Poetry: Serious. Not That Serious.
3 POETS AND THEIR MUSICAL EQUIVALENTS 
I attended the Capitol Hill Block Party this past weekend, Seattle's three-day musicfest with acts ranging from Major Lazer, who crowd surfed in a large clear gerbil ball and set your favorite dance songs to his own sick beats, to the Lumineers, who held it down for Denver in a jump-up-on-your-toes, pop-folk, suspendered, tambourined jamboree. It was fun and exhausting and hit almost every one of my musical G-spots (Drake wasn't there, so I can't say the experience was totally fulfilling). It got me thinking—I like certain poets for the vibes they create and the personas they take on. I like different poets in different moods as I enjoy different friends for different moods. Since music is poetry set to music, I began to think about which musicians I love corresponded to poets I love vibes- and lyrics-wise. Here are a few. 1. Father John Misty, one of Friday's headliners at CHBP, put on a great show, replete with dangerously sexy dance moves and frequent chugs from a personal bottle of tequila. The former Fleet Foxes drummer is steeping in a folk-infused L.A. glitz/darkness these days, perhaps best personified in his song “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings.” Video below! Aubrey Plaza, comically dour office girl of Parks & Rec fame stars.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tHJB9Po_HcSoulbond Poet: I'm voting Charles Bukowski on this one. Check out “this kind of fire.” The self-destruction-in-motion. The macabre. The machismo. The struggle with power over one's destiny. The powerlessness.2. Ani Difranco writes beautiful, disturbing, confessional songs about relationships, her shifting sexuality, and how to live in an emotional landscape that swings pendulum-like between painful and awe-inspiring. Much of the savagery and carelessness she addresses is self-inflicted. One of my favorites is “Gravel:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGh0_Ok6NmoSoulbond Poet: Let's go with the queen of self-exposing anguish herself, Anne Sexton. Sexton's life was heavily marked by mental illness, years of psychoanalysis (leading her to poetry), fractured romantic and familial relationships, and suicide. Along the way, in “madness and near-madness,” she penned some of the most heartbreaking, vicious, and immediately relatable poetry ever written. I recommend her wickedly funny and insightful retake on the fairytales we grew up with, Transformations, and the classic “Her Kind.”3. Girl Talk, AKA Gregg Michael Gillis, takes the songs you love—from Biggie to John Lennon—and mashes them all together in one delightful stew. It's musical ADD perfection. It makes you want to dance so maniacally you need a nap afterwards. Girl Talk's genius is finding the common strains in completely different music, such as the desire to survive violent circumstances or the need to let loose after a long work week, and bringing them together in an unlikely maelstrom, at an uncompromising digitally sampled pace. Here's one of my faves:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bMM7tGV9MI Soulbond Poet: Can you see where I'm going with this? A lot of poets use found material/already-existing art to create something entirely new. They also aren't afraid to talk about Britney Spears and Lord Byron in the same poem. I think that's exciting Now, I don't know if you'd call reality show The Hills art, per se [former reality show focusing on Orange Country popular girl Lauren Conrad turning L.A.-resident-trying-to-make-it-in-the-big-bad-world-of-fashion-and-betches] but Kate Durbin's “The Hills, 5” definitely takes what exists, restates it using lyrical blank statements and, ultimately brings meaning to the vapid. P.S. For my Fellow Poetry MFA Students & Grads, or anyone who knows one, a bleak/hilarious take on the day you graduate and your existence thereafter.--Lucy Hitz