The poetry that inspires Jonathan Richman
Poetry should be specific because that’s where honesty lies. “Exactly, like Jonathan Richman’s ‘Summer Feeling’ when he talks about the girl with the dirty ankles on the playground flirting with him,” songwriter Andrew Bird tells me. “That is all I’m trying to do as a songwriter—find the girl with the dirty ankles.”
What exactly is Jonathan Richman? Is he a poet, a punk or a composer? It’s not a question that he ever seems to have bothered himself with, so for ease, neither will I. The man who sits outside of everything, including outsider art, is not merely unfettered by labels but also everything else that could obscure his unwavering positivity.
With this footloose approach to creativity, he weaves a utopian world that can embalm you with its bliss, even when it is decidedly unignorant and dogged. As Richman explains: “When I was a teenager, I thought I would be a painter, and then sound overtook me. I made up songs because I had to. I had the need to express how I felt. And that’s still how it is. It’s just what I do. I do it when there’s no audience, I do it when there is an audience. And, when I paint, that’s how that is too.”
Ryan Dann, the man behind the music for Joe Pera, recently told me his aim in life was to “try and really live what I think of as the ideal artistic life. It is not just a hobby, or a side hustle or a main hustle. It’s just every part of your day is integrated with this creative project.” Immediately, Richman sprung to mind. Perhaps part of the reason why Richman is so singular is because he wraps himself up in so much art; he’s not overly swayed by one element and can come out himself on the other side.
A large part of this is poetry, and when he was asked for his favourite proponents of the craft on Reddit, he responded: “I’ve been reading poetry of Kabir, Rumi, and Mirabai, all in translation. If you read these, make sure you try several different translators, because the translations can be wildly different.”
He continued: “Oh! One more thing! Also, a great poet was the mystic Yogananda. He wrote songs, too. All of these have had a big effect on me. Many people recommend his book Autobiography of a Yogi, that was published in the 1940s; I’m one of those people who recommends it.”
You can check out one of the poems from it below. And beneath that, you can check out Richman’s own spoken ode to Bermuda.
When I Cast All Dream Away – Yogananda:
“I sipped the sap of each sane pleasure;
I exulted in the crushed beauty of sextillion stars;
I made a bonfire of all sorrows and basked in the glory blaze;
I quaffed the questing love of all hearts;
I mingled paternal, maternal, and fraternal love together,
And drank the solacing draught;
I squeezed the scriptures for drops of peace;
I wrung poems from the winepress of Nature;
I lifted gems from the mine of thoughts;
I stole the sweetness from the honeycomb of innocent joys;
I read, I smiled, I worked, I planned, I throbbed, I aspired;
But naught was sufficient.
Only nightmares of incompleteness,
Ever receding will-o’-the wisps of promised happiness,
Haunted and hastened my heart.
But when I cast all dreams away,
I found the deep sanctuary of peace,
And my soul sang: “God alone! God alone!”
