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Tributaries: Stan Rogal + More Songs the Radio Won’t Play
In his new collection More Songs the Radio Won’t Play (ECW Press), Stan Rogal plays with found text from non-poetical sources to craft poems that rewrite popular songs into something entirely new—something that would, as the collection title suggests, never be played on radio.
Read “Friday I’m in Love”
from More Songs the Radio Won’t Play (ECW Press)
Friday I’m in Love
The Cure
Another manic Monday, can’t trust that day
Nothin’ really wrong, just feel I don’t belong
Emergent theme of unsettling otherness
Twilights of androgyny & inattention
Wanna shoo-ooh–ooh–ooh-oot the whole day down
Sun comes up, it’s Tuesday morning
Tuesday’s a heartache, love comes, love goes
Lying with you, you turn your face from me
Tuesday afternoon I’m just beginning to see
That’s right, you’re wrong; you’re wrong, that’s right
Anyway, I’d rather listen to Coltrane
Than go through all that shit again
Waiting for Wednesday, Wednesday morning 3 a.m.
Watch my chest gently rise, gently fall
Now straight, now slightly bent
As yesterday was the day for watching
A universe tethered to the corporeal form
A fulcrum between scales of the heavenly body
& temptations of the flesh
We used to meet every Thursday, remember?
In the afternoon, for a coupla beers, a game of pool, &
— well…one thing leads to another, yeah? —
But that was then
I won’t wear makeup on Thursdays anymore
I’m tired of covering up
But, hey, it’s Friday, I’m in love
Saturday begins the same as other days
But ends up different in many ways
It’s the Saturday night special
Got a barrel that’s blue & cold between my teeth
10:15 & the tap drips under the strip light
Drip, drip, drip, & I’m sitting at the kitchen sink alone
A discursive visceral wondering
Should I kill myself or go bowling?
Oh, Sunday morning
You sure have changed since yesterday
Sunday bloody Sunday, let’s go
The real battle’s just begun
Another day like every other one
But, hey, it’s Friday, I’m in love
Shift away from sombre elegy toward satiric exuberance
Complete with flapping louvres & retinal scans
A universe of clichés so familiar
That they seem at once comforting & strange
An inscrutability of purpose & yearning that jostles
The underside of meaning
Such an easy beat
Within an atmosphere of pop glamour & celebrity fetishism
Tonight, I’ll spend my bread
Tonight, I’ll lose my head
They call it stormy Monday [but Tuesday’s just as bad]
Wednesdays there’s no cure, Thursdays can’t endure
Saturday, Sunday, draw the blinds
But, hey, it’s Friday, I’m in love
An interview with Stan Rogal
All Lit Up: Can you tell us a bit about your book and how it came to be? How did you
come to write “Friday I’m in Love” and how is it representative of your collection?
Stan Rogal: The concept for …more songs the radio won’t play… came to me while I listened to Canadian singer songwriter Kathleen Edwards’ “One More Song the Radio Won’t Like.” As a poet, I related to the same notion that, while writing a song or a poem was difficult enough, it was doubly difficult (if not near-impossible) to get the work out into the world via the various media. I decided it might be fun to take popular songs that did make the radio and rewrite the lyrics to ensure they would never be played on radio. I did this by inserting text from various sources usually considered non-poetical, including snippets of science, philosophy, literary theory, biography, history, and so on. I have since discovered that, as poems, I have managed to get several of these pieces accepted for publication by magazines and blogs, plus, as the prized fetish object, THE BOOK. Part of my interest in pop songs was the fact that many of the songs dealt with youthful romantic love and I wanted to explore, perhaps even explode, that theme a bit. “Friday I’m in Love” seemed to fit that carefree, fun theme. So, I constructed much of the poem using lines from other songs that dealt with love and days of the week. Of course, in my version, the protagonist considers suicide on a Saturday night while the kitchen tap drips, but then, the calendar flips, and he’s back to Friday, I’m in love. Happy ending.
ALU: Has your idea of poetry changed since you began writing?
SR: Yes. I find I’m now less interested in the “what” of a poem, than I am with the “how”; less interested in the “meaning” than I am with the “construction.”
ALU: Has your idea of poetry changed since you began writing?
SR: I enjoy the compact form and the freedom the form provides. I like the fact that not only can I provide multiple meanings to a reader to choose from (if they wish), I can also allow the reader to construct their own.
ALU: If your collection had a theme song, what would it be?
SR: I’d have to stick with “One More Song the Radio Won’t Like.”
ALU: What’s a non-written piece of art (e.g. a song / album, painting, sculpture, or film) that you feel is a “sister city” or companion to your collection.
SR: Maybe Duchamp’s readymade, L.H.O.O.Q, the Mona Lisa with a moustache and goatee drawn on it. The title when pronounced in French, puns the phrase “Elle a chaud au cul,” translating colloquially in “She has a hot ass.” The playfulness and irreverence of teasing high art and providing a shift in interpretation, appeals to me.
Stan recommends…
“Sunrise with Sea Monsters” from rob mclennan’s
World’s End, (ARP Books)
ALU: Why did you choose rob mclennan‘s poem “Sunrise with Sea Monsters” from his collection World’s End,? What do you love most about this particular poem?
SR: I chose a poem from rob mclennan’s book World’s End, from ARP Books, 2023 — “Sunrise with Sea Monsters.” I enjoyed how rob used a quote from Emmanuel Hocquard that begins “Literality is vertiginous” — that is, using words in their most strictly prosaic, unimaginative adherence to meaning, is mind-numbing to the point of dizzying — and creates a poem that is, in itself, dizzying via its non-literality, using language that is sparse and imagistic to suggest a landscape (seascape) that is “this beach, // unblurred. Withdrawn, / and monstrous. Hideous at first. / And later, clarifies.” Nice.
Sunrise with Sea Monsters
Literality is vertiginous, like the kind of double-barreled
tautology it produces.
Emmanuel Hocquard
Across the bow,
a cut in ailment, mercy. Burdened,
tabloid-tone,
undone. This dawn
unwinds, horizon. Summarize:
elegiac. Time’s
nostalgic schema, bends
a yellow shadow.
Beds: each thing
a shining tone. This breach,
this beach,
unblurred. Withdrawn,
and monstrous. Hideous, at first.
And later, clarifies. Unbuttoned,
arisen from the language. Literality
is vertiginous. Quote.
A silence, cut through
space.
* * *
Born in Vancouver, and now living in Toronto, Stan Rogal is the author of 27 books, including eight novels, seven story collections, and 12 poetry collections. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the U.S., and Europe. Rogal is also a produced playwright and the former coordinator of Toronto’s popular Idler Pub Reading Series.
* * *
Thanks to Stan for answering our questions, and to ECW Press for the text of “Friday I’m in Love” from More Songs the Radio Won’t Play, which is available to order now (and get 15% off with the code TRIBUTARIES until April 30!). Thanks also to ARP Books for the text of “Sunrise with Sea Monsters” from rob mclennan’s World’s End,.
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