

Related posts: D. H. Lawrence's Becoming Bat (click here); Reflections on the Bat 1 (click here); Reflections on the Bat 2 (click here); Roethke and the Bat Boy (click here).   

Still Life

Stephen Alexander: Still Life (2017) 

Dead sparrow and dried red rose 
on lime green sponge cloth 

The term, still life (from the Dutch stilleven) isn't one I care for and would rather, as an object-oriented philosopher, it was simply called object art.

For that is what it is essentially; a genre in which one creates compositions using inanimate objects, be they natural or artificial, real or virtual, in order to produce a picture that might, at the very least, interest or amuse and at best tell us something important about things and the relationships between them as they exist in a zone of proximity and/or a flat ontological field. 

Unfortunately, however, I don't get to name things, so I suppose we'll have to stick with the given and widely accepted term - even if I insist on the right to read the word still not as an adjective meaning static, fixed, motionless, but in the adverbial sense of that which continues even now; i.e. death is still very much a vital part of life and not simply its silencing.

Whilst its origins can be traced back at least as far as the Classical era, still life was first recognised as a distinct genre in Western art during the 16th century (i.e. the early-modern period) and it has remained popular ever since, with painters and members of the viewing public. Anthropocentric art critics, however, continue to rank it as an inferior form within their precious hierarchy of genres - below even landscape - due to its lack of a human subject.*

As indicated earlier, the Dutch were pioneers of the form and remain for many the great masters, although, personally, I prefer late modern (and postmodern) works that produce less cluttered canvases and which challenge still life conventions by using mixed media and a wider, more random selection of mundane objects.

That said, you can't in the end beat dead birds, beasts and flowers (still life has always had an obvious affinity with zoological and botanical illustration). And thus, in my own attempt at a still life above, I've used very traditional elements, though arranged on a more contemporary background drawn from the world of consumer culture and domestic life.

The aim, in part, was to offer the super absorbent, lime green kitchen sponge as a fascinating (and rather lovely) object in its own right, rather than merely a pleasing aesthetic background. The sparrow and the dried red rose are not to be privileged over the Spontex cloth, which, made as it is from cellulose and cotton is just as organic in nature (and as biodegradable) as the other objects, despite being manufactured (this for those who worry about such things).

And, obviously, none of these things are meant to symbolise anything, or possess some kind of mythological meaning. They should be appreciated as real objects made glamorous only by the play of sunlight and shadow, art and death ...        


* In 1667, for example, the influential French art historian André Félibien famously declared:  

"He who produces perfect landscapes is superior to those who only depict fruit, flowers or seafood. Similarly, he who paints living animals is more commendable than those who only represent inanimate dead objects. And as man is the most perfect work of God on earth, it's also certain that he who imitates God by representing human figures, excels beyond all others ..."