Sgt. Peppers as it should have been...

With the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", it got me thinking about what should have been:

When the Beatles started the recording sessions of what would become Sgt. Pepper on 24 November 1966, two of the first songs they recorded were Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever. (The third was When I'm Sixty-Four, another song about their childhood growing up in Liverpool.) Because of the pressure to release a single, Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever was released in February 1967 as a double-A side. Because their producer George Martin and manager Brian Epstein thought "it was inappropriate to require fans to pay twice for the same material", they left these songs off Sgt. Pepper. Martin later described the decision to drop these two songs as "the biggest mistake of my professional life".

So...if we "restored" these two songs to Sgt. Pepper, where would they go? I couldn't see how to place them on side one without completely re-ordering the album. But I saw one logical and artistic place: put both songs on side two, right after the first song "Within You Without You". As the new 2nd song, "Penny Lane" is a strong comeback after "Within You Without You". Then if "Penny Lane" is followed with "Strawberry Fields Forever", it's another good change of pace, and preserves the mix of Lennon/McCartney songs on the album. It also makes side 2 and the whole album much stronger in my opinion. 

Here is how I would include "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" on Sgt. Peppers. What are your thoughts?

Side one
No.	Title	Lead vocals	Time
1.	"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"	McCartney	2:02
2.	"With a Little Help from My Friends"	Starr	2:44
3.	"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds "	Lennon	3:28
4.	"Getting Better"	McCartney	2:48
5.	"Fixing a Hole"	McCartney	2:36
6.	"She's Leaving Home"	McCartney with Lennon	3:35
7.	"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"	Lennon	2:37

Side two
No.	Title	Lead vocals	Time
1.	"Within You Without You"	Harrison	5:04
2.	"Penny Lane"	McCartney	3:00
3.	"Strawberry Fields Forever"	Lennon	4:05
4.	"When I'm Sixty-Four"	McCartney	2:37
5.	"Lovely Rita"	McCartney	2:42
6.	"Good Morning Good Morning"	Lennon	2:41
7.	"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)"	Lennon, McCartney and Harrison	1:19
8.	"A Day in the Life"	Lennon and McCartney	5:39

Side note: The issue for this version of the LP is length. Side 2 clocks in at 27:05 (up from 20:02), vs 19:50 for side 1. The standard LP mastering technology allows 23 minutes per side. LPs longer than 23 minutes per side are possible, and can be 30 minutes or longer, but with a loss of fidelity. So if these two songs were added, it's likely there would have been other changes to the song order, and possibly which songs were included!

Across The Knife Edge (poem)

Across The Knife Edge

Following the cold trail across the high country,

somewhere in front of us the other summit rises,

invisible in the icy windswept fog.

We must reach the safety of the other side

before the coming storm

reaches us.

Across the knife edge,

faster and faster we go

into the fog of the day.

Along the tumbled edge,

giant rocks make us twist and turn.

Some are hewn too large for us to step.

Faster and faster we go,

into the fog of the day,

into the invisible future.

Across the knife edge,

the path narrows as we climb,

but we don’t see it yet.

Why don’t we see it?

Hunting, hunting

for ground beneath our feet.

Will we stop or turn

before it falls away –

Why don’t we see it?

Hunting, hunting

for ground beneath our feet.

Across the knife edge,

into the fog of the day,

through the wind, ahead of the storm,

to the safety of the other side,

into the invisible future,

we race.

May 2014 North Andover, Mass.

Photo is by Dan McGinness

from his solo winter 2014 hike of Mt. Katahdin in Maine

http://dmoutdoors.blogspot.com/2014/04/mt-katahdin-baxter-hamlin-peak-solo-in.html

Used with permission

From The Christening (poem)

This poem was inspired by my Aunt Mary Jo, my Godmother who held me at my christening and who I felt was like a second mother to me. It was also inspired by memories of times together with the extended Bohrer family and thoughts of those in the family who have passed.

Peace.

From The Christening

Those who came before us

are not gone,

even though they rest today

in quiet fields of stone and flower.

Those we love who are gone

live in mind and heart,

their home,

alive in love’s power.

But more than this,

those who came before

and gave us life,

or read stories to us at a Sunday visit,

played games together at the family picnic,

gazed out the window with us during the storm –

arms around –

or held us at the christening,

still live I claim.

Look back through the lens of time.

Follow the unseen line of sight,

not my invention,

but one that science calls dimension.

This story tells of an unbroken line, a celestial strand,

a woven thread of strength eternal.

The eternal now.

Now.

The ones we love

are still as they were,

alive and strong,

though passed from our easy view.

They still move and breathe,

laugh and sing,

on that line of time,

as real as yesterday,

like friends who moved away

now living in another town.

But we’re the ones who moved.

Still, that strand is in our reach.

I feel the threads return and join,

connecting to the fabric here

that I now hold in hand,

this fabric of the gown passed down

from the christening.

For Aunt Mary Jo

April 2014  North Andover, Mass.

PS Here's a picture of me and my Aunt Mary Jo when I visited her this past July. She passed away only three months later, on October 14, 2025.

here are some haiku / standing here looking at you / say kon'nichiwa

I wanted to share some haiku I wrote, but before I do, I wanted to start with a few by Japan's most renowned haiku poet, Matsuo Bashō, who lived from 1644 to 1694. These are translated by Jane Reichhold. Enjoy.

