I think it was T.S. Eliot who talked about good poetry being felt before it's understood. I believe that. There are some bands where I love their lyrics but I don't have a clue what they're on about.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
T.S. Eliot was one of the first poets introduced to me when I started studying literature and has felt like a close friend ever since. No one nails urban despair quite like Eliot.
I wrote poetry before I wrote songs, and T.S. Eliot was my inspiration. I love his honesty and try to bring that to my own songwriting.
People used to say poems were different to songs but I don't think they are.
In the late 60s and early 70s, I did get interested in voices, and in narration and embodying the voice, making the poem sound like a real person talking.
The poet is someone, I think, who's interested in registering experience immediately or giving you the sense of immediacy and directness.
I think there is a poem out there for everyone, to be an entrance into the poetry and a relationship with it.
What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I'm older. Thank God for growing up.
That was when Neil discovered Jack Nietzsche. They went off and pretty much came up with that by themselves, but I thought it was a great song, and I was more than happy to do my harmony parts on it.
Amy Winehouse and Paul Weller are examples of poets, I think.
Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.