Interesting extrapolations, Aaron. Thank you.

I read it like Aaron in his point #1. I kind of thought she was on-side with what I understand as the Native American reverence for Earth. I also think we could use more of that, rather a lot more.

Michael, I think the contrasting interpretations -- they are a part of the failure of the poem, a part of what makes it bad.

Just my humble, reverent, Native American opinion :o

J

Of course the poem is bad. But it doesn't bother me very much because I can see the reason it was published: Yoko is a public figure who is of interest to many millions of people, so it's interesting to see a sample of the poetry she writes whatever its failings may be. If they had published the same poem but it was by someone we never heard of, it would bother me much more because I couldn't see any reason for its publication.

For a long, long time now, the prevailing aesthetic there has been that good and bad do not even exist, as far as art is concerned.

Naturally, when you strip away such, you are left with only the materialistic -- as Bob points out (and I agree): fame.

That and money and power.

J

"She's better than The Beatles." Care to elaborate? (I said The Pixies were better than Leonard Cohen, which I'm fairly certain about--outrageous here, it seems. Maybe to you as well. I do disagree with you, firmly, but am very curious about why you feel that way.)

And Yoko's poem is pretty awful. I don't accept the justification that she's a name so let's look at what she scribbled on an old receipt when she was bored. I think rejecting that sort of thing is one of the most important things a journal can do.

When I was living in Japan in the early sixties, Yoko Ono distinguished herself by selling bottles of her own piss in front of Shibuya station. And here we are fifty-five years or so later, and she's still famous and I'm still not. How can I compete with poetry like that?

Asia is a little different... but I don't think Yoko represents Asia, or Japan, in the slightest. Not that she should. But she is opportunistic. Maybe I'm wrong. Ask Paul.

Maybe the original was amazing, but then a modern critic told her to avoid trying to write like a Shakespeare, so she converted it to this.

Quincy may or may not admit that a lot of the music he likes was influenced, even if indirectly, by Ono’s music, which remains challenging and ear-opening, unlike the Beatles who are wrapped in nostalgia. Maybe they are pop perfection, maybe not, but besides the self-titled white album, which I admire conceptually, “A Day in the Life,” which really is brilliant, and the suite at the end of Abbey Road—besides these bits of pleasure I am tired of their music and their songs which sum themselves up too neatly when they end.

None of this excuses the poem.

Two favorites from her first two albums:

“Greenfield Morning”

"Mind Holes"