Overview:
The Poetry of Rock reflects on how a seventh-grade assignment connecting rock lyrics to poetry transformed a disengaged student into a lifelong learner and English teacher who built his own teaching philosophy around connecting rigorous curriculum to students’ interests.
The only things in my bookbag were a small pack of Kleenex, five sticks of Big Red gum, and a copy of No One Here Gets Out Alive, the Jim Morrison biography by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman. It was April 1982, and I was nearing the end of Ms. Margo’s 7th grade English class at Great Neck North Middle School.
While the class was busy working, Ms. Margo called me up to her desk. I started preparing my answer to what I assumed was her question, “Why are you showing up without a notebook or pen?” Since the first day of school, I sensed that Ms. Margo didn’t care for my ways. When I stood beside her, I felt it even more. Without humor, she reminded me that our poetry book report was due before spring break the following Friday. I’m not sure if I heard anger, frustration, or kindness in her voice, but I appreciated her teacherly nudge.
At lunch, I avoided my food and friends and went to the school library, where Richard Goldstein’s The Poetry of Rock found me. I was chosen! Maybe the book judged me by my cover, just as I judged it; half Sgt. Pepper’s, half M.C. Escher, and completely what I needed for Margo’s poetry book report. The assignment required us to reflect on several poems by different writers, critically examining each one to explore its literary and sound devices, as well as share our personal insights. The Poetry of Rock was the perfect text… The Who, The Stones, The Doors!
The book’s author, Richard Goldstein, was one of the first and most important writers on rock music. His pioneering 1966 “Pop Eye” column in The Village Voice provided cogent weekly analysis of contemporary popular music. Goldstein believed that “mass culture can be as vital as high art,” and whoever was ordering books for the Great Neck North Middle School library must have agreed with his assertion that: “There is an immense reservoir of power here, an impressive awareness of language, and a profound sense of rhythm. I call those qualities ‘poetic;’ you may want to call them ‘unconscious,’ but I do not see how the two are incompatible.”
Waiting for the Sun
Fittingly, Richard Goldstein was an early champion of The Doors. He was also mentioned several times in No One Here Gets Out Alive, having spent time in the studio with them, interviewing them on the New York PBS television show Critique, and attending a great number of their concerts. “Anyone who disputes the concept of rock literature had better listen to The Doors’ ‘The End.’”
During the past summer, my camp counselor, Howard Ben Twersky, played a cassette copy of The Doors: Absolutely Live, which was unlike anything I had ever heard before. The Doors sounded like rock with a thesaurus; theatrical spoken word sliced with crooning, screaming, and cerebral insurgency.
“Lions in the street and roaming
Dogs in heat, rabid, foaming
A beast caged in the heart of a city.”
The Doors were slightly beyond my comprehension, but I knew there was much more to explore. The Doors shone a light onto my subconscious, giving expression to my growing thoughts and emotions. That year, their songs became my sonic guidance counselor, while their story, No One Here Gets Out Alive, was the only book I took to school in 7th grade.
I went from listening to music while doing homework to listening to music as my homework. The once-unimaginable concept of rock music as a lesson – pop lyrics as part of the lexicon of scholarship – majestically opened the levees of my learning. Goldstein’s The Poetry of Rock brought the soundtrack of my happy world outside of school and turned the stereo speakers toward my less self-assured world inside the classroom.
I paid my library fines and left with now two books in my backpack: The Poetry of Rock and No One Here Gets Out Alive.
Floating away at the end of the school day on my Schwinn Scrambler BMX, like one of the kids from E.T., I rode through Allenwood Park on my way home and stopped to sit on a bench. I took out a stick of Big Red and flipped through The Poetry of Rock. In the opening pages, Goldstein connects modern musical wordsmiths to a time before smashing guitars and exploding drums, comparing Chuck Berry’s five-vowel, authentic rock libretto of 1950s America girls-and-cars to Robert Lowell; John Lennon’s wordplay to James Joyce; and Bob Dylan to Walt Whitman.
Over spring break, I practiced lacrosse at Allenwood Park, listened to Morrison Hotel on my dad’s Sony cassette player, and joyously worked on the poetry assignment. I embraced Goldstein’s ideas and studied the book’s structure. I saw how he editorialized each set of lyrics and used this as a model to dive deeper into poetic devices and meaning. Needing more content for the project, rather than biking four miles to the Great Neck library, I walked four feet to my brother’s bedroom to look through his record collection. Here I found elegant poetic elocution lifting from the spiral vinyl surface, spinning at the speed of 33 RPM.
Stevie Wonder: “You must have known that I was lonely, because you came to my rescue.”
Carole King: “If the sky above you grows dark and full of clouds, and that old north wind begins to blow.”
Kansas: “Just a drop of water in an endless sea.”
Cat Stevens: “You will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.”
The power of friendship, the reassuring universal themes of companionship and resilience, all expressed with smooth funky beats and crisp guitars. I feared that I was doing something wrong, as there was no way schoolwork could be this fun. Looking back now, that might have been the moment I committed to a career and a lifetime of learning.
The numerous hours spent typing away on my mom’s beige IBM eventually gave birth to An Insight into Human Emotion Through the Poetry of Song. A mulberry-hued, thoughtfully crafted report made from various construction papers, it featured a collage of glued images, vibrant colors, and playful shapes. The fourteen pages full of rock lyrics were presented like a Mario Puzo Las Vegas coffee table book, complete with
photos, illustrations, typed mini write-ups, a table of contents, and a bibliography. I handed it in on the first day back after the break.
A few days later, Ms. Margo returned it. She seemed to appreciate the effort and was satisfied with the outcome. “Lee, this is a fine job. If it had been handed in when it was due, it most certainly would have been an A+.” The A+ had a line through it, and a B was written below it. Perhaps she didn’t care for my ways, but I now knew that she had expected more from my work.
