The Poetess Who Sings: Random Memory #2

It just came to mind. And so I will share.

In my junior year of college, I took a pretty memorable Poetry course. It was memorable for various other reasons, in addition to what this post is about: I was reuniting with my beloved, favorite professor, Jennifer Atkinson, after having taking a creative writing class with her in my sophomore year that pretty much changed how I looked at my writing style, my voice, etc.; my sister was in the same class with me, which proved to be an exercise in entertaining our peers with our sibling hijinks and so much more; other familiar faces were in the class, so it was even more of a reuniting. Anyway, one morning, I overheard a guy in front of me talking about a CD he had just purchased. I heard words like amazing and poetry in music and so on and so forth. Immediately intrigued and far more open about my ear hustling, so I asked him who he was referring to. “Fiona Apple,” he replied. “Get her CD immediately. It’s like poetry set to song.” Hook, line, sinker.

I bought Tidal that week.

He wasn’t wrong.

Oh, how Fiona Apple slayed me. She slayed me so easily and quickly and painfully and beautifully and deeply. She was a poetess, yes, weaving her experience and her life into verse and piano. I was a bit crazed by it all. For me, she didn’t have the intellectual rage of Alanis or the ethereal of Sarah McLachlan or the haunting beauty of my Tori Amos. She was wholly different. She had tremor and strength and fragility encased in this rich vibrato that transfixed me and transported me to my own life experiences and thoughts. I couldn’t put her in the same category as my other treasured female musicians, because I simply felt like Fiona Apple was speaking directly to me. Needless to say, I swallowed everything I could find about her. Interviews, televised concerts (her *version of Jimi Hendrix’s Angel on MTV’s Unplugged series remains an utter favorite)–whatever Fiona said or did, I read about it or listened to it or watched it.

Of course, now in my “old age”, the obsession has diminished, in the sense that I’m not minutes from camping outside of Fiona’s house, but I’m still a pretty devoted fan. Any discovery of good music thrills me, so yes, I’m glad that I totally barged in and asked my classmate what he was talking about. And speaking of my classmate, it’s no mistake that Fiona and her music/poetry moved him. I watched him fall in love with poetry in that class. His own work was pretty compelling.

Nice, random memory.

*You knew I’d post it, didn’t you? Enjoy.