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The Songs of Ani DiFranco Work Perfectly As Poems
By Ellen Eldridge
Not too long ago I climbed into my husband’s car to serendipitously find Pearl Jam’s Ten in the CD player. As “Deep” sounded out from the speakers, cutting through the years that I went without hearing it, I thought about the lyrics and just why I loved them. The immediate chill-provoking metaphor of the word ‘deep’ as a double entendre for both the depth of emotion and the depth of water, shook me into an analytical mode. I remembered my desire to feature Ani DiFranco as a poet because of her soul-shaking ability to work words into a frenzy that can shake the belief system of the listener.
To me, poetry is a genre of writing that really is most often written and least often read. I said this on the back of my own poetry book, and I reiterate it now not to castigate the form, but to awaken the readers of its power. The fact that a poem is concise means every single word carries an immense responsibility; each syllable must contribute to the rhythm, the feel, and the meaning of the poem. Works focused on a metaphor can make mundane language alive with possible interpretations just like in Pearl Jam’s “Deep.”
When I think about the songs spanning DiFranco’s prolific career and which of those songs speaks the most as a poem, “School Night” rears up with two fists in the air screaming, “Pick me!”
“School Night” by Ani DiFranco
she went over to his apartment
clutching her decision
and he said, did you come here to tell me goodbye?
so she built a skyscraper of procrastination
and then she leaned out the twenty-fifth floor window
of her reply
and she felt like an actress
just reading her lines
when she finally said
yes; it’s really goodbye this time
and far below was the blacktop
and the tiny toy cars
and it all fell so fast
and it all fell so far
and she said:
you are a miracle but that is not all
you are also a stiff drink and i am on call
you are a party and i am a school night
and i’m lookin’ for my door key
but you are my porch light
and you’ll never know, dear
just how much i loved you
you’ll probably think this was
just my big excuse
but i stand committed
to a love that came before you
and the fact that i adore you
is but one of my truths
what of the mother
whose house is in flames
and both of her children
are in their beds crying
and she loves them both
with the whole of her heart
but she knows she can only
carry one at a time?
she’s choking on the smoke
of unthinkable choices
she is haunted by the voices
of so many desires
she’s bent over from the business
of begging forgiveness
while frantically running around
putting out fires
but then what kind of scale
compares the weight of two beauties
the gravity of duties
or the ground speed of joy?
tell me what kind of gauge
can quantify elation?
what kind of equation
could i possibly employ?
and you’ll never know, dear
just how much i loved you
you probably think this was
just my big excuse
but i stand committed
to a love that came before you
and the fact that i adore you
is just one of my truths
so i
i’m goin’ home
to please the one i so love pleasing
and i don’t expect
he’ll have much sympathy for my grieving
but i guess that this is the price
that we pay for the privilege
of living for even a day
in a world with so many things
worth believing in
© 2001 ani difranco / righteous babe music
The meaning of this song can be distilled into a description of a love affair that didn’t work out as could so many of DiFranco’s songs. She admitted to the live audience at Variety Playhouse in Atlanta this February that she has had issues with relationships. But, look at her choice of words to describe actions, words like “clutching her decision” in the second line paint a vivid picture of a woman struggling with an intangible feeling that physically causes her to tense up as one with a stomach ailment would. The next description uses the metaphor of a skyscraper to show the amount of time the main character spent avoiding the breakup, which is described as leaning from the skyscraper’s 25th floor.
The rest of the poem/song uses additional metaphors to compare the two people in the relationship, but rather than saying “we were oil and water,” DiFranco describes the couple as “a party and a school night.” The words stay poetic with their power and commitment to invoking feeling from the reader while avoiding overly abstract ideas; we know what the narrator is saying in this song. The second most poignant description in “School Night” comes in the fourth stanza with the compelling imagery of a mother choosing between her two children in a burning house with the line “choking on the smoke of unthinkable choices.” The fact that these “unthinkable choices” refers to the mother described in the previous line does not mean that the songwriter is not masking other “unthinkable choices.” Ani DiFranco has never told me that she had an abortion, and I would never ask knowing it’s none of my business, but many of her songs create an image of a woman struggling with such a decision. One of these songs, “Tiptoe,” is another that works so well as a poem, and is included in the first book of poetry released in 2007, Verses.
