Jim Morrison: Worth as a Poet?

[thebadcowboy]

how do you know it is accrate dude.....?

stuart said:

For me, No one else has described"Death" and Passing on through to the other side(just my own beliefs here!) in such an accurate, .

Pure Brilliance

[stuart]

well an accurate description in the way jim says"Comes Death on a strange hour, unannounced,unplanned for" i personaly would say that is pretty on the money mate.

[sparky]

ensenada said:

i believe he was a unique poet and a very good one. and i agree with holyshameister, that he could captivate an audience, that was his gift. he could hypnotise them with his charisma and voice and general aura! he does it to me everytime...

i agree with ricks point that he was a unique poet. he most definatly had a way with words. jim had the potential to become a great poet and if he was still with us today he would have given us a whole new breed of poetry to read and love.

[redrooster]

Jim is honest and real. He does not front. He would capture audiences with his words. If it was someone just trying to impress themselves, the audience would have revolted. His power to enthrall the people comes
from dictating his views and beliefs to them. He is amazing.

[hippywitch25]

Jim was an incredible poet.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

35 Years gone now (this July) and he has recently received some stick in the media from Blender and some of the younger bands.
Many find it hard to understand that the guy was not a rock singer in the way we would define a rock singer.
OK some of his stuff was not great but he strove to perfect his art as a poet....not as Mick Jagger....which is why at the height of his fame he grew a breard got fat and drank more......

So come on you poetry types.....we have a mountain of Jim Morrison stuff in this section.....I have not a clue as I am not poetical in the slightest....was this stuff any good??

[jym]

An American Prayer doesn't get the respect it deserves as a major piece of poetry, probably because it's dismissed as being by a rock star. Poets form Jim's generation didn't start to get recognised until the late 70's or early 80's people like Mark Strand & certainly none seemed to use the same style as did Jim which is a bit reminiscent of Allen Ginsburg which I think is the level Jim would have risen to if he'd allowed himself more time.

Jim surely could have chosen a route that didn't catapult him to fame so quickly, I wonder what the driver was that he sought that.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

He has been gone for 40 years this July which is plenty of time to evaluate his worth as a poet. Or is it?
Not into poetry much but have read all the available stuff and heard the three albums his poetry features on.
I saw Stephen Spender and Brian Patten in 1972 who were popular poets at the time and Jim was not in thier league it's true but he did have a way with words that was fascinating sometimes.
Obviously he wrote some utter tripe as well but when he was on form especially in his spoken word poetry he was able to make up for his shortcomings with a voice that was at times hypnotic and mix that with words that evoked all sorts of imagery.
Still even 5 years on from the origin of this thread don't think he was a great poet but I am still of the opinion that given a chance he could well have been just that.

We still have not seen all the works he was putting together and still have not heard the complete December 8th 1970 session. Add to that the poems he recorded for the WFTS sessions and perhaps the TSP session and there is a lot fans have yet to hear and read.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Los Angeles Times

A Rebel's Verse - The Doors' Jim Morrison made his mark as a rocker, but 20 years after his death it is his poetry that is attracting new attention.

By PAT H. BROESKE, TIMES STAFF WRITER
March 10, 1991
Since his death in 1971 at age 27, Jim Morrison has come to signify the glory and the decadence of the '60s saga of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. But beyond the hedonism and beyond the music, the Doors' lead singer had another side. Morrison wanted to be a poet--not just the writer of many of the song lyrics that were a Doors signature, but of serious verse.

In a 1969 interview with Jerry Hopkins in Rolling Stone, Morrison called poetry "eternal." "Nothing else can survive a holocaust but poetry and songs," he said. "No one can remember an entire novel. No one can describe a film or a piece of sculpture, a painting. But so long as there are human beings, songs and poetry can continue."

And indeed, Morrison's poetry has continued, although his literary legacy is a small part of the image that is still potent this year, the 20th anniversary of his death: His baritone haunts the airwaves and his pouty image stares from magazine covers, posters, T-shirts--even the side of a three-story building at Venice beach. He is also the subject of the recently released film, "The Doors," directed by Oliver Stone, and of at least half a dozen new books. (See accompanying story.)

