Dell on Eminem

Do you remember the children's lullabye Hush Little Baby? Shelley and her friends were playing their music one evening out here at the lake and right in the middle of this one song, I was hearing words from this lullabye. When I asked them to play it again, they took me inside to check it out on youtube, so I could read the lyrics as it played. I was surprised when she entered Eminem. I thought she had been saying, M & M, like the candy. Shelley said I was half right [or half wrong] because the artist's name was Marhsall Mathers.

With the words in front of me and the music playing, I was just blown away, to use one of Shelley's phrases. Here was someone using the same consonance rhymes I recognized from the World War I poet, Wilfred Owen. Considered the finest war poet from that period, Owen wasn't the first to play around with consonance and pararhyme, although he used it more than other poets. Wilfred Owens' poems are especially heart-rending because he was killed a week before the end of the war. His poems described the terror of life in the trenches and the horror of mustard gas. You may have seen old photographs of the masks on the soldiers. Owen's most famous poem Dulce Et Decorum Est is a description of the reality of chemical warfare and ends with a quote from Horace: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. That nonsense is still being told to young people; romanticizing war makes about as much sense as romanticizing 8 Mile in Detroit.

Eminem's rap Mockingbird made a fan out of me. The lyrics of Mockingbird are an account of the breakdown of his relationship with his children's mother, his longing to be a good father and see his children happy: familiar emotional territory.

Then Shelley brought me the movie 8 Mile, starring Eminem. Loved it.

When I hear my contemporaries call rap "crap", I make a point of telling them why I think Eminem is worth a listen. The misery of poverty, depicted in 8 Mile, is in part rooted in the prejudiced mind-set that hangs labels like "crap" without even listening to the music. When did people get the notion that maturity is getting one vision of how things should be and then refusing to budge from that vision? Nothing changes if nothing changes.

Tomorrow Shelley and Kevin are due back. Dorg has been pacing back and forth tonight obviously ready to be reunited with his owner. Maybe I'll sing Hush Little Baby to him, or not.