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Angels, Divas and Blacklisted Heroes
Establishing a fusion of literary and serious pop culture, this collection of challenging essays brings together writers and singers who share a common thread of creativity from the cutting edge of their given field. Considering singers ranging from Frank Sinatra and Leonard Cohen to Marc Almond and Scott Walker, this examination also explores writers as diverse as Lautramont, Eugenio Montale, Jean Genet, and Oscar Wilde as well as confronts the subjects of angels in poetry and poetry and magic. An insightful piece on Aleister Crowley and the left-handed path is also included.
- GenresMusic
175 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1999
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December 20, 2020
Picking up Jeremy Reed’s Angels, Divas and Blacklisted Heroes in a local charity shop, I couldn’t even get out of the store before having finished the first essay on Jean Genet. It gets 4.5/5, and my TBR list is now groaning at the additions.
He delves into sexuality, gender, androgyny and resistance in this collection of essays on creativity, independence and the paths that artists take to achieve self-expression. Needless to say, I was hooked by his deftness of touch in evoking artists, poems and songs, delving into their lyrics to rocket from suffering to mythology, the snapshot to erotic climax. It is this lightness of touch that convinces the reader to follow the linking of poetic biographies from Rimbaud to March Almond, Scott Walker to drag acts and divas, Sinatra to Oscar Wild, and angels to Poe.
What links these essays is the fascination with the creative process, and how the poet lives in a ‘metaphoric desert’, where ‘the sand in a poet’s shoes turns to gold’. I was more than happy to get lost in the winding paths of supposed parallels between artists for (to quote Reed again) ‘you walk down the same road every day and suddenly it’s a highway to the stars.’ But this collection isn’t just about transcendence, there has to be the exploration of the artists’ suffering that can allow Reed to elicit the beauty of the new degrees of interpretation, to confront the madness and risk all in creative output. And thus, can we gain access to the subjects of Reeds essays, or as he says of Marc Almond - ‘even though you can’t see a soul, you hear its contents in [his] phrasing.’
Can’t wait to get into some of Reed’s own novels now.
He delves into sexuality, gender, androgyny and resistance in this collection of essays on creativity, independence and the paths that artists take to achieve self-expression. Needless to say, I was hooked by his deftness of touch in evoking artists, poems and songs, delving into their lyrics to rocket from suffering to mythology, the snapshot to erotic climax. It is this lightness of touch that convinces the reader to follow the linking of poetic biographies from Rimbaud to March Almond, Scott Walker to drag acts and divas, Sinatra to Oscar Wild, and angels to Poe.
What links these essays is the fascination with the creative process, and how the poet lives in a ‘metaphoric desert’, where ‘the sand in a poet’s shoes turns to gold’. I was more than happy to get lost in the winding paths of supposed parallels between artists for (to quote Reed again) ‘you walk down the same road every day and suddenly it’s a highway to the stars.’ But this collection isn’t just about transcendence, there has to be the exploration of the artists’ suffering that can allow Reed to elicit the beauty of the new degrees of interpretation, to confront the madness and risk all in creative output. And thus, can we gain access to the subjects of Reeds essays, or as he says of Marc Almond - ‘even though you can’t see a soul, you hear its contents in [his] phrasing.’
Can’t wait to get into some of Reed’s own novels now.
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