Meanwhile, Morrison's poetry has been attracting its own fans, not just a cult following, but a cadre of scholars who have come to regard him as one of the major poets of his generation, even the century.

Some may scoff, but poet Michael McClure--whose own writings linked the '50s "beat" generation with the '60s "flower power" generation, says, Morrison's poetry "will be in the canon of the era."

He was "the major poet of the last quarter of the 20th Century," says Maria Rosa Menocal, an associate professor of Medieval literature at Yale. She is at work on a review of Morrison's posthumously published poetry.

And Wallace Fowlie, an 82-year-old professor emeritus of French at Duke University, lectures on Morrison around the country. He has found parallels between Morrison and 19th-Century French poet Arthur Rimbaud, seeing both as "the rebel as artist."

During his lifetime, some of Morrison's works were published privately, and then in a single commercial volume. After his death, Morrison's common-law wife, Pamela Courson, attempted to get other works published. When she died, her parents inherited the rights to Morrison's works and continued her quest.

As a result, "Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison, Volume I," was published in 1989 by Villard Books. There have been three printings, totaling 151,000 copies and 100,000 copies of a 1990 paperback edition from Vintage Press.

"The American Night: The Writings of Jim Morrison, Volume II," was published in 1990 with a first printing of 95,000 copies. "That's an extraordinary number," says Peter Gethers, publisher/editorial director of Villard. He says that a printing of 5,000 to 7,500 copies is considered huge for a poetry volume. As to why Morrison's poetry is the exception, Gethers offers, "Well, he is Jim Morrison. And his writings do seem to define an era."

The son of a Navy rear admiral, Morrison was born in Melbourne, Fla., on Dec. 8, 1943.

As a child, he read exhaustively. He was about 10 when he wrote his first poem, "The Pony Express." "It was one of those ballad type poems," he once recalled, adding, "I never could get it together, though."

Morrison attended UCLA, where he dropped out in 1965 shortly before graduation. That summer he ran into classmate Ray Manzarek at Venice Beach and sang for him the lyrics he'd written for a song called "Moonlight Drive." It was then that the two decided to form a band, which went on to include guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore.

Singled out by the press as the Doors' pretty boy star, Morrison also stood out as an intellectual. He read and quoted the 19th-Century French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire, as well as the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Some say that toward the end of the Doors' four-year rise and fall--around the time of a notorious 1969 concert in Miami during which he was arrested for indecent exposure--Morrison felt he was a poet trapped in his self-created image as the most outrageous, on-the-edge rock star of his time, his behavior fueled by drugs and later alcohol.

Doors fans did not embrace Morrison the poet. Critics and audiences alike accused him of pretentious posturings.

When the Doors performed at the Aquarius Theater on the Sunset Strip in July, 1969, Morrison--bearded, overweight and wearing little orange glasses--read aloud a poem he'd written after the recent death of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones. Copies of the poem were passed out to the crowd.

When the concert ended, the theater was littered with copies of Morrison's "Ode to LA While Thinking of Brian Jones, Deceased"--many folded into airplanes that were flown across the auditorium.

During his rock career and mostly because of his fame, Morrison's poems appeared in a spate of publications, including Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Free Press and Stereo Review.

In 1968 poet/playwright Michael McClure persuaded him to privately publish his poetry. McClure says he told Morrison that this "would be a kind of trial run. Jim was worried that his poetry would be seen as the poetry of a rock 'n' roll star."

Indeed, for his private printings, Morrison used his full name--James Douglas Morrison.

"The Lords: Notes on Vision" was a compilation of poems and observations, printed on parchment contained in a blue binder with tie-string. "The New Creatures," was a 42-page booklet of poetry. Five-hundred copies of each were printed. Both are now considered collector's items.

In 1969, the two works were combined in "The Lords and the New Creatures" published by Simon & Schuster and reprinted in 1987.

