Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964. That Beatle performance on TV was dynamic, influential, catalytic . . . it started the British Invasion, bands from the UK flooding American radio and changing the direction and development of popular music in the US. Because of the Beatles, kids in the US began playing guitar and drums. That’s how I got started as a musician!
I began a poem on this event yesterday using the monotetra form, which is quite difficult, so I wasn't able to pull off the poem until today. The monotetra is a quatrain (a four-line stanza) with 8-syllable lines all rhyming with each other (aaaa) . . . and the ending line has to be something said twice (4 syllables each). Here's a link to a description of the monotetra. In this poem, I have four monotetra stanzas; is that a tetra-monotetra?! Anyway, I used quite a lot of slant rhyme here. The doubled ending line I found quite tough to make sound natural. Here goes . . .
Beatlemania
—monotetra
The Beatles played Ed Sullivan
sixty years ago today, and
I watched. “I want to hold your hand,”
they sang. Girls screamed. They sang. Girls screamed.
They sang, “She loves you, yeah yeah yeah.”
Paul’s dad had told them, drop the yeahs —
too American. Well, now here:
Beatlemania, Beatlemania.
They spurred the British invasion:
The Animals, The Who, Herman’s
Hermits, The Kinks. Americans
never the same, never the same.
The Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five.
Music revolution, all live.
Rock and roll will never outlive
The Beatles’ jive, the Beatles’ jive.
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking.
Ingat, everyone. ヅ
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