‘Angelene’: The poem that inspired a PJ Harvey classic
Poetry and music have always gone hand in hand, going back thousands of years prior to the advent of popular music. For an artist with as seminal and wide-reaching a discography as PJ Harvey, artistic inspiration can come in a variety of forms, but poetry has always been a very important aspect of the songwriter’s output. Her early output in the 1990s, on records like Dry or Rid of Me, was inarguably punk in its output, but even then, it was clear that the songwriter was just as driven by poetry and literature as she was abrasive rock and roll music.
Although she had gained experience playing with cult Bristolian band Automatic Dlamini during the late 1980s, she first arrived on the radar of most listeners with the release of her debut solo album Dry in 1992. This was the record that first established Harvey’s unique balancing act of defiant, punk-adjacent triumphs like ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’, with the more emotional, understated, blues-influenced offerings, which would increase in frequency as her discography developed.
Her fourth studio record, Is This Desire?, for instance, saw Harvey embrace a much more personal, vulnerable songwriting style. The album saw Harvey fully embrace her poetic influences, notably on the title track, as well as the opening song ‘Angelene’, which took inspiration from a very specific, meta, poem from the world of literature. Reportedly, the song had come about as a result of a short story by the legendary American author J.D. Salinger.
Salinger was no stranger to providing inspiration to musicians, though artists were most often drawn to his defining work, A Catcher in the Rye. Instead, as you would expect, Harvey went for something a little more obscure. Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes, first published in 1951, sees Salinger focus on three telephone conversations revolving around the marriage of a lawyer named Arthur and his wife, Joanie, who is embroiled in an affair with Arthur’s colleague, Lee.
Clearly, Harvey’s song, which focuses on a sex worker yearning for true love, does not share many common themes with the short story. However, Harvey does borrow a few lyrics from Salinger’s work. Namely, the lines, “Rose is my colour, and white/Pretty mouth and green my eyes.” These lines were taken from a poem that Arthur once wrote to his wife, which he then comes to regret when learning of her infidelity and the problems within their marriage, “Christ, it’s embarrassing,” he says in Salinger’s story, “it used to remind me of her.”
It is certainly not the most profound poem that Harvey ever drew upon, having regularly cited figures like Sylvia Plath, James Joyce, and W.B. Yeats as being incredibly inspirational figures in her own writing. However, her ability to weave in lines from a poem created by a character in an obscure J.D. Salinger short story, which came out nearly two decades prior to her own birth, speaks volumes about the endlessly broad range of influences taken on by Harvey throughout her discography.
Indeed, Harvey’s diverse output and tendencies for captivating literary references form an essential part of her appeal to many listeners. It is difficult to think of another figure who can encapsulate these influences so expertly without ever feeling too pretentious or overly high-brow.
Her constant use of poetic inspiration on ‘Angelene’ also predicted Harvey’s own flurries into the art of poetry. Back in 2013, the musician performed her first poetry reading and instantly found an audience for her profound and emotionally devastating writing style. Since then, she has published two poetry collections, which have added an entirely new layer to the ever-broadening artistic world of Polly Jean Harvey.
