[Aaron Poochigian]

Question for a poem--does everyone know the song "Rocky Raccoon"? I have a poem that starts:

"Rocky Raccoon"

Imagine that this is summer,
a throbbing afternoon.
A mustachioed park-bench strummer
is crooning "Rocky Raccoon."

Allusions are dangerous because you can limit your audience, but major Beatles' songs are basic cultural knowledge, right?

I later allude to the climactic word in the song ("revival"), so the poem assumes some familiarity with the lyrics.

[Chris O'Carroll]

Whether or not the Beatles are more popular than Jesus, their songs are certainly among the world's most widely known cultural phenomena. My guess is that more readers will recognize a Beatles reference than a line from Dickinson or Whitman or Shakespeare.

[Aaron Poochigian]

Thank you for the encouragement. Yes, if one must allude, popular Beatles' song are fairly safe bet.

[Max Goodman]

I'll be interested to see what responses you get here.

There's a fashionable aspect to pop music, and fashions change. My daughter, a radio hound, finds my music--Beatles included--uncool.

The way younger people consume music also works against good Rocky. I think they buy what they like song-by-song (without even the flip side our singles had), and so are less likely to stumble on something they didn't seek out. They can own "Blackbird," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Back in the U.S.S.R.," and "Helter Skelter" without ever hearing "Rocky Racoon."

And there's an awful lot of Beatles music a new listener is likely to hear before "Rocky Racoon." So even a person who recognizes the title as a Beatles' song might not know the lyrics. I played a lot of Beatles music for my kids (back when they were willing to listen to my music); I'm not sure I ever played them "Rocky Raccoon."

[Allen Tice]

Put the Beatles song origin in a note at the end of a book. You could even have fun explaining what the Beatles are (were).

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

I didn't recognise the title but did recognise the lyrics when I googled.

Can you get away with having a snatch of the actual song? It might just be me, but once I knew it was the one with 'Gideon's Bible' in it, I remembered the track.

Sarah-Jane

[W T Clark]

Nah, never heard of it. But I don't think you should be worried. They are incredibly famous, and if I read it in a poem capitalised that I knew it to be a title of something, I would google it.

[Kevin Rainbow]

Rocky was a flying squirrel, not a raccoon.

[John Riley]

There seems to be a trend among millennials and those younger to hate the Beatles. It is silly, of course, but so much of youth is silly. I think they see it as quintessential boomer music and mocking boomers is very much in style, much as boomers mocked the older generation years ago. The Beatles have been caught up in this so it isn't cool to like the Beatles. My son, however, who just turned twenty-seven and is a talented violinist, loves the Beatles because he recognizes their genius. He also loves Dylan, who is someone so many young people have never listened to. I don't know if this would have any effect on your poem, but suspect it will among certain age groups.

[Julie Steiner]

I didn't recognize "Rocky Raccoon" as a Beatles song. Basically, the only Beatles songs I knew were the ones that got airplay on Top 40 radio stations in the 1970s. (And I haven't expanded my Beatles repertoire much since. I discovered "Blackbird" for the first time a few years ago.)

On encountering "Rocky Raccoon" in a poem, I would have assumed it was the theme song of a children's show I'd never heard of, and moved on without bothering to look it up.

The answer to question "to note or not to note" comes down to how important it is to you that every reader catch the reference to its lyrics.