“Tiptoe” by Ani DiFranco
tiptoeing through the used condoms
strewn on the piers
off the westside highway
sunset behind
the skyline of jersey
walking towards the water
with a fetus holding court in my gut
my body highjacked
my tits swollen and sore
the river has more colors at sunset
than my sock drawer ever dreamed of
i could wake up screaming sometimes
but i don’t
i could step off the end of this pier but
i’ve got shit to do
and i’ve an appointment on tuesday
to shed uninvited blood and tissue
i’ll miss you i say
to the river to the water
to the son or daughter
i thought better of
i could fall in love
with jersey at sunset
but i leave the view to the rats
and tiptoe back
Now, an educated reader would know better than to assume that the songwriter and the narrator experienced the same feeling or event. Assuming that any songwriter’s words describe that individual is a dangerous thing, but my point in re-printing “Tiptoe” is to show how well DiFranco steps inside of a character and presents weighing suicide against abortion unabashedly. This song appears on the 1995 release Not A Pretty Girl as a spoken word piece, and is followed by the song “Cradle and All” with its chorus mimicking the nursery rhyme. One could argue the song’s personal importance to the songwriter in its appearance on both the original album in 1995, the live album Living In Clip in 1997, and as a poem in Verses, but I wouldn’t be so bold as to assume anything about a writer from a written work.
In the booklet for the 2004 release Educated Guess DiFranco includes three unread poems, two of which appear in the book Verses. For anyone who feels the pull toward DiFranco’s words but not so much the pull toward the way she presents them as song, buy a copy of Verses. The added works of fine art created by DiFranco will also show long-time fans of DiFranco’s music a new side to her talent as well.
The last song I chose to discuss in DiFranco’s discography (and it was a tough choice) was “Out Of Habit” from her first studio release in 1990, simply titled Ani DiFranco.
“Out of Habit” by Ani DiFranco
the butter melts out of habit
the toast isn’t even warm
the waitress and the man in the plaid shirt
play out a scene they’ve played
so many times before
i am watching the sun
stumble home in the morning
from a bar on the east side of town
and the coffee is just water dressed in brown
beautiful but boring he visited me yesterday
he noticed my fingers
and he asked me if i would play
i didn’t really care a lot
but i couldn’t think of a reason why not
i said if you don’t come any closer
i don’t mind if you stay
my thighs have been involved
in many accidents
and now i can’t get insured
and i don’t need to be lured by you
my cunt is built
like a wound that won’t heal
now you don’t have to ask
because you know how i feel
art is why i get up in the morning
but my definition ends there
it doesn’t seem fair
that i’m living for something
i can’t even define
there you are right there
in the meantime
i don’t want to play for you anymore
show me what you can do
tell me what are you here for
i want my old friends
i want my old face
i want my old mind
fuck this time and place
the butter melts out of habit
the toast isn’t even warm
© 1990 ani difranco / righteous babe music
Again, the individual images pack warmly into an extended metaphor of a relationship going wrong and longing to get back to a previous time, but no one needs to guess what the narrator means when describing the way butter melts “out of habit” on warm toast. So many relationships follow the same path where the couple doesn’t necessarily recognize a problem, but the passion and lust evident in the start of a romance eventually dissipates into routines; habits. To capture this in a succinct song with the ability to bring back earlier images makes the song strong. The slap the listener takes when hit with descriptions like “a cunt built like a wound that won’t heal” (line 21-22) is tempered by the simple proclamation “art is the reason I get up in the morning” (line 25), and the glue keeping the entire song/poem together is the image of a man in a coffee shop noticing the main character’s fingers and asking her to play. The idea comes back later in the song with the description of not wanting to play anymore (line 32). The extended metaphor of playing around in a relationship and wanting to determine where the passion lies resolves with the repetition of the first line, which shows the whole song compares a relationship to butter melting out of habit on warm toast and longing for that which was before.
For anyone who considers him or herself a poet or a songwriter, take a look at these songs and poems by Ani DiFranco. Even if you don’t care for her brand of folk music, you would have a difficult time saying her poems don’t work. What works so well is the comparison of ordinary things through the powerful presentation of otherwise clichéd ideas. If the emotions of heartbreak, death, and struggling with decisions didn’t affect every single person then poetry and music by and large would be pointless. For those of us creating and releasing it onto society, we’d best do it in a way that acts as a catharsis for us and the listener/reader. I also strongly recommend that anyone curious enough to read more of Ani DiFranco’s words for free do so at http://www.danah.org/Ani/ because this site has listed lyrics of DiFranco’s for free and without ads since 1995.