Other Voices
Despite, or perhaps because of, my early disengagement in school, I went on to become an NYC public high school English teacher (now in my 28th year). Over the years, the depth of impact from my 7th-grade English class poetry assignment has become more pronounced. In many ways, it both informed and inspired my career path. I am always searching for engaging subjects or new ideas to stay connected with students and remain relevant in my craft.
Reading The Poetry of Rock during my middle school spring break allowed me to see how curricula and lessons can emerge from many places and spaces. This not only saved me as a student but influenced my practice and persona as a teacher. Understanding that I could summon pedagogy within the relatable and familiar, while maintaining scholarly rigor, made me, a struggling student, feel both smart, challenged, and hungry for knowledge. I knew from experience that the impact of such a populist approach could further position my students toward success. With this intention, I encourage the students to share things from their outside world that bring them joy and enthusiasm. One particular year I learned that several of my students were into art and liked to draw old-style graffiti (in a sketch pad, I assumed, and not on the subway). To better serve my students’ area of interest I started building a curriculum that included street art documentaries Wild Style, Bomb It and Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop.
With my students in mind, on May 14, 2023, I went to Brooklyn’s Industry City for something called the Tag Conference – an academic gathering in the growing field of graffiti studies, featuring traditional scholars, independent researchers, rogue archivists, and cultural historians. It was a collection of sophisticates, some of whose voices are often overlooked in academia.
The panel presentation I attended was titled Genesis Stories of N.Y.C. Graffiti. I took a seat, listened, and took notes.
“When I first started writing about graffiti in the 1970s for The Village Voice I equated it to Visual Doo-Wop,” said an older gentleman with a grandfatherly beard, “I felt it was important to look beyond the original demonization of N.Y.C. artists and see the artistry and conversation behind it. Youth culture at the time didn’t need to be built up or broken down—but to be documented and understood.”
His PowerPoint highlighted photos and headlines from articles he had written for The Village Voice, chronicling the original backlash against N.Y.C. graffiti artists, all the way to the present, when their work is now elevated into an acceptable form of art.
After the discussion, I went directly up to the edifying man with more hair on his face than on his head and told him that I was a teacher and would be delighted for him to visit our school to speak with the students about the city’s history of graffiti. He seemed vaguely familiar, like someone I had met a long time ago, or perhaps someone I had never met but still knew well.
He gave me his card, and when I got home I looked him up.
His name was Richard Goldstein.
Google became a time machine, transporting me back to 7th grade on Long Island. Richard “The Poetry of Rock” Goldstein. The gravitational pull toward Goldstein at the conference now seemed kismet-inevitable, and an introduction over 40 years in the making. I realized, an hour after speaking with him, that I had finally met one of my education’s founding fathers.
I didn’t have much in the way of ephemera or old schoolwork as I rummaged through the living room cabinets that I had not opened since moving into my Lower East Side apartment a decade earlier. But a poetic providence led me down a promising path, uncovering writing journals and a small pile of notebooks and papers dating back to 6th grade at Great Neck North Middle School.
Alive, she cried… the clutter gave me a glowing sense of succor, illuminating its shine on the old and beautiful brown and red pages: An Insight into Human Emotion Through the Poetry of Song, the poetry project I had written in Ms. Margo’s class 40 years earlier.
The paper was brittle, browned, and fading, but it was still extraordinarily striking. I picked it up slowly so as not to upset it, opened the pages gently, and read each word with astonished delight.
It was a full-circle moment, and I couldn’t wait to reach out and tell Richard Goldstein that his words and wisdom gave me structure, shape, sound, and the potential to thrive as a learner and teacher. I had so much I wanted to tell him, to ask him, to share with him.
It was a full-circle moment… that didn’t last long.
I lost my wallet the following weekend while taking my daughter to a carnival in Park Slope, Brooklyn. In it was his card and contact information.
Full Circle
Work, marriage and parenting put a pause to my hopes to connect with him again. Now, two years later, Richard Goldstein continues to be that song on the radio that pops up when I’m driving down the highway. I know all the words, sing along, and turn the volume up loud! Wandering through The Strand bookstore, I happen upon his memoir, Take Another Little Piece of My Heart, and learn that he grew up in the Bronx-the son of Jewish immigrants, with a father who worked for the post office.
Goldstein writes with the aplomb of a participant-observer, sharing his love of music, his complicated relationship with the ’60s, and his firsthand accounts of culturally significant moments. He writes about events such as the 1968 Chicago riots, where having a journalist’s press pass actually put him in more danger-but being short helped him avoid a beatdown from local law enforcement. At the Monterey Pop Festival, he witnessed Jimi Hendrix set his guitar – and the world – on fire, saw Otis Redding give a master class in soul, and had lovely interactions with Janis Joplin.
His journey reflects a continuous exploration that leads to personal and collective growth. He also revisits The Poetry of Rock and offers new reflections on The Doors. Though now more stately, his writing still explores the overlapping interplay between life, art, and education.
I once again obtained Richard Goldstein’s contact information. He is now 81 years old and teaching at NYU. I emailed him, sharing this story.
He got back to me the same day. We had lunch the following week, and I showed him my poetry book report from 1982.
He held up my forty-something-year-old project and read aloud:
“There are places I’ll remember all my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better; some have gone, and some remain.”
Then he continued reading my words beneath the Beatles’ lyrics:
“This ballad discusses how past memories are special, but not as special as what you feel now.”
Quite a prognostication from a seventh-grade mind, almost as if I knew this moment would come, and that it would be precisely this wonderful. Poems are meant to be spoken, and sometimes, they even speak things into existence.
