Comfort Music (Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy”): Essay by Su Zi

GAS: Poetry, Art and Music welcomes Su Zi as a monthly columnist!

Zoeglossia Fellow 2023

Poet-writer, artist, equestrian

Creates Red Mare, an eco-feminist, poetry chapbook series that is handmade (each cover is a numbered block print, each copy is bound by hand sewing, editions limited to under 50, publishes at summer and winter solstice).

Publications in zines as well as full titles in poetry, essay, art – Multiple contributions to Unlikely Stories, automachination, GAS.

Titles from various publishers include: Danke, Flux , Chirp, Sister Woman, Solstice Epistles, Three Days, Chicago Poems, Pillar of Salt, Lit, The Tissue of Language , Building Community, Transgression in Motion,Tropical Depression, #100TPC

 Comfort Music (Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy”)

In the social unsettlements of spring, we might find ourselves spiritually beleaguered. For those for whom the old ways of community interaction are no longer viable, there’s respite in archival music. While current times see archives themselves as being under a bit of a barbaric threat, it’s our history—the embers we pass forward as our legacy. 

If we consider the span of time for a generation to be around the half-century mark, we may find the influences of our forebearers upon our current culture. In the case of music, many automated playlists will routinely include music composed at a different time. Of all the arts, music has become the most accessible form, for while it might be some privilege or risk to attend live music performances, recorded music allows for a timeless and global experience.

In the case of plundered libraries, archival activism exists to ensure preservation and often these are curated from private collections; in music, these collections might include the holdings of a broadcast company, or someone’s private collection, and a variety of swap meets. Of course, there’s the accessibility of cyber download, from songs to the entirety of an artist’s work, and for the reason of accessibility, let us consider a widely disseminated work as viable for general social solace.

A half century ago, a single musical work that was widely disseminated was a hit, a cultural moment; as our culture has staggered into our current era, how hot is that once hit tune? While the complete works of this artist are indubitably influential, for our needs for solace, allow a listen to Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy”, which has an Apple AI falsely cheerful introduction that includes “the revelation is that political music [...] can be inviting” and an odd reference to hippies.

A cautionary note for this-century listeners: this is analog music. There’s an orchestra playing every line of sounds on this recording—the credits list some twenty-five musicians, including two groups for additional vocals, and two people playing violin. The production team—those who published this work a half a century ago, number just under a dozen. This vintage work, an auditory composition of just over three minutes—a work of art with minimal physical existence—was the collaborative effort of dozens of people.

The piece itself begins with multiple instruments, including a piano, playing a chord twice, followed by two chords a half step higher on the scale, and then the initial vocals, which begin with the song’s chorus, it’s thesis “things ain’t what they used to be”, the repeated refrain occurring four times in the song’s three minutes. Gaye sings the single, seven syllables within the four beat bars as ditrochaic, emphasizing the “Things/What/Used /Be” and sometimes using a more trochee rhythm to stretch his tenor on the vocals for the following line. The song’s lyrics are two-line stanzas that may or may not employ end rhyme or consistent meter; instead, they read like koans, although they are structured as three citations of evidence with a fourth being conclusionary. This conclusionary stanza poses the still unanswered rhetorical question:

“What about this overcrowded land? /How much more abuse from man can she stand?”

Gaye sings the multiple syllable word as a ditrochee, speeding up his enunciation in a manner that was (and still is) a demonstration of technical ability, but which both matches the timing of the song’s general tempo. 

In counterpoint to Gaye’s smooth vocals is a saxophone solo that comes at about a minute, and after the lyrics conclude with a five-line supplication that is a change from the four, two-line lyric stanzas that support the song’s thesis.  The saxophone plays for six bars that climax with the blues squeal famous from that instrument.  It is here that the tempo’s emphasis on the third stress is most audible, and listeners often find this opportune for dancing—for interaction with the work. The final minute of the piece engages additional vocals for six bars, and a kind of denouement of instruments, a soprano voice.

Despite the remove of time, Gaye’s lyrics are unfortunately relevant still, and, in certain lights, the use of the pronoun “she” to reference the planet might still be controversial. Indeed, the song itself might be seen as controversial, since the thesis is one that asks for compassion for our obviously distraught planet. Nonetheless, the song’s elegant orchestration, still-relevant thesis, and Gaye’s sensitive tenor are still a rich offering of musical food for our soul.

GAS Featured Poet: Doug Jacquier

 Doug Jacquier writes from the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. His works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry have been published in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India. He blogs at https://sixcrookedhighways.com/ and is the editor of the humour site, Witcraft, as well as the short story site Who Let The Stories Out?.

This day, it begins to rain

 

Our harvesters are rusting in sagging sheds, 

unable to reap our imagined crops

when we try force the utmost 

from nothing.

 

But this day, it begins to rain. 

The rain comes in sideways, 

driven by the same scouring winds 

that delivered new dust to us 

and sent our own on a journey 

elsewhere.

 

Rain enough to drown our despair 

at fly-blown carcasses in the paddocks 

and ancient trees falling 

like matchsticks. 

