Great Beginnings Monday: Fats Domino

May 11, 11:11 AMNY Writing Careers ExaminerTad Richards

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Illustration by Tad Richards

"Yes, it's me, and I'm in love again."
  --Fats Domino

How do you announce yourself in a poem or lyric? The first person nominative doesn't cut it. It's taken for granted; it's like wallpaper. But the first person objective stull has some juice, and Fats Domino makes it happen with his first three words.

How do you announce yourself? Twentieth century confessional poetry, fiction and nonfiction left a lot of readers wishing people would just stop doing it, but there are still some forms where self-aggrandizement pays dividends, and the blues is one of them.

The blues, as a literary form, parallels a lesser-known (in America), but equally expressive form: the ghazal, which is Arabic, and like the blues has its roots in North and West Africa. Both forms use a series of loosely connected, self-contained verses, and both forms leave plenty of room for celebrating their creators. In a traditional ghazal, the writer mentions himself in the last stanza (here's an example from Agha Shahid Ali, who brought the form into American poetry.

Blues singers are self-referential to similar effect. Here's Brownie McGhee:

    [Mama] would say Brownie, oh Brownie, won't you mend your ways.

Fats Domino enters "I'm in Love Again" with a swagger that lasts throughout the song, which is all the more interesting because the rest of the lyric doesn't exactly sustain it. He's in love again with the same girl as always, but somehow hoping it will work out differently this time. Though he tries to put a bold face on it, he's quickly reduced to begging for her love; then, setting his sights even lower, begging for her not to sic her dog on him.  Through all that, the swaggering entrance holds up. We can't think of someone who walks in the door saying "Yes, it's me" as a nebbish. "I" is nebbishy. "Me" is a statement.

Here it is again, from Jerry Lee Lewis:

     Open up, honey, it's your lover boy, me! that's knockin

Here's a ghazal of mine. I might have inserted my name into the last stanza, but my  muse, Sookie, aced me out. You'd think the function of a muse would be to guarantee the success and fame of the poet she's attached herself to, but Sookie doesn't see it that way. (She's no relation to vampire-loving Sookie Stackhouse, who pronounces her name to rhyme with "rookie"; Sookie rhymes hers with "they're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky, they're altogether ooky...")

Sookie gives me as little help as she possibly can, and what she does bring me is mostly plagiarized. The invocation to the muse of fire is from Shakespeare's great opening to Henry V, and with a little digging, I've discovered that the rest of the references are all somehow pulled from Shakespeare too. Never trust a muse.

  SOOKIE’S GHAZAL

Dead women come to accept the role of muse.
Brides may flee the altar on a cue from the muse.

Jolted from feckless sleep to a shaky tango,
Some men first call upon a truant muse.

I saw you cutting brightly colored pictures –
Made me think you might be married to a muse.

Freud called for honey, yeast and sour paste,
Not the first to think he could cure a sick muse.

Two weeks incognito in a harem
Can reinvigorate a tongue-tied muse.

Stirred by a painted beauty, a man may
Close the door, and forget he has a muse.

Aroused by a invocation to a muse of fire
Sookie stirs, stretches, says she is not that muse.