So I'm listening to the new Hold Steady and he name checks Kerouac's best-known character and I'm very please don't do that and then he name checks John Berryman, gives him a whole verse, and suddenly Gideon and Charlemagne are Bones and Henry, and the Springsteen structure and Squier riffs are Finn's sonnet forms and skronky dialect, and it suddenly clicks for me why some people can't STAND their music some people can't STAND to hear people talk about poetry, it's the inch that if you give it leads to smarmy condescension and weaselly profundity that ends up repeating totally hollow lines until you think they mean something, "boys and girls in America" or "I'm gonna walk around and drink some more." Or worse, some urgent news about Judas kisses.

But. I don't feel that way about poetry. I like it, even when putative rock stars haul out its fifty-years-dead corpse for cred. I like it then especially, actually. Hey that's my neighborhood on Law and Order!

UPDATE: I wish I could talk about music without admiration or irony. Maybe I'm just sore that the Hold Steady have turned back into Lifter Puller, all ironic distance and tedious indie film scenarios disguised as short stories no recognizable adult life. FWIW, "'It's great to see you back in a bar band, baby' / It's great to see you're still in the bars" counts as recognizable adult life.