Lyrics

This is just a fun blog to share some of my favorite Christmastime songs with you and to get you thinking about lyrics and how they can bring meaning to music.  Song lyrics are like poems, and songs are a marriage of words and music, two of my most favorite things. 

The lyrics of Christmas and holiday songs are special.  From the spiritual to the fun loving, all of them evoke certain images and feelings in anyone.  Even those who aren’t religious/spiritual, enjoy these songs because they resonate with joy, fun, love and hope. 

I have a lot of favorite Christmas carols and songs.  Some are favorites because of childhood memories.  Others are favorites for personal or spiritual reasons. 

A Christmas Carol favorite is Away in a Manger.  As a small child I loved that there was a lullaby for Jesus.  I remember singing it to my dolls at Christmas when I got ready for bed.

My parents had a number of albums of Christmas from different countries.  From the Christmas in England album I learned that there was another melody for Away in a Manger. This alternate melody has become my favorite.  The lyric remains the same.

Away in a manger no crib for a bed

The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.

The stars in the sky looked down where he lay

The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.

The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes

But little Lord Jesus no crying He makes.

I love thee Lord Jesus look down from the sky

And stay by my cradle ‘til morning is nigh.

Be near me Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay

Close by me forever, and love me, I pray.

Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care

And fit us for heaven to live with Thee there.

What tremendous memories a song and its lyric can retrieve from hidden secrets that lie deep within each of us.  I find myself singing this song when I feel stressed or out of touch with my spiritual self.  There is a calm that comes from placing yourself  as a child at the feet of ones God.

My favorite Christmas fun song is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  This is the first holiday special I remember watching on television when I was little back in the 60’s. 

Nowadays, I love to sing this song with my daughter.  We’ve been signing it since she was tiny.  We always start by singing out the names of the reindeer, that’s her favorite part.

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen

Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen.

But do you recall the most famous reindeer of all?

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer

Had a very shiny nose

And if you ever saw it

You would even say it glowed.

All of the other reindeer

Used to laugh and call him names

They never let poor Rudolph

Join in any reindeer games.

Then one foggy Christmas Eve

Santa came to say,

“Rudolph with your nose so bright

Won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?”

Then how the reindeer loved him

As they shouted out with glee,

“Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer

You’ll go down in history.”

Who doesn’t enjoy this simple story?  It’s one of many songs that were turned into television specials for children.  Some others include Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus is Coming to Town.  These started out as fun children’s songs for the holiday and became endearing, long lasting holiday television shows.  If not for the gifted lyricists, these songs would never have been made into shows. 

Do you have a favorite holiday song, poem or story?  Do you return to that favorite every year to bring the memories, feelings and images back as part of your celebration?

Feel free to share with me in the comments.  I’d love to hear about your favorites.  Happy holidays!  Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah!  Happy Kwanzaa!  And a pleasant greeting to all who celebrate in any way at this time of year!

Spiritual Inspiration

Without entering into a lengthy and probably controversial discussion of spirituality or beliefs, I want to discuss how I have been inspired and share some of my writing with you.  

My spirituality or feelings of connection with my God come at times when I am contemplative, under stress, relaxed or are unexpected.  During some of these times I find myself talking to him and even creating something in my mind.  Do you know those times when words just start to form and you have to write them down, those times when you are talking out loud to yourself?  Those are the times when I know I am being inspired to write.  So, I write.

Unfortunately, I can't remember exactly what was going on in my life when I wrote this, but I called it 'A Psalm' for a reason.  When I was first discovering my faith as a Christian, I read the Psalms A LOT!  I connected to them because they are poems, song lyrics, direct messages to God.  I wanted to have (and still want to have) a directed link to God.  David wrote many of the psalms as his expressions of great emotions toward God.  Sometimes he was angry, sometimes he doubted, sometimes he expressed deep faith and love.  The overall feeling of this psalm is a desire for connection, not wanting to be left behind or forgotten.  I can see a strong desire for hope and belonging.  Also, I believe that I needed spiritual strengthening.

A Psalm

By Kimberly L McClune, January 18, 2013

Diffused light from the bright morning star

Emanates through a maze of frosted branches.

Fingers of illumination pattern the blue tinted ground.

A glowing countenance gracefully peers from beyond

Bearing a measure of hope to my longing my soul.

Oh, light that brings peace and love

Renew my spirit, fill the depths of my soul!

Shine your light in and through me.

Reveal your truth to my hardened heart.

Shower me with fulfillment and joy!

Do not deny a weakened spirit.

Open a portal to the inner sanctuary

Hardened by disappointment and fear.

Pour out your soothing balm to cleanse

And heal the wounds left by an ordinary life.

Oh, mighty and righteous giver of peace,

Wondrous lover of needy and aching hearts,

Let your love reign in my gasping soul,

Lift up my wounded spirit,

Wash me clean of all wrongdoing.

Heavy heart, wounded and sore

Hold fast to that one remaining thread of hope.

Don’t loose your grip, but cling to it

As if nothing in the world can move you.

For this is the path to enlightenment.

Hope does not fail, love does not leave

Peace is never far away.

All around are signs of faith and healing.

Open the heart, the mind and the spirit

And all shall enter in, together at last.