 

This day, that it begins to rain,

brings shock,

a burning stimulus,

in motion, 

along our nervous systems.

 

It brings healing,

finding that fluttering life muscle

behind our dead eyes,

and palpates gently

until hope’s heartbeat returns.

 

In excelsis

 

Patti, the Horses-faced harbinger of rock,

who was a girl named Johnny

who said let's dream it, we'll dream it for free, Free Money

who kept Mapplethorpe and Shepard a-muse-d

who birthed children and watched men die too young.

who wrote with Springsteen ‘Because the Night’ said so, 

who lost the plot to ‘Hard Rain’ singing Bob at the Nobels.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not hers
People say "beware!" but I don't care 

the words are just rules and regulations to me

and her name is, and her name is, and her name is

G-L-O-R-I-I-I-I-A

in excelsis day-o.

 

Moving Memories

 

Memories,

carefully dusted off and swathed,

packed in the boxes

along with the more trivial possessions.

Like the apocryphal cat

they can’t be left behind.

Some you will unpack immediately upon arrival

as handy conversation pieces when old friends call.

Some will remain encased

with only an occasional furtive private inspection

to check for silverfish and mildew.

And some will be ‘forgotten’,

but will only feign death

and, like ancient terracotta soldiers,

will wait in infinite patience

ready to ambush the present.

 

GAS Featured Poet: Miriam Sagan

 

Miriam Sagan is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and memoir. She is a two-time winner of the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards as well as a recipient of the City of Santa Fe Mayor's Award for Excellence in the Arts and a New Mexico Literary Arts Gratitude Award. She has been a writer in residence in four national parks, Yaddo, MacDowell, Gullkistan in Iceland, Kura Studio in Japan, and a dozen more remote and interesting places. She works with text and sculptural installation as part of the mother/daughter creative team Maternal Mitochondria (with Isabel Winson-Sagan) in venues ranging from RV parks to galleries. She founded and directed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement.

Hypochondria

Beneath my ribs 

inside the bone cage 

a terrarium of topsoil 

oak root and branches 

imitate networks, veins, arteries.

Inside me 

serrated fingered leaves fall 

but not till spring 

acorns ping 

forests house truffles, caterpillars,

gall wasps 

devour the humous 

that once was me.

Birds nest, fledgelings 

fly out of my mouth 

in augury.

Whatever I’ve called myself

doesn’t matter 

any more.

Containment

The small cell 

with one window and 

one long boring tattered 

paperback, 

but no chocolate or coffee, 

is like a well-apportioned grave: 

bed, sink, toilet 

although only the living 

need these.

So what’s the point?

I’ve set the scene 

but without action, 

plot points, or denouement.

In this way 

it is not only like a coffin

but freedom. 

Su Zi's Review of "This is My Body" by Jonathan Fletcher

The chapbook has a two-hundred-year history, and a search overview describes the chapbook as originally a type of street literature. Certainly today, there’s a potential for multiplicity, for revealing voices that might be too Other for the increasingly oppressive monotone of the more corporate presses. For anyone dedicated to the literary arts, a support of the chapbook is more than crucial.

Some chapbooks become into existence through the auspices of an institution, and the book is intended to be laudatory, the author presented as a debutante to literary society. In the case of Northwestern University Press, an established institution—that of an expensive school—presenting a chapbook seems to be more of an aristocrat endeavor than a funded effort at street literature. Since chapbooks tend to be the annoyance of booksellers --and thus often require special order-- a well-heeled sponsorship of a chapbook does present a middle ground between world bank publishing and that of the threadbare independent press. Thus, we might approach these works with our determination at inclusion still held dear.

If finding new voices is the reader’s goal, the chapbook often contains poems that were individually published, often by periodicals with their own position on the publishing spectrum. A discerning reader will not let the voice of status overshadow that of the work itself, although authors are pressured into the Sisyphusian task of complying with a market that rarely considers the work for its own merit. What can be equally annoying to a serious reader is a superficial introduction to the work itself, as if the work were a magic trick instead of an artistic endeavor with the potential for layers of nuance. In the introduction for Jonathan Fletcher’s This Is My Body (Northwestern University Press, 2025), the work’s introduction, with two authors, seems to consider the first poem only, a childhood recollection. Nonetheless, this first poem, “Jonathan”, contained the striking stanza

As we bathed together,

 compared bodies—mine brown 

and foreskinned, yours light

 and circumcised—we wondered 

whose was better, cleaner. 

And while the introduction’s authors find the work “nakedly intense and overwhelming at times”, they appear to leave it to the reader to discern the vowel shifts from “brown/foreskinned” to “light/circumcised” and the triple alliteration of “we wondered whose” that speaks to a consideration of technique, in addition to the intimate action portraited.

Each poem in this collection is a portrait of an intimate moment, many of which might create binaries of experience among readers—those for whom the poems resonant, and those for whom the poems frighten. Fletcher’s language seems conversational and smooth, balancing topics often barely whispered. In “Medusa”,

       The way you attach 

electrodes to my scalp,

 let them drape behind

 my head, I must 

look like a Gorgon. 

