An Electric Guitar Rendition

My longtime YIMBY comrade Dan Bertolet has returned to his 1990s roots. Last week, he released a My-Bloody-Valentine-demos-style set of pop tunes prompted by teenage poet laureates such as W.B. Yeats, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, e.e. cummings, and Robert Frost, along with a few other geniuses of verse: Louise Glück, Alice Oswald, and Wislawa Szymborska. He also sneaks in an Ocean Vuong poem! It’s an ambitious, shimmering 14-song set that Dan, going by Swirl & Ache (Frost), calls “Bonewebs, Hungry Seas, & Other Delights” (Oswald, I think).

Dan’s warm and plaintive vocals—featuring gracefully crafted recitative-like melodies—are word-for-word renditions of the poems. And the opening track is a rendition of one of my poems: “I’m Delighted My Young Avant-Garde Friend,” which was my attempt, back in 2019, to write a YIMBY villanelle.

Ultra teenage poet laureate Dylan Thomas wrote the famous villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” with the memorable repeated lines: “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” My pro-development version: “I’m delighted my young avant-garde friend/Let there be light, let there be infrastructure, amen,” which Dan leans into with a wicked overdrive guitar hook.

Here’s Dan’s explanation of his project:

“Hey there insta folks, I made some music and I guess it's good to share things that you make, so if you're game, copy/paste this bandcamp link:

https://swirlandache.bandcamp.com/album/bonewebs-hungry-seas-other-delights

”Over the past 16 months I got a bit obsessed with writing and recording little guitar pop ditties using other people's poems for lyrics. You all can blame @city_hex for getting me started.”

And here’s a recording of me reading the poem on the Cathexis Northwest web site back in 2021 (when it was first published.)