Whether you are Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, or have any other faith, we can all relate to similar spiritual needs.  We want the belonging and the comfort of a faith in something greater than ourselves.  I encourage you to embrace your spirituality as it relates to writing and see what you come up with when you bring the two together.  Writing as an expression of yourself, for some, is the only way to write.  For others, writing can be a way to escape yourself.  

Culture in Poetry

Being partly Irish, I am drawn to the overall culture and all things Irish.  I love music so I listen to Irish tunes quite often.  I have an extensive collection of Irish poetry and stories and love to let my eye wander over pictures of the Irish landscape.  Oh, I neglected to mention my love of Irish food!

I’ve been reading some of the Irish poets lately, W.B. Yeats, Thomas Moore, Patrick Kavanaugh and Oscar Wilde to name a few.  In my poetic contemplation over these beautiful works I began to notice a great sense of the Irish culture itself within them.  Each piece gave me a different sense of who the Irish are, what is important to them and how they live, think and believe. 

Some themes I’ve culled from the works I’ve read are the importance of family and relationships, love of the land, the importance of history to everyday life, strength of spiritual belief and a great love of life and living.  The Irish are a very proud and expressive people.  They carry their hearts on their sleeves and live every moment as if it’s their last.  Humor sustains them through thick and thin and their ability to survive is second to none.  All of these qualities of the Irish come through when reading their poetry.  I consider them to be some of the strongest poets our world has produced. 

If you’ve ever wondered why the Irish are so much in love with their homeland, then you’ve never been there or lost yourself in pictures of the beautiful, magical landscapes and architecture of this incredible island. 

In his poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree, W.B. Yeats expresses his desire to return to the peace and beauty of his home from the wild and raucous streets of London. 

 

“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.”

Poet Patrick Kavanaugh expresses the deep love of a man for his mother in his poem In Memory of My Mother. I love his optimism for seeing her once again when he, himself, passes into heaven and his wonderful memories of her very essence. 

“And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life –
And I see us meeting at the end of a town.

On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shops and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.”

While these are only a couple of examples of great Irish poetry, you can find many sources for them in your local bookstore or on various websites like the following:

www.irishcultureandcustoms.com

www.poetryfoundation.org

www.poetrysoup.com

Find some beautiful images of Ireland here:

Christian McLeod Photography: www.cmcleod.com

Inishowen Photography – www.inishowenphotography.com

Images of Mayo Landscape Photography of County Mayo, Ireland by Eamonn McCarthy– mayo.photium.com

Irish Dew Landscape Photography – www.irishdew.com

Try an Irish dish from:

www.donalskehan.com

www.yourirish.com

Perhaps you have a favorite culture or are from a particular culture that also has beautiful poets.  Do some reading and see if you also find that the culture of the poets home is carried into the work of the poet.

Inspiration

Well, I have nothing to lose by trying again to be published in another issue of Poetry Quarterly.  I submitted four poems, all older works, to them this morning.  This was inspired by having just written my first poem in at least two months.  Recently, my time has been spent in study for a new career, job hunting and raising my child so there has not been much time for writing, as I had hoped.

The inspiration for this new poem was not what most expect.  It was a very personal poem, kind of a healing work.  You see some poems are inspired by beauty and what you glean from the world around you, and some are from the depths of your soul and express deep emotion.  Take a sonnet from Shakespeare.  These works are doubtless the inspiration from the depths of a soul tortured in the fullness of love.  I say tortured because love can be a difficult emotion.

To continue on the topic of inspiration, when I write about a tree or sunset, there is less emotion and more appreciation for beauty in that work, that desire to put pen to paper and describe my view.  I love to paint pictures with words, to make a scene come alive from the written page.  What I have been learning in the last year or so is to bring emotion up from the page as well and this is harder because that emotion comes from deep within me.  I find that I do less editing on a poem that is filled with emotion.  The feelings must be real and they must be raw on the page.  They must not be altered to make them sound or appear a certain way, they must be the way they first come to me from deep within or they are not true.

Now, when you see the poem I wrote this morning you will find that it has a sort of rhythm.  This was not necessarily intentional.  This is the way that it came to me.  Honestly, it came to me as a song as I drove home from my daughters school before 8am.  I sang the first few lines to myself then came in the house and started to write.  The poem I will share here is exactly what came from me first thing this morning.

I cannot say that famous poets or more learned poets would take the same position about writing as I do.  I also do not profess to be particularly learned on poetry.  However, I can say that I am pleased with the results I achieve in my own writing.  Others, whose opinions I value, have given me honest, positive and constructive feedback on my work.  This gives me cause to believe that I have a talent for poetry beyond just my own pleasure.  Whether the world would agree or not is something that I am not concerned about.  If I took on the weight of pleasing everyone the joy of writing and the restorative peace I receive from the process would be lost and I would give it up completely.

So enough about the process and on to the work I produced in very little time this morning.  I will not reveal the reasoning behind this work as it is personal and not important to reading and culling your own enjoyment and thoughts from it.

World of Dreams

By Kimberly L. McClune

September 19, 2012

In my world of dreams

I would love you better,

Hope would come more easily

Faith would be more natural

Dreams would all come true.

In my world of dreams

You would always come to me

My arms would open wide

We would be so comfortable

Just to be.

In my world of dreams

I would know you love me

Just the way I am

No need for forgiveness

You would know I love you, too.

In my world of dreams

We’d have all we needed

No more need for fear

Worries all behind us

Together, just we two.