"He was thrilled by the commercial edition," relates McClure. "He was so happy that the publisher didn't beat the rock 'n' roll drums."

However, Morrison was reportedly disappointed that the book was published under the name, Jim Morrison and used a famous pinup picture of him on the jacket. When the paperback edition was being prepared, the publisher substituted a more literary looking photograph of a bearded Morrison at his request.

After Morrison's death, reportedly of heart failure, Pamela Courson tried to get his unpublished writings into print.

In August, 1971, she asked McClure for help. Courson gave him "a very lucidly assembled collection, maybe 150 pages," McClure says. However, he returned the poems and told her she needed to edit them herself.

Courson died of a heroin overdose in 1974. Since her death, McClure says, no one has found the poetry Courson showed him.

Before she died, Pamela Courson was about to inherit Morrison's estate after a long legal battle with the Doors. They claimed they were owed money from the estate, which included song royalties and related merchandising and is said to be worth more than $1 million a year.

The estate was divided between Courson's parents, who live in Palm Desert, and Morrison's parents, Steve and Clara Morrison, who live in the San Diego area and will not discuss the son from whom they were estranged. The profits from Morrison's books of poetry are split between the couples. However the Coursons received control of Morrison's manuscripts, which include large number of poems that were in their daughter's possession when she died.

Pearl Courson says she and her husband Columbus (Corky)--a former Orange County high school principal--continued the efforts to get Morrison's poetry published, "because this was something we felt we had to do for our daughter and for Jim. We thought of him as someone very special in her life."

The Coursons did not involve the Doors in the posthumous publications. "Why should they be involved?" says Pearl Courson. "They had nothing to do with Jim's poetry. They didn't create it. They didn't work with him on it."

A lasting bitterness exists between the Coursons and the Doors because of their daughter's legal difficulties with them and the publication of a paperback biography of Morrison, "No One Here Gets Out Alive." The 1980 book describes tawdry episodes involving Morrison and Courson. Its co-author, Danny Sugerman, is now a Doors consultant.

Of Morrison's poetry, Sugerman says, "We think it's great (that it's being published), but we don't necessarily agree with the way it's being edited.

"If the Doors were the editors and arrangers of Jim's poetry, instead of the people who are doing it, the poetry would come closer to the greatness and timelessness of the lyrics," Sugerman says.

Still other Morrison associates question whether Morrison writings should be posthumously published at all.

Alan Ronay, a longtime friend of Morrison's--who recalls how Morrison used to anguish over a single word, or punctuation--sees the works as unfinished writings.

"If something was thrown in a wastebasket by Cezanne, I don't think it should hang in a museum," says Ronay. "What about the sanctity of the writer?"

The Coursons feel that great efforts have been made to preserve what Morrison intended. Frank and Kathy Lisciandro, who were friends and employees of Morrison and the Doors, assisted the Coursons in putting together the books of poetry. Lisciandro met Morrison at UCLA in 1964. His wife was secretary to the band.

Morrison didn't date his works, but Lisciandro says they were ultimately able to determine the final version of poems--some of which were reworked by Morrison up to 50 times.

According to Lisciandro, "if there was any question" about a poem not being the latest draft, "it was put away and not printed."

Morrison was near-obsessive in drawing a line between his poetry and rock lyrics. That trait bemuses Yale medievalist Maria Rosa Menocal, who says, "If he'd been writing in the 13th Century, there would have been no distinction--poets were writing for songs, as troubadours."

As Menocal, 37, notes, there's a sad footnote to the rise of Morrison the poet: Most bookstores put his poetry in their music sections. The books are also published under the name Jim Morrison, not James Douglas Morrison.

The reason, admits Villard's Peter Gethers, is "they sell better."

As perhaps do the souvenir postcards tourists buy at Morrison's grave at Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where, ironically or fittingly, "the king of orgasmic rock" lies near Moliere, Proust, Oscar Wilde and Honore de Balzac.