Though punished

by no goddess, I feel

cursed. Though not quite

a Hippocrates, you diagnose,

 treat. Though no oracle,

you foresee recovery: (15)

The resonance is the now, often-fraught medical experience—a cultural hotspot, too ubiquitous now to be a taboo topic. Even the specificity of electrodes is balanced by the classical allusion. Once again, Fletcher uses a subtle vowel shift to shift the point of view. A look at the assonance shift from the a vowel of “Way/attach/scalp/drape” gives us that physical moment of touching, which shifts to the more distant view posited by the allusion to a monster and the use of “cursed/punished”.  That intimate perception, those personal reckonings that too often happen because of medical settings, are still also too often the taboo topics that surround the stigmas of disability.

Fletcher’s portraits of intimate moments do give the work the overall feel of memoir, but the work doesn’t follow that as a sequence. In the closing poem “Boys”, the scene is of a slumber party and action figures, with sound effects and off-stage directions (“time for bed”),  a scene culturally seen as utter normalcy. The poem concludes with

[...]Our heads atop

 your X-Men pillows, our bodies beneath 

your matching comforter, we’d fall asleep,

 warm and peaceful, in one another’s arms. (26)

the rhyme here of “beneath/asleep” does not conclude the poem, but leads up to it, as if musically introducing the concluding assonant that sonically seems a sigh.

Whilst those who bean count status might just become aware of Fletcher’s sublime offerings through the ivory influence of the press, for those to whom the work itself matters would be advised to add Fletcher to their personal collections. His social media profile, and this chapbook’s acknowledgements, show him to be a diligent producer of work. This Is My Body is a strong start for a writer worth watching.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.

 

GAS Featured Poet: Arvilla Fee

 

Arvilla Fee lives in Dayton, Ohio, teaches English for Clark State College, and is the managing editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous national and international journals. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. Arvilla loves writing, photography and traveling and never leaves home without a snack and water (just in case of an apocalypse). Arvilla’s favorite quote in the whole word is: "It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~ Henry David Thoreau. To learn more, visit her website .

The Wishing Star

 

it streaked across the sky one night,

just above the red glow of her cigarette,

she made a wish; she made a thousand

                                                                        wishes

that her trailer wouldn’t tilt to the left,

that her double shifts at the diner

would bring in enough tips to pay rent,

that her mother wouldn’t drink herself

                                                                        to death

she didn’t really believe in stars

or Santa Clause or the tooth fairy,

just wasn’t raised on foolishness,

always looking behind bushes and

                                                                        bruises

but there was something about that star,

the way it left a lingering dust tail,

that made her think maybe, just this once,

something in the cosmic universe might

                                                                        listen

My Dog Will Get Me

 

when I slowly rise from the bed,

each joint creaking

like a scarcely-oiled tin man;

he’ll lift his silken head

from his place on the duvet,

knowing it will take me

a few more minutes to walk

toward the kitchen cupboards

to make my tea and his breakfast;

when I stay in my tattered nighty

until midday, his kind brown eyes

will not judge, not even with my hair

yet uncombed, my teeth unbrushed;

we’ll putter around the garden,

looking for ripe tomatoes,

the only veggie I can still pick

without throwing my back out of kilter;

we’ll doze in the recliner after lunch

probably in the middle of a game show;

when I awake, I’ll search for my glasses,

and he’ll wait patiently, ears perked

for my shout of glee when I find them

atop my head; he’ll understand when

I’m out of dog biscuits and milk

and wag his tail when I promise

he can tag along to the grocer tomorrow;

should I grow melancholy, he’ll place

his paw on my arm and sigh in solidarity.

 

GAS Featured Poet: Mukut Borpujari

Mukut Borpujari is a graduate in English Literature and hold a Masters in Computer Application (MCA) from G.G. University, Bilashpur, CG. Based in Guwahati, Assam, INDIA, he has a plethora of poems published in top journals including The Canyon Voices Literary Magazine of the Arizona State University. He was also longlisted in this year's Erbacce-prize for poetry 2024. An active member of the Greenpeace Movement, he has a deep-rooted conviction about nature and the natural world. Apart from being an avid reader, his other hobbies include Computers & internet, and Driving. 

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The Rebel 

With a flagrant disregard for existing social norms, 

something’s brewing in the anvil of thought. 

Wild rhododendrons and bougainvilleas running 

along the wall, 

as we denounce the barriers of casteism and marginalization. 

No to the elite. 

No to centuries of limiting beliefs and traditions, 

their insistence—the shackles of our own minds. 

At midnight, 

in the waning light of the stars in the sky, 

the silhouette of our necks interlocked like flamingos. 

I miss you. I never even met you: 

let us take a deep dive into our imaginations, 

until we find the right imagery and metaphors 

we can discuss—dissect; 

not for ego’s sake, but for love.