The song I've chosen to defend as poetry is Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens. The song, off the album Illinois, is one that never fails to make me feel a little sad, but in a weirdly happy way, after listening to it. (Here is a video if you want to see the song performed.)
The song, told in a story-like format, centers around a guy and his friend who discovers she has bone cancer. It begins with the lines, "Goldenrod and the 4H stone / The things I brought when I found out you had cancer of the bone." 4H is a youth development organization with a four-leaf clover symbol. Paired with goldenrod, a yellow flower native to North America, one can imagine that the boy brought his friend flowers when he heard about her awful news. A later verse talks about religion, hinting at a shred faith between the pair, "All the glory that the Lord has made / And the complications you could do without / When I kissed you on the mouth." Now the listener can infer that their relationship is becoming more than just platonic. The "complications" mentioned are not just her sickness anymore, they now include the future problems that may come with getting close to someone who's very sick. (We've all seen The Fault In Our Stars.) The boy Sufjan is singing about starts to question his faith, after seeing no improvement in his friend, with the lines, "Tuesday night at the Bible study / We lift our hands and pray over your body / But nothing ever happens." It's not so uncommon for one to question God while experiencing something really painful. After all, if God is so great, why would he put anyone (with remotely decent faith) through something as horrible as losing someone to cancer?
Soon it becomes more obvious the pain that the two of them are in. Their frazzled mental states start to show in both their physical appearances and actions, described by the verse, "All the glory when you ran outside / With your shirt tucked in and your shoes untied / And you told me not to follow you." The girl's tucked in shirt shows that although she still is trying to look nice and put-together, her untied shoes are a clear giveaway to how she's really doing. Sufjan later mentions "the great divide" which could be a reference to the overhanging fear of his friend dying. Similar to repeated lines and themes in a poem, now the boy's shirt is tucked while his shoes are still untied and we see his declining mental health with the line, "I am crying in the bathroom." Finally, towards the end of the song, the girl passes away. This is never explicitly stated, but instead we are told that "In the morning when you finally go / And the nurse runs in with her head hung low / And the cardinal hits the window." I really love that last line- the cardinal hits the window as abruptly as the news of the death hits everyone waiting in the hospital room.
At the end of the song, Sufjan's voice fades away with another melancholy complaint about God, "And He takes and He takes and He takes..."
I love this song! I have always been amazed at how it tells such an elaborate story in just a few minutes.
ReplyDeleteI like how you brought up how their clothes show how they feel. I think the line "and you told me not to follow you" gives a lot of perspective from the girl. She knows she'll die, and she doesn't want him to live his life mourning her after she's gone. She doesn't want him to follow her
ReplyDeleteI've listened to this song before and loved it but your reading of it has added a lot more to the experience. That sounds icky but you have some really cool ideas that never would have occurred to me.
ReplyDeleteI've listened to this song before and loved it but your reading of it has added a lot more to the experience. That sounds icky but you have some really cool ideas that never would have occurred to me.
ReplyDelete