I'm a resident of a city They've just picked me to play the Prince of Denmark Poor Ophelia All those ghosts he never saw Floating to doom On an iron candle Come back, brave warrior Do the dive On another channel from "Ode to LA While Thinking of Brian Jones, Deceased" by Jim Morrison

When the still sea conspires an armor And her sullen and aborted Currents breed tiny monsters, True sailing is dead Awkward instant And the first animal is jettisoned Legs furiously pumping Their stiff green gallop, And heads bob up Poise Delicate Pause Consent In mute nostril agony Carefully refined And sealed over "Horse Latitudes" by Jim Morrison.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Shakespeare allusions in Jim Morrison's poetry
by Xenia Bystrov
Ivanovo State University, Ivanovo Oblast, Russia

Jim Morrison (1943-1971) was one of the most educated and well-read poets of his time. He was interested in Greek drama and Artaud theater and just the theater concept in itself. A born poet, signer and actor Morrison managed to reveal his talents while working as a frontman of The Doors. He didn`t just sing but acted trying this or that role of a shaman-poet, of a Greek god Dyonis, of a mythic Lizard King. Morrison was a real poet-performer, he created his own tragedy in his mind and through his poetry he dramatized his inner feelings and emotions.

Though Morrison preferred the epic theater of Brecht and the Theater of Cruelty of Artaud to traditional theater associated with Shakespeare for the latter lacks the possibility of involving the spectator into the action as a participant of a certain rite, Morrison respected greatly Shakespeare`s works and while reading Wilderness we can`t but find lots of Shakespeare allusions in his poetry.

In Ode to LA while thinking of Brian Jones, Deceased Morrison writes:

I’m a resident of a city
They’ve just picked me to play
the Prince of Denmark…

The poet feels himself a Hamlet – and that may seem old-fashioned and even banal but the thing is that the existential problem of to-be-or-not-to-be is actually the only one worth mentioning in poetry. Death may surely be called one of the central problems in Morrison`s poetry. Morrison as a true visionary poet forsaw lots of things and predicted his own death. He died a very young man at the age of 27. Image of death, the end, appears throughout his poetry. A poet feeling his end too close couln`t but asked himself whether the life was worth living, whether the life was worth being a sacrifice for a revealed truth:

…You’ve left your
Nothing
to compete w/
Silence…

Ode to LA is devoted to Brian Jones, a rock musician (The Rolling Stones) whosemysterious death in a swimming pool influenced Morrison and provoked him to writing a poem languorous with images of water, pools, trampling board and dead bodies:

…Poor Ophelia

All those ghosts he never saw
Floating to doom
On an iron candle

Come back, brave warrior
Do the dive
On another channel

Hot buttered pool
Where’s Marrakesh
Under the falls
the wild storm
where savages fell out
in late afternoon
monsters of rhythm…

Shakespeare`s Ophelia may have some resemblence to Brian Jones and even to Morrison`s own death as he died in a bathroom in Paris in 1971. The official version was heart attack. Applying Morrison`s death to the poem makes the latter twice more terrifying:

Ophelia

Leaves, sodden
in silk

Chlorine
dream
mad stifled
Witness

The diving board, the plunge
The pool

You were a fighter
a damask musky muse

You were the bleached
Sun
for TV afternoon

horned-toads
maverick of a yellow spot

Look now to where it’s got
You

in meat heaven
w/the cannibals
& jews

The gardener
Found
The body, rampant, Floating

Lucky Stiff
What is this green pale stuff
You’re made of

Poke holes in the goddess
Skin

Will he Stink
Carried heavenward
Thru the halls
of music

No chance.

