Poetics: Inspired by Album Cover Art

Mish from mishunderstood (A Collection of Poetry by Michelle Beauchamp) devised a prompt that I could not resist. Her dVerse prompt was to write any style of poem (ekphrastic-ish) inspired by an LP music album cover.

My (writing/art/reading/library/music/office) room walls are decorated with 100 album covers (see why I can’t resist?) with more stashed on various shelves around the room, all changed out or around regularly. While I dearly love the music and what it does to me, the albums displayed are all about the cover art with few exceptions like the Beatles White Album or the Eagles, The Long Run, and a few others. Most of it is photographic art, thus (photography is another of my “hobbies”), I must respond to yesterday’s “Poetics: Inspired by Album Cover Art.”

I chose a classic: Tapestry, Carole King’s second and most phenomenally successful album from 1971. The poem credits the photographer. The album was produced by Lou Adler and was released 10 Feb 71, by Ode Records.

Smackwater Jack

It is weird, isn’t it?
How we form attachments to things, both iconic and not.

Sights and sounds, perhaps,
more than other senses,
but still in nineteen-seventy-one, when my B.S.,
Tapestry, and Billy were all born.

(And, oh god! — Wally World.)

There’s Carole, barefooted in jeans,
sitting on the bench window seat
at home with her great hair, at

Eighty-eight-fifteen Appian Way,
Laurel Canyon—in Hollywood Hills, L A.
There she is,
perched on a pillow holding a tapestry.
While her cat, Telemachus, sits on his own pillow—

But only momentarily,
much chagrining cover photo guy,
Jim McCrary, photo maker of many iconic covers.

And ya know the piano’s
not far away. Maybe it’s
“Way Over Yonder,” or maybe
“It’s [just] Too Late.”

She had help (James, Joni, and more) recording
in Studio B. And isn’t it amazing
how more than fifty years later
I still know, I accurately remember
every word of every song to sing along.

Look both ways and let the magic of art and music take you where you want to go.
Mind the gaps, as crazy as it is, vinyl is coming back.

25 thoughts on “Poetics: Inspired by Album Cover Art”

  1. When I saw you in my inbox and the prompt you chose to respond to, I couldn’t help but smile. Somehow I knew it would be your hard crush that would end up being your muse.

    Beautifully done, Bill.

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  2. When I was in 9th grade we’d have dance parties at someone’s (chaperoned) house, taking turns with everyone (that was a rule). Going slowly round to “So Far Away” was the bittersweet heart of puberty, whatever girl I had a crush on passing through my hands so fleetingly. Gone tomorrow, thanks to Carole. A permanent album from the court of soft rock. Wonderful stroll of those facts here we learned long after we first fell in love with the sound.

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  7. Great choice, Bill! Every time I put on Tapestry I can’t help but sing along, I know those tracks so well – and the cover photo, which I love. I also love the stanza in your poem that is truly ekphrastic, describing ‘Carole, barefooted in jeans, sitting on the bench window seat at home’ and ‘her cat, Telemachus…on his own pillow’. Have you noticed how the best people, including Joni, love cats? I also love how you included titles from the album.

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      1. My pleasure Bill! If songwriters are anything like poets, they only realised the effect a long time after writing.

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  9. Such an iconic cover – great choice and thanks for filling in some of the background details so nicely. I don’t think anyone who has heard this album has come away unaffected. It strikes so many poignant chords!

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  10. I enjoyed hearing about her on our car ride. Artists, their life stories and trivia, are some of my favorites, most interesting information to me.

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