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Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Don’t Know Much About Poetry, Part Seven: The Versified Story
(Didn't think you'd be seeing any more of these, did you?)
The story told in poetic form is among the most powerful forms of art. It harnesses effects and devices not available to the prose fictioneer. Sometimes those extra tools are what make the story strike home. It could be because the images appropriate to poetic form are the necessary complements to the bare bones of the story. It could be because the story needs the compelling sense of poetic rhythm to drive home its themes. Or it could be that only rhymed, scansioned verse will serve to evoke the appropriate sense of setting and mood, as is the case in your Curmudgeon's selection for today.
Older readers will likely remember this piece, the lyric to a major hit from the AM radio era of the Sixties. Younger readers might never have heard of it. Your Curmudgeon will be interested in the spread of your reactions.
It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.
I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay.
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat.
And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all remember to wipe your feet,"
And then she said "I got some news this morning from Choctaw Ridge,
"Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge."And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the black-eyed peas:
"Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please."
"There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow."
And Mama said it was a shame about Billy Joe, anyhow.
"Seems like nothing ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge.
"And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge."And brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe,
Had put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show.
And wasn't I talking to him after church last Sunday night?
"I'll have another piece of apple pie; you know it don't seem right.
"I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge,
"And now you tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge."Then Mama said to me, "Child, what's happened to your appetite?
"I've been cookin' all morning and you haven't touched a single bite.
"That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today.
"Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way.
"He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge.
"And she and Billy Joe was throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge."A year has come and gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe,
Brother married Becky Thompson, and they bought a store in Tupelo.
There was a virus goin' 'round, Papa caught it and he died last Spring.
And now Mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything.
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge.
And droppin' them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge.("Ode To Billy Jo," by Bobbie Gentry. Copyright © Northridge Music Company / Universal MCA Publishing.)
It's rather a pity that it would incur the wrath of the Copyright Cops for your Curmudgeon to post an MP3 link to this song. Gentry's brilliant rendition adds yet another dimension to its many assets. But one must make do with what one has.
The rhythm of the verse perfectly captures the ambiance of rural living in the Deep South. It succeeds as it does because it's reinforced by Gentry's perceptive use of setting. She emphasizes the two elements that have always predominated in farm country: grueling, never-ending physical labor and food. To a family of farmers, nothing could ever be more basic, or more important -- and note how both elements are shown to take precedence over the news about Billy Joe's suicide, even as the news is discussed at the dinner table.
That would be enough to make this a fine example of the special effects available to the storyteller through verse, but there's more. Consider the casual, almost contemptuous dismissal of the matter by Papa, from which he continues on to the mention of what really matters to him: five unplowed acres of farmland. Consider the obliviousness of Brother, unaware of the romantic connection between Billy Joe and the narrator, even as he describes several of its outward indicators. Consider the unintentional cruelty of Mama, as oblivious as Brother, in mentioning Brother Taylor, obviously a candidate being put forward for the narrator's affections, in the wake of the news. And consider the powerfully evocative mention that the narrator and Billy Joe had been seen together "throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge" -- but what? A token of their shared affection? An engagement ring? A baby? The structure of the piece compels us to infer that it was something important to them both, of which the narrator's parents had not been allowed to know -- possibly because they would never have permitted the romance to continue.
The final verse seals the agonies and the ironies together. A year later, Papa, to whom Billy Joe's death meant so little, has himself passed away before his time, leaving behind a widow who "doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything." Brother has moved on, as brothers do. And the narrator, apparently the last able-bodied, mentally whole adult in the family, whiles away her idle hours in remembrance of a loss the others never grasped.
"Ode To Billy Joe" was a huge hit when it was released. It lingers in the memories of many for reasons they don't quite comprehend. Your Curmudgeon would suggest that a great part of it is the extraordinary fusion between form and content Gentry achieved in this short versified story -- an accomplishment many orders of magnitude beyond what most pop artists could attain, and powerful enough to strike home even in the minds of those to whom a prose rendition of the story would have seemed intolerably sappy, infinitely removed from their far more urgent concerns.
Art is human endeavor that communicates some enduring truth in an emotionally evocative manner. Poetry, including the sort set to music, should be held to no lower standard.
(Thanks to Charles Hill for reminding your Curmudgeon of this wonderful piece.)
Comments
It’s worth mentioning, also, that attempts to turn this story into an actual motion picture failed miserably, simply because throwing it up on screen didn’t convey any of the subtext that Bobbie Gentry had tucked away into her narrative. (Besides, trying to show what they were throwing off the bridge adds nothing to the story; like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, you’re supposed to fill this in yourself.)
Posted by CGHill on 05/24/2005 at 08:14 AMFWIW, “Ode to Billy Joe” is getting airplay currently on country radio. I’m not hep enough to the Nashville sound to know if it’s the original (sounds a lot like) or a more-recent cover.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 05/24/2005 at 08:39 AMThere was a novelization as well, which I read. It explained why Billy Joe committed suicide, but was otherwise pretty unmemorable.
Thanks a lot, the song is running through my head now.Posted by on 05/24/2005 at 09:22 AMI remember this song well, and always thought that Billy Joe had jumped off the bridge because he couldn’t live with something he’d done - and the only hint in the song was the narrator and Billy Joe “throwin’ somethin’ off the Tallahatchie Bridge”. As this was 5 or 6 years before Roe v Wade and abortion was taking center stage, many at the time thought the “somethin’” was a baby. In light of the song’s orientation to tragic (young) death ie Billy Joe and the father, this always seemed the most logical conclusion to me.
Another excellent song written by Gentry is Fancy. Always liked it, too.
Posted by Joe on 05/24/2005 at 11:06 AM
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