I mean, lyricists are writers too

As you may or may not be aware, Dear Reader, I've embarked on a second blog experiment. The other blog -- let's think of it as a mistress, really, because I loved you first -- is dedicated to celebrating "quality" music, where "quality" music is defined as "that which sounds as good if not better performed live" (as opposed to in a studio, within arm's reach of the auto-tune button).

Inspired by Friday Jams, the blog is called Dai(ly) Jams and (shockingly) it features one live music video per day. I encourage you to check it out, because so far I'm pretty much just talking to myself. Which, you know, isn't new, but it gets boring after awhile. I'd especially love video suggestions!

In writing Dai(ly) Jams, I've realized something of a paradox: Despite my intrepid insistence that I'm a writer, I actually spend very little time listening to song lyrics. I'm terrible at memorizing lyrics -- an ailment my band meets with bemused frustration, no doubt -- and I almost never fall in love with a song because of the words.

It might have something to do with my childish ignorance of and aversion to poetry. I tend to recoil from things that I need to interpret -- foreign languages, Wall Street jargon, Edgar Allen Poe, to name a few. And a lot of songs tend to be veiled homages to...whatever. Their long lost lovers' boyfriends' dog. Or something. But some poetry -- for example, this piece by Carolyn Forché -- is undeniably incredible. The writing is exquisite, the execution damn near perfect.

Maybe my problem with poetry -- like that of romance novels -- is that most of what I've read is bad. In that spirit, and assuming that my formal poetry education began and ended with Dr. Seuss, I'm taking suggestions for must-read poetry. Fire away.