My longtime YIMBY comrade Dan Bertolet has returned to his 1990s roots. Last week, he released a My-Bloody-Valentine-demos-style set of pop tunes prompted by teenage poet laureates such as W.B. Yeats, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, e.e. cummings, and Robert Frost, along with a few other geniuses: Louise Glück, Alice Oswald, and Wislawa Szymborska. He also sneaks in an Ocean Vuong poem! It’s an ambitious, shimmering 14-song set that Dan, going by Swirl & Ache (Frost), calls “Bonewebs, Hungry Seas, & Other Delights” (Oswald, I think).
Dan’s warm and plaintive vocals feature gracefully crafted recitative-like melodies out of word-for-word renditions of the poems.
And the opening track features the biggest genius of them all. It’s a banger conjured from on one of my poems: “I’m Delighted My Young Avant-Garde Friend,” which was my attempt, back in 2019, to write a YIMBY villanelle.
Poet Dylan Thomas wrote the famous villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” with the memorable repeated lines: “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
My pro-development version: “I’m delighted my young avant-garde friend/Let there be light, let there be infrastructure, amen,” which Dan leans into with a wicked overdrive guitar hook.
Here’s Dan’s explanation of his project:
“Hey there insta folks, I made some music and I guess it's good to share things that you make, so if you're game, copy/paste this bandcamp link:
https://swirlandache.bandcamp.com/album/bonewebs-hungry-seas-other-delights
”Over the past 16 months I got a bit obsessed with writing and recording little guitar pop ditties using other people's poems for lyrics. You all can blame @city_hex for getting me started.”
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Here’s a recording of me reading the poem on the Cathexis Northwest web site back in 2021 (when it was first published.)