A fun recent Twitter meme involved a whole ton of people taking the topic of plums in an icebox from William Carlos Williams’ famed 1934 poem “This Is Just To Say” and inserting them into lyrics from artists ranging from Smash Mouth to Carly Rae Jepsen, but said meme appears to have mostly run its course. It was fun while it lasted, though, and the idea of mixing poetry topics into songs about something else feels like something that has wider potential. Here’s what some other poets’ famous works might have looked like following these principles:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan,” with Guns N’ Roses, “Paradise City” (pictured)
Take me down to the dome in air
Where there’s flashing eyes and floating hair
Oh, won’t you please cry beware?
…Just a miracle of rare device
That sunny dome, those caves of ice
Drinking the milk of paradise
Where they on honeydew have fed
Close your eyes with holy dread
Lord Byron, “The Destruction of Sennacherib,” with Duran Duran, “Hungry Like The Wolf“
Sheen of the spears, stars on the sea
My cohorts are gleaming after you
Hitting the fold, in purple and gold
I’m hungry like the wolf
William Shakespeare, “O Mistress mine” (from Twelfth Night), with Haddaway, “What Is Love“
What is love?
‘Tis not hereafter,
What’s to come
Is still unsure.
In delay
There lies no plenty,
Youth’s a stuff,
Will not endure.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Charge Of The Light Brigade,” with Smash Mouth, “Walking On The Sun“
So don’t dismay, act now
Your time is running out
Yours not to reason why
Yours but to do and die
And you won’t have wondered
If someone had blundered
The order’s done, you might as well charge the guns
Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” with Bob Seger, “Turn The Page“:
Here I am, in a wood again
Here I am, where roads diverge
I took the other, won’t come back again
Not to this place, where roads merge
J.R.R. Tolkien, “All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter” (from The Fellowship of the Ring), with Kanye West, “Gold Digger“:
I ain’t saying he’s a glitterer
But old and strong ain’t no witherer
King the crownless, the crownless get kinged
King the crownless, the crownless get kinged
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias,” with ZZ Top, “Legs“:
He’s got vast and trunkless legs, knows how to use them
He always brags, look on my works, you humans
On his pedestal, those words, can you see them?
Near them on the sand, a sneer of cold command
He’s king of kings, it’s all right
Thanks for indulging, and feel free to leave your own versions in the comments!