Drumming Armageddon

by George Drew

Overview

"Often it is said of contemporary music that it's the soundtrack of our lives. If so, Drumming Armageddon is a poetic rendering of that soundtrack: Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Folk, The Blues-they're the genres comprising it, and they all are present in this collection. The poems pay homage to the artists-Dylan, Clapton, Lennon, Crow, The Beatles, Elvis-and track the poet's personal musical biography: his experiences and memories the music both relates to and marks. The poems, like the music, have plenty of swagger. Finally, though, they remind us that, at their best, poetry is music, music poetry"--

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948692359
Publisher:	Madville Publishing
Publication date:	05/28/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	76
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

George Drew is the author of eight poetry collections, with Pastoral Habits: New and Selected Poems, Down & Dirty and The View From Jackass Hill, winner of the 2010 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, all from Texas Review Press. His eighth, Fancy's Orphan, appeared in 2017 with Tiger Bark Press. Drumming Armageddon is his ninth collection. Recently George won the Knightville Poetry Contest, The New Guard, his poem appearing in the 2017 edition, and two other poems as Honorable Mention in the Steve Kowit Poetry Contest, appeared in the 2018 and 2019 San Diego Poetry Anthology. He was a recipient of the Bucks County Muse Award in 2016 for contributions to the Bucks County PA literary community. Recently, one of his poems from Fancy's Orphan appeared in Verse Daily. George's biography will appear in Mississippi Poets: A Literary Guide, University of Mississippi Press, edited by Catherine Savage Brosman.

Table of Contents

Contents

1.

1  The Word Swagger

2  On Another Epic Trip Around the Sun

3  Oatmeal

4  The Blues are Like a Shoelace

5  The Sensible Daddy Blues

6  Albert and Stevie Ray on PBS

7  Second Fiddle

8  Listening to the Blues Six Miles Up

9  Listening to Country on the Tarmac at O’Hare

10  Don’t Blame Me (A Country Tune)

12  The Sheryl Crow I Mean

13  Missing Randy Travis by a Country Mile

14  Easter at the Café Destino

15  Friday Night at Caffe Lena

17  Peter the Magic Seer

19  Ain’t You Lucky?

2.

23  The Rolling Stones Poem

25  Jiving Jimmy Clanton

27  I, Too, Thought Eric Clapton was God

28  Roy Orbison in Machu Picchu

30  Why I’m Sad About the Death of Paul Revere

32  The Poem About The Beatles

34  The Man Who Wanted to be Carlos Santana

35  No Other Wizard: Ziggy Stardust in St. Peter’s Celestial Rehab Center

37  Elvis Sighting in the Arthur Crudup Old Age Home

39  Really, Elton

3.

43  Strange Entanglements

44  Early Morning at the West Side Y

45  The Day After Ray Manzarek Died

46  Ode to Billy Joel

47  Ode to Chuck E. Berry

48  Sorry, Rod

49  John Lennon in a Lamborghini

50  Love Me Do, Baby, Love Me Do

52  The Fab Four in Frost Country

53  Twenty-Seven

55  Drumming Armageddon

56  Who Remembers Herbie?

58  I Know You’re in Detroit

59  Tuning the Radio

60  Bovine Bop

63  About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Studio drummers use the phrase “In the Pocket” when they want to talk about being in that sweet spot right on the beat and tucked straight away into a song. That is exactly where you’ll find George Drew’s voice in the poems of Drumming Armageddon. Drew spins his turntable through the history of electric music from rock-n-roll icons like Chuck Berry, Elvis, the Beatles, and The Rolling Stones, to blues giants like Stevie Ray Vaughn. The poems render these characters much better than any history book could, and what’s even more impressive, the lines ride the melodies of the music in and out of personal narratives deftly telling family stories and offering tributes to friends who’ve passed away. This book rocks like a greatest hits album, and this poet turns in a performance as memorable as any front man could.

—Jack B. Bedell, Poet Laureate, State of Louisiana, 2017-2019

Surely all good poets, especially the ones born in Mississippi, think of their poetry as a sort of blues. George Drew’s Drumming Armageddon is, without question, not merely a celebration of the blues, but the blues in fact. Oh, he channels such heavyweights as Chuck Berry, Gladys Knight, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Aretha, Roy Orbison and so on, but Drew knows the blues are love, how you somehow keep going and keep caring in spite of a world that seems always just a breath away from Armageddon, a terrible world of anger and pain and death. Aptly, he leaves us with Charlie Parker blowing his sax on a lonely country road, playing to a cow. He leaves us wrung out and worn out and whole, putting our envies and sins aside for a little while and saying, Lord have mercy, that boy can sing.

—Jack Butler, Author of Broken Hallelujah

From the Publisher