Requiem for a heavy
That smile
That porky satyr’s
leer
has leaped upward

into the loam

Another important image in Morrison`s poetry is the Far Arden. Far Arden is known to the reader from Shakespeare`s As You Like It. In Morrison`s poetry Far Arden symbolizes freedom, joy and music, it is a mystic forest where songs and dances rule:

Ladies & gentlemen:
please attend carefully to these words & events
It’s your last chance, our last hope.
In this womb or tomb, we’re free of the
swarming streets.
The black fever which rages is safely
out those doors
My friends & I come from
Far Arden w/dances, &
new music
Everywhere followers accure
to our procession.
Tales of Kings, gods, warriors
and lovers dangled like
jewels for your careless pleasure

(he enters stage)

The poet tries a role of a middle age minstrel, a vagabond, a wanderer, who chose his life be an ever feast of life. Tales of kings and queens attract Morrison`s imagination. He admires the illusion of harmony in Shakespeare`s world:

Under the moon
Beneath the stars
They reel & dance
The young folk

Led to the Lake
by a King & Queen

O, I want to be there
I want us to be there
Beside the lake
Beneath the moon
Cool & swollen
dripping its hot
liquor

(Signals)

A poet of the XXth century, when a man was left alone, when the death of the god was officially proclaimed and life was changed for existence with no aim in life, Shakespeare`s Far Arden stands for middle age utopia, a world of fiction and illusions, a beautiful forest where young folk sing and dance and the poet would gladly plump for this world of dreams.

Traditionally Shakespeare`s images are reflected intertextually in the works of the poets of the following centuries. Morrison as a poet of tradition contributed this tendency greatly. He interpreted Shakespeare`s images through his own scope of vision of a poet born in the XXth century whose poetic style was worked out on the base of existential philosophy combined with the tradition of visionary poets, Indian religion and American avant-garde of the 1950-60s.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

What are your favourites and what are your thoughts on James Douglas Morrison Poet rather than Jim Morrison rock star?


"But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly to comprehend."
The final paragraph of The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley.

"If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel."
Jim Morrison

"To be a poet meant more to Jim than writing poems.
It meant embracing the tragedy, fate had chosen for him and fulfilling that destiny with gusto and nobility"
Paul A. Rothchild 1993

"An American Prayer documents a fragment of the passion of Jim Morrison. It is not art as he would have it, but nothing posthumous is perfect. It is not the whole picture but the best part of the trip is intact. And like finding a roll of Diego Rivera's under an industrial sink, it is treasure unearthed. We feel a sense of
guilt but we are grateful for the glimpse. Notes toward a symphony of ritual. Last movements to reach out, to penetrate. New information. Interesting, inspiring new ammunition and that is truly something."
Patti Smith Creem Magazine 1979.

[adam]

i think that unlike his music, jim's poetry is very much locked into the times in which he wrote it.

the music is timeless, the poetry is very 1960s (like his beat poet mates)

as ppl said waaaay back when this thread was started, jim's true gift lay in communicating with an audience, be it poetry, songs (prob even dirty jokes!!) he could get peopel to listen & what to listen & it's hard to pin down why - the tone of voice? maybe? but jim had a voice that people listened to & that is what (IMHO) drives his art

[casandra]

I can’t comment if Jim was a poet like the beats, because I haven’t read anything of beat poetry. I'm not a good reader of poetry, because I prefer the novels. The poetry I've read more is Spanish poetry , and a bit French (XVIIIth and XIXth century) and a bit English poetry at XIXth century, but both translated to Spanish.

However, I think Morrison was a poet in growth, with qualities, but he had potential poet. We also have to distinguish between the poems published by him when he was alive and published posthumously, as these are taken from his notebooks and are inconclusive poems, of which we don’t know their ideas about how he wanted to publish them.

Anyway, what most get my attention is the aesthetics and lyricism of the poems, they don’t just tell a story; some times they have an ambiguous meaning of words, but Jim has a talent on choice of words in themselves as sound and in harmony behind the verse. I think it is the true quality of his poems.

The first time I hear COTL (it must have been in the middle 80's when I bought second-hand Absolutely Live vinyl album and then I had no idea that Jim Morrison had written poetry, and then I just knew a few English, I was studying in high school), what struck me was the verse:

For seven years I dwelt
In the loose palace of exile,
Playing strange games
With the girls of the island.

