Haddaway is a poet.
Wait. Don’t leave. Wait. Take my hand. It’s going to be fine. We will do this the right way, and it’s going to be full of grace. You must trust me.
Haddaway (you know who he is). He’s written neither sonnets nor terza rima. Nor thinly-veiled and pointless epistles (ahem). But it is clear he has Bled before. Can you Hear it there through the gyrating and totally-danceable house rhythms?
Just this: what IS love?
Haddaway doesn’t know. Good grief.
And he’s willing to just stand there and bellow like a wounded bull through the cosmic weight of this unknown. He punctures all the purple prose of the classics; it’s an explosion of gurgling lava as it dies – all the references to creamy-skinned women and budding roses and things that make soft shapes in the dark. He demolishes the couplet. His voice is a lone arrow: what is love?
You are crushed, Shakespeare. Dashed – Barrett, Donne and Burns. The whole Earth is shaking because your coffins are white hot and vibrating from the force of these three pulsing words. Haddaway is a volcano in Ray Bans. We will dance our way to Truth today, my loves – here, before the end of the world.
More: We’ve established before that poetry is just blood on a page. You took a breath. You exhaled. And a rush of Self splattered out of your lungs and landed in tangle of yowling Life at your feet. This is why I love poetry. This is why you should love poetry. And this is why you should buy some. Please allow me to make this easy for you:
Louisville’s own Sarabande Books is offering a pretty sweet deal for those looking to fill shelves, stuff stockings – and, you know, enrich the soul. Using the code BOOKLOVER, customers to the site can participate in the Sarabande Winter Sale and earn buy one get one free (people call this “BOGO”, apparently) on all books in the catalog. Additionally, orders of three or more titles will include a signed broadside of Paula Bohince’s poem, “Hare in Snow”, from her newest collection, The Children. The sale is going on now through January 10th, 2013.
Sarabande, an independent and Louisville-based publishing house, provides a haven for contemportay writers of poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction – publishing talent from across the nation (and a couple Faraway Lands if I’m not mistaken). Haddaway may not be involved, no, but I can assure you that the blood on the pages of a Sarabande book is thick and rich and will make the thumpy-heart-thing in your chest beat. Pulse. Dance.
You can let go of my hand, now, if you like. It’s safe. We’re bonded over Haddaway. And that’s not a brittle thing.
Image: Courtesy of Sarabande Books website www.sarabandebooks.org
