Manifest-Ography
Part Manifesto, Part Biography, all Mitch
I remember listening to the words.
People did, because, even though it was Rock and Roll, there were words, and they were important enough to fill the space on the crisp paper of the record jackets. Most of the time the words added up to empty platitudes, or they were flat-out pretentious, or their metaphors were mixed. Or. Or. Or.
But sometimes the words moved me. For just a second, something shifted in the gut. Maybe you know what I mean.
Those moments led me to write songs and then poems, then to study poetry and now to teach folks how to get words down on a page so they show thought, shape a view, even move people.
But I didn’t forget the music.
For me, spoken poetry and sung songs have always been two aspects of the same thing—a means by which a listener (and a writer as well) can be moved, can see the world in a new way, can even be, him or her, you or me, changed.
Maybe it’s just one moment—midway in a song early in a show. Or it’s at the end of a poem and, hell, you don’t even like poems. Maybe it’s at the final chord of the final song of the night.
But there it is.
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Mitch Goldwater has taught poetry and writing at Mansfield University, among other places. Nowadays he mostly crouches between song and poetry trying to fit the one into the other, right where he thinks they belong. He has an MFA in Poetry Writing from the University of Pittsburgh and lives in Corning, NY.