Jim Morrison Poetry Burlesque

Last night, riding the #14 bus home from a press screening of the teen virginity burlesque “Sex Drive,” I thought about the poetics of evasion. How trying not to say something directly often creates more meaning (and wonderfully weird language) than just saying it outright. It’s poetics 101 for the most part, but I’m always up for a refresher course.
So, for example, at its most direct, something like “Sex Drive” would just be two awkward minutes of coitus filmed in a gaudy rumpus room. But that will not do. To make a movie, even a middling one, the basic core of teen sex must be artfully dodged, right?
Right.

Representing this whole ethos of evasion in one line of dialogue, the female lead in “Sex Drive” can't bring herself to use direct language for her anatomy, but instead she uses the euphemistic noun “beaver.” Not so uncommon. But here, she uses it as a verb--as in, “I just beaved a family of four” after she accidentally flashes a passing car. Brilliant!
The low road can be quite fun.
Having a fundamental void at the center of what you’re trying to say--and refusing to admit it--can often make for meaning galore. In this way, the McCain/Palin campaign, like “Sex Drive,” is a masterful Oulipo performance. The campaign's gymnastic stretching of truth and contorted evasions are quite Perec-like, and amazing if you can suspend your terror at the fundamental void at its center.
But I digress.
I’m on the 14 bus, taking the low road. The lady a few seats over from me is yelling, to no one in particular, “God gave me a gift, motherfucker! That’s right! So you’ll get your goddamn money on the first!” A man a few seats back (the lender, perhaps?) gives this lady an evil eye and mutters obscene—and quite direct—things under his breath (Both breath and obscenities way too direct for Harriet. Way too direct). I settle in with my library copy of Please Kill Me, one of my favorite books of all time, and read about Jim Morrison and the void at his core. Like most singer/songwriter poets, he was at his worst when he was most direct. A Please Kill Me excerpt [direct obscenity evaded]:
Ronnie Cutrone: I loved Jim Morrison dearly, but Jim was not fun to go out with. I hung out with him every night for just about a year, and Jim would go out, lean up against the bar, order eight screwdrivers, put down six Tuinals on the bar, drink two or three screwdrivers, take two Tuinals, then he’d have to pee, but he couldn’t leave the other five screwdrivers, so he’d take his [campaign] out and pee, and some girl would come up and [suspend] his [campaign], and then he’d finish the other five screwdrivers and then he’d finish up the other four Tuinals, and then he’d pee his pants, and then Eric Emerson and I would take him home.
That was a typical night out with Jim. But when he was on acid, then Jim was really fun and great. But most of the time he was just a lush pill head.
Ray Manzarek: Jim was a shaman.
Danny Fields: Jim Morrison was a callous asshole, an abusive, mean person. I took Morrison to Max’s and he was a monster, a prick. And his poetry sucked. He demeaned rock & roll as literature. Sophomoric bullshit babble. Maybe one or two good images.
Patti Smith was a poet. I think she elevated rock & roll to literature. Bob Dylan elevated it. Morrison’s wasn’t poetry. It was garbage disguised as teenybopper. It was good rock & roll for thirteen-year olds. Or eleven-year-olds.
As a person, I think Morrison’s magic and power went beyond the quality of his versifying. He was bigger than that. He was sexier than his poetry—more mysterious, more problematic, more difficult, more charismatic as a performer. There has got to be a reason why women like Nico and Gloria Stavers, the editor of 16 magazine, fell so deeply in love with him, because he was essentially an abusive man to women.
But it sure wasn’t his poetry. I’ve got to tell you, it wasn’t his poetry.