Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.: “To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech. Then ask two questions: One, how artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered, and two, how important is that objective. Question one rates the poem’s perfection, question two rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining a poem’s greatest becomes a relatively simple matter.”
? Professor Keating, English instructor in the film “Dead Poets Society” (who described the fictional Ph.D.’s work as “excrement”)
If we were to apply a J. Evans Pritchard-esque scale to bad Christmas songs, graphing them according to artlessness and triviality, then one that would score highly would have to be Bruce Springsteen’s rendition of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.”
I know it’s his schtick, and Dylan-hungry libs dig it, but vein-popping shouting at a pitch slightly flat of the desired note is not singing.
