I'm breaking my repeat rules, because recently I have fallen deeply in love with Okkervil River and this song is probably one of the most splendid thing I've ever had the pleasure of listening to live. Also, since there was a mild Beach Boys theme earlier in the month, it's appropriate that I continue the trend and use a song that utilizes Sloop John B in a similar way. It's also the end of the month, so what better way to end this one by saying:

Live and love.

John Berryman (orig. John Allyn Smith) was an American poet who threw himself off a bridge in 1972. His biological father shot himself early on in Smith's life and his mother remarried, making him a Berryman. I'm not a fan of poetry so I can't really comment on Berryman's poetry except to say that it looks like you can read his Dream Songs for relatively free as far as I can tell.

I like this one:

Filling her compact & delicious body
with chicken páprika, she glanced at me
twice.
Fainting with interest, I hungered back
and only the fact of her husband & four other people
kept me from springing on her

or falling at her little feet and crying
'You are the hottest one for years of night
Henry's dazed eyes
have enjoyed, Brilliance.' I advanced upon
(despairing) my spumoni.—Sir Bones: is stuffed,
de world, wif feeding girls.

—Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes
downcast ... The slob beside her feasts ... What wonders is
she sitting on, over there?
The restaurant buzzes. She might as well be on Mars.
Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry.
—Mr. Bones: there is.

Sloop John B is, of course, that marvelous Beach Boys song inspired by a folk tune about a bunch of unhappy sailors. I wish there was more to say about it, except that it's one of the earliest tunes I remember getting stuck in my head for years and years, as on one 'vacation' across the United States with my parents (when I was 9 years old) we ended up seeing Forest Gump about six times in various different states. I'm pretty sure Forest Gump is to blame for my taste in music.

How does it all come together? I don't know. It just does.