Dusty Sang and staff of the redoubtable "Stay Thirsty" magazine conducted an interview with David Lehman about his poetry in general and "Playlist" in particular.
Here's an excerpt:
STAY THIRSTY: Your poem references music, movies, people and events, often from the mid-twentieth century. What is it about that period of time that so attracts you?
DAVID LEHMAN: The music and movies of the 1940s and 1950s are superior to those of our own time. I value what you can see and hear in those old films and songs: wit, romance, glamour, charm, style, a belief in outmoded virtues such as honor and heroism.
STAY THIRSTY: Radio has played a character role in your poetry in the past and, in this poem, you credit Channel 71 on the Sirius radio network as almost a tour guide to the past as you drive from Ithaca to New York City. Of all the electronic media, you seem to be most enchanted with radio. Why?
DAVID LEHMAN: The radio – to use McLuhan’s categories – is a “hot” medium in the sense that it requires the reader to participate in a way that television does not. If you listen to a ball game on the radio, you feel impelled to visualize the stadium and the action. You’re more involved than when you watch the game on television or on your computer via an Internet server. Sirius 71, (“Siriusly Sinatra”) is excellent as are “Real Jazz” (67), “40s Junction” (73), and “Symphony Hall” (75).
STAY THIRSTY: From classical music to jazz, from Hoagy Carmichael to Nat King Cole, from Louis Armstrong to Ira Gershwin, and from Beethoven to Schubert, music appears to be the superhighway into your soul. What sparked your love of music and if there were three songs that most represent who you are, what would they be?
DAVID LEHMAN:
Impossible to answer, and I would name three different songs each time I am asked. But here are three all-time greats that I'd choose as among my favorites:
The Lady is a Tramp
Our Love is Here to Stay
Too Marvelous for Words
The first because of its superior irony; the second because of the marriage of lovely music and simple but lively lyric; the third because of the melody and the wonderful bridge crafted by Johnny Mercer: “You’re much, too much, and oh, too very, very, / to ever be / in Webster’s Dictionary.” Three of the best versions of the song are those of Jo Stafford, Doris Day, and Helen Forrest. May I mention two other songs? Harold Arlen’s “Come Rain or Come Shine,” a love song suffused with melancholy, and Jerome Kern’s “Make Believe,” a soaring ode to love at first sight and to the power of the imagination.
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