I felt that it was great by the combination of sounds. And I think that is his best quality: perfect diction in reciting verses and intonation of voice and choice of words to produce an effect and musicality not only for their meaning but by the internal rhythm and in harmony behind the verse; it is the musicality or sound aesthetics. The poetry is not only meaning but aesthetic.

I don’t know if there are aesthetic styles or movements in English-speaking poets are but in Spanish poetry there are poets who prefer aesthetic, lyricism and musicality in the expression and the dispersion of meaning. I think Morrison could be in those styles.

I seem very difficult to explain this.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Feb 18, 2011 21:28:50 GMT casandra said:

The first time I hear COTL (it must have been in the middle 80's when I bought second-hand Absolutely Live vinyl album and then I had no idea that Jim Morrison had written poetry, and then I just knew a few English, I was studying in high school), what struck me was the verse:

For seven years I dwelt
In the loose palace of exile,
Playing strange games
With the girls of the island.

I felt that it was great by the combination of sounds. And I think that is his best quality: perfect diction in reciting verses and intonation of voice and choice of words to produce an effect and musicality not only for their meaning but by the internal rhythm and in harmony behind the verse; it is the musicality or sound aesthetics. The poetry is not only meaning but aesthetic.

You make an excellent point and don't worry about the language barrier as you explain things fine.
Frank Lisciandro once said that Jim used words not for their particular meaning but for the effect the words had.
I found when I first began to listen to COTL on the Absolutely Live album I did not notice the words as such and was simply moved along by the rhythm they had in conjunction to the music.

It is hard to explain your thoughts on poetry when you are not into that medium. I too am not poetically minded and dismissed Morrison's written work for 30 years. I loved the power of his voice on COTL and on the first bootleg to contain the March 1969 session 'Rock Is Dead' which appeared before American Prayer.
I do love American Prayer as well but it is a mistake as the music dilutes the power of Jim's voice.
I can understand why they did it and it helped get Jim's poetry out to a larger audience but if and when they release anymore of his poetry I would much prefer they do not add anything to it.

As you rightly say most of what we have is incomplete and it's hard to say what Jim would have been satisfied with and published but sadly it's all we have and to judge his worth on incomplete poetry is not at all satisfactory.
But it's better than nothing and we can get a feel for what he meant by what he wrote.
Some of it is indeed profound, some of it silly.
I was annoyed that the band put Death Of My Cock on the American Prayer album as that too was a mistake as it just pandered to the Mythical view of Jim the performer and conjured up Miami.
The Doors did him a disservice with that one and could easily have put out a less sensational piece of poetry.
But they wanted to make money so included their interpretation of Jim's poetry.

I reread the three books I had in 2001 as I was doing a 30 year issue of my fanzine and with the information given to me by Doors fans was able to appreciate a lot of what I had for three decades dismissed.
I was wrong on that I freely admit. Jim wrote some extraordinary verse and who knows what he could have put out had he lived and sobered up.

That for me is the mistake a lot of Doors fans make. They spend too much time arguing about how he died and forget that he also lived. His poetry is the best Legacy of James Douglas Morrison as opposed to Jim Morrison. A lot of Doors fans can't seem to differentiate between the two.
I myself did just that in the 70s but realised my mistake and have spent the last 30 years trying to understand how the guy lived rather than how or where he died.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

When you’re strange by Daniel Nester

A hell of an interesting little viewpoint on this very subject well worth taking the time to read.

Any of you lot got any thoughts on the topic of Jim Morrison's worth as a poet?
It's a hard question to evaluate Jim. I took 30 years after he died to really have a worthwhile opinion.
Doors fans for me don't give Jim Morrison the Poet the due he deserves and spend too much time on Jim Morrison rock asshole.
That's not a criticism simply an observation honed from 30 years of doing exactly that myself.

There are far to many lies told about Jim Morrison and it is entwined in far too much Myth which in turn is used to make far too much money from an image the guy hated.

Well to celebrate his birthday why not try to discuss the Poet and the Man himself instead of the Manzarekesque caricature that we have seen exploited this last 20 odd years.