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Everyday speech is full of poetry -
There's no-one here to take your call right now; please leave a message when you hear the tone.

Few people would recognize this as perfect Iambic Pentameter (di-DUM five times over) that would fit easily into a contemporary Shakespearean sit-com -



"There's no-one here to take your call right now; 
Please leave a message when you hear the tone."
"Hello? Hello? Girl, please pick up the phone.
I really need to hear your voice right now.
Can you believe she's going out with him?
Text me as soon you know what's going on."

What passes for Everyday Speech is often full of poetry and we are only sometimes aware of it. Poetry on the other hand is never full of Prose, unless it is a deliberate gesture. Poetry contains the element of sculpture and design that Prose has only by accident. Poetry is literary sculpture, and although its medium is the word, its message is made more sophisticated by the form that has been imposed upon those words -  These are the times that try men's souls expresses with gravitas what Soulwise, these are trying times trips over in clumsiness. Artful architecture confers more than the words alone.

Connecting with poetry from a foreign language is therefore extremely difficult, because to reproduce the elements beyond simply the meaning with any accuracy makes the translator's job an almost impossible one. Here are some sample renderings of Hamlet's existential musing To be, or not to be: that is the question -

Être, ou ne pas être, telle est la question
Sein oder Nichtsein; das ist hier die Frage
Essere o non essere, questo è il problema 
¿Ser o no Ser esa es la cuestión?

Each may convey the meaning to each new audience, but the rhythm of the poet's monosyllables has been destroyed, and their profound semantic simplicity has of necessity been sacrificed. As Robert Frost observed, Poetry is what gets lost in translation.  

To set a poem to music is to do it further damage; compositional treatment is itself a form of translation, since it forces spoken or thought text into the language of music, solidifying an interpretation of the text that remained ambiguous while it was still unspoken. 

Consider the following -
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day? 
I can imply at least six different meanings in the musical phrases I use to set the text -

1. Shall I (and not someone else) compare thee to a Summer's day? 
2. Shall I (or shan't I?) compare thee to a Summer's day? 
3. Shall I compare thee (or shall I contrast thee?) to a Summer's day?
4. Shall I compare thee (or shall I compare thy sister?) to a Summer's day? 
5. Shall I compare thee to a Summer's (or a Winter's) day?
6. Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day (or a Summer's morning)?

Some of these are clearly incorrect, and some are more incorrect than others, and some should get me laughed off the stage. Then there is the issue of sensitivity to tempo, tone, volume, etc. Yell any one of them at speed and you will get my meaning.


A composer who ignores the rhythm of the language, misunderstands the text, or is not interested in the 'whole truth' of the poem does great violence to the original.
If someone ground your homemade gingerbread cookies into the crust for a cheesecake and presented that entirely new dish as 'the dessert you had brought to share' you too would be as horrified, because you have clearly lost control of your brand; the 'meaning' of those cookies has been hijacked. You had intended their shape and dryness to be a comment on the bland aridity of the guests, but the host felt they needed tarting up lest dinner end in disaster.  

Pity the poor poets whose work is hijacked, repackaged and sold as their own. Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day? SHALL I?

Dr. Johnson's Dog is Alive and Well and Living in California.

If members of the general public applaud the antics of an animal being paraded on its hind legs, any indulgence on their part is an acknowledgment of effort rather than quality, and is also tinged with sympathy for the poor brute who has been reduced to such circumstances. In the 18th Century, Dr.Samuel Johnson misogynistically likened such a circus act to female preaching, expressing surprise not that either could do it well but that they could do it at all.

Consider, then, Rufus Wainwright, songsmith royalty of the Wainwright-McGarrigle bloodline, commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra to write and perform settings of Five Shakespeare Sonnets. Mr. Wainwright is a popular musician with substantial sexual magnetism but of little orchestral savvy; his celebrity alone is the hindquarters upon which he is expected to balance.

Happily the San Francisco Chronicle reviewer did not mistake Mr. Wainwright's staggerings for Art. His natural gift for melody and the pianism of the singer-songwriter do not of necessity translate to the orchestral medium. The makings of a good sandwich are different from the ingredients of a great souffle; a novel doesn't always make a great movie, and although the material was of a certain quality, the orchestra's presence was wasted.

But with California's vacuous love of celebrity, perhaps the greater San Francisco public might not have been so discerning. In Arnold Schwarzenegger California mistook a body-builder for a Governor.In Ronald Reagan they and indeed the nation as a whole mistook an actor for a President. Yesterday, Bristol Palin's celebrity allowed her to be mistaken for a dancer in Dancing with the Stars, and so the preposterous celebritocracy is in its full ascendant.

Hearteningly, the recent mid-term elections proved that inexperience can be a handicap in CA politics, if not in Art.The virgin billionairess Meg Whitman failed in her bid for the Governorship, and the similarly  outrageously under-qualified Carly Fiorina was unsuccessful in her attempt to unseat Senator Barbara Boxer. Had these two lamentable pretenders had higher-octane glamor star-power behind them and not mere chutzpah and the contemptible likes of John McCain, the outcome might have been very different.

Celebrity has become the new Education. A degree in political science is trumped by an appearance on the Today show. Being qualified to talk about your subject because you have studied it for nigh on a decade matters less than the hastily-formed opinion of someone more photogenic than you. The hiring team at San Diego opera told one of the candidates at a recent round of auditions, "We love your voice, but we won't hire you until you are more of a star." Clearly, it's not about Quality.

Humpty Dumpty famously described a world in which the meanings of words were not fixed by dictionary definition. 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.' He would be comfortable with someone who makes up words like 'refudiate', or who fires someone for using the word 'niggardly' correctly. We are in a time when semantic territories need to be defended; daughters of political pundits are not professional dancers, billionairesses are not governors, actors are not presidents, architects are not set designers, singer-songwriters are not the next Mahler. They are entitled to try, but their celebrity alone does not entitle them to succeed.

Celebrity has become the dominant word of the American landscape, consuming all other words in its path. It makes a mockery of education and tramples on the knowledge-establishment with its empty but trump card braggadocio. In 21st Century America fear of the Pinheads has morphed into adulation of the Airheads; we have handed over the microphone to the people least able to speak in complete sentences, which is the one thing that a spokesperson is expected to be able to do. It is scandalous in an enlightened democracy that celebrity should be encouraged to wield such power.

Before you know it, Sarah Palin will be running for office and the sun will be orbiting the earth again.

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.'

The answer is they can, if YOU let them.