{"id":418,"date":"2012-11-16T09:14:23","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T09:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/douglascowie.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2012-11-14T08:45:09","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T08:45:09","slug":"song-of-the-week-john-allyn-smith-sails-by-okkervil-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Week: &#8220;John Allyn Smith Sails&#8221; by Okkervil River"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.<\/p>\n<p>This week, &#8220;John Allyn Smith Sails&#8221; by Okkervil River:<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nOK7ownE3Hg\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The song narrates the suicide of one of my favorite poets, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poets.org\/poet.php\/prmPID\/6\" target=\"_blank\">John Berryman<\/a>.\u00a0 The detailed story (the song is basically a ballad) gets narrated across two different melodies.\u00a0 The first builds from voice and acoustic guitar through a gradual accumulation of additional instruments until the full band plus strings accompany the jump from that Minneapolis bridge, and after a note from the violin lasting a couple bars, the melody of the Beach Boys version of &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sloop_John_B\" target=\"_blank\">Sloop John B<\/a>&#8221; takes over, and builds to a climactic finish that mixes original lyrics, lines from the folk song and some phrases borrowed from Berryman&#8217;s poetry.\u00a0 The whole song presents a powerful and emotional combination of words and music, and the cultural cross-polination of rock, folk and poetry creates a further set of powerful resonances, too.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a bonus: John Berryman talking about his greatest work, <em>The Dream Songs<\/em>, and reciting my favorite of his poems, Dream Song 14:<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1YUu3L-qGMI\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22John%20Allyn%20Smith%20Sails%22%20by%20Okkervil%20River\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it. This week, &#8220;John Allyn Smith Sails&#8221; by Okkervil River: The song narrates the suicide of one of my favorite poets, John Berryman.\u00a0 The detailed story (the song is basically a ballad) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22John%20Allyn%20Smith%20Sails%22%20by%20Okkervil%20River\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-of-the-week","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":420,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}