114

ah haru haru

yōinaru kana haru

to un nun

ah spring spring

how great is spring

and so on

29

haru kaze ni

fukidashi warau

hana mogana

spring winds

hoping the flowers burst

out in laughter

96

hatsu hana ni

inochi shichi jyū

go nen hodo

first blossoms

seeing them extends my life

seventy-five more years

my haiku about haiku

the words are loaded

in the poetic pistol they wait

bang! flowers appear!

simple only, so

around, it sees, it hears, so

in the moment, so

the haiku – not clear

a few words say what they say

everyone says what?

the black ink stands small

tries to fill the empty page

white space fills the rest

a poem is

a suitcase of words

packed with brain, heart, and soul

ready for travel

My response to Dover Beach

One of my favorite poems is Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold. I hesitate to say this because it's such a downbeat poem. Oh my God, I swear, if Mr. Arnold had a pistol nearby when he completed it, it might have been all over.  In these latter days of an endless and endlessly downbeat election season, I can relate more than ever to the downbeat view of the human condition found in Dover Beach. "Darkling plain" indeed.

The poem is short, less than 40 lines, and very accessible. And yet it has so many layers and echoes for such a short poem. There's a good chance you read it in high school. It's called "the most anthologized poem in the English language." If you're not familiar with it, it's worth reading. Even if you've read it, it's worth re-discovering. Here it is:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43588

I've been carrying this poem around in my head for a while now. The thing is, as beautiful as it is, and as evocative as it is, I couldn't disagree with it more. So in addition to the words of the poem, I carried THAT thought in my head for quite a while. Somehow, Mr. Arnold got it fundamentally - if beautifully - wrong.

Well, as I carried this thought around, something happened, as things do. This mulling turned into a poem - one that actually started out in response to something else - but somehow in the end became a response to Dover Beach. Here it is:

http://markbohrer.blogspot.com/2016/10/almost-whole-poem.html

October 2016

Almost Whole (poem)

Almost Whole

The moon is almost full.
Stand with me at the narrow straits,
where the Merrimack meets the tide.
Gaze across the bay, under the gibbous night,
watch at anchor, how the island rides.
Against the dark, it plumbs the deepening sea.
Breathe in the cool night-air, and look!
Even the wind on the water moves to the lunar pull!
Keeping her date, the moon rests on our shoulders.
Starlight gleams from a distant shore.
Moon-blanched rocks stand above the flood,
the Joppa Flats are gone. Salt-marsh birds rest in the reeds.
Tonight they hide, choosing to let the tide work its force.
Keeping her promise, on her ephemeris, the moon moves,
the waters rise, and our river changes course,
bearing in the salt, a salve for the wounded.
Tonight we receive the tide’s ephemeral and ageless balm.

In this long arrival of life, I am reached
by a tide that stands full at the strand.
The water lies full at my feet, cresting
where I stand, where I am, cresting the shore.
Good comes in, comes in, to me as to each,
retreats and then, calls out, have some more.
In this run, ebbs strife.
Good flows in, arriving, and arriving.
It is enough. I take, I sample, I store.

Tonight there is no retreat,
no gliding taking in the wash of the strand,
no draw of the tide, no grating roar.
Tonight the same salten sea rises within;
the same ocean river courses the inner shore.
It runs in this temple, in these freshets and veins.
Tonight it arrives, bearing the same cure.

I am not as wounded as I thought –
no knife to withdraw.
I am speechless, struck dumb to my shallow core
by the depth of the sea that surrounds.
The breath of the sea-air touches my face,
sea and stars go still; wind and water, no sound.
From afar, tide and moon in silent tune embrace.
I see no struggle, no pain, no sadness, no sorrow –
no need. The moon is almost full.

What if I am standing at the waters of Charon,
in range of his searching eye? The ferryman, ready on his raft,
ready with his constrictors, his leathers, his binds,
gliding by, on the dark river Styx, silent, his eye all hunger –
what if he found me with no want, no hunger, no need?
What if he turned downstream?
Tonight, the ferryman turns his eye,
and misses one.
Ready with his constrictors, he turns from me,
and I unwind what was taut.
The cord of discord is loosed, prevented, undone.
I have finally gone to school. I have finally learned
how to be untaught.
What I have is enough.
The night-air is sweet. The tide is full.
The darkling plain but reveals
the glimmering light of the stars.

October 2016, North Andover Mass.

Postscript: My Response to Dover Beach

One of my favorite poems is Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold. I hesitate to say this because it's such a downbeat poem. Oh my God, I swear, if Mr. Arnold had a pistol nearby when he completed it, it might have been all over.  In these latter days of an endless and endlessly downbeat election season, I can relate more than ever to the downbeat view of the human condition found in Dover Beach. "Darkling plain" indeed.

The poem is short, less than 40 lines, and very accessible. And yet it has so many layers and echoes for such a short poem. There's a good chance you read it in high school. It's called "the most anthologized poem in the English language." If you're not familiar with it, it's worth reading. Even if you've read it, it's worth re-discovering. Here it is:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43588

I've been carrying this poem around in my head for a while now. The thing is, as beautiful as it is, and as evocative as it is, I couldn't disagree with it more. So in addition to the words of the poem, I carried THAT thought in my head for quite a while. Somehow, Mr. Arnold got it fundamentally - if beautifully - wrong.

Well, as I carried this thought around, something happened, as things do. This mulling turned into a poem - one that actually started out in response to an Emily Dickinson biography - but somehow in the end became Almost Whole, and a response to Dover Beach.

October 2016  North Andover, Mass.

De-versification, or news of my divestment from The Vintage Book Of Contemporary American Poetry

I watch your angels

dance on the head of a pin.

I wait for music.

When I play your verse,

angels dance; my heart stands still.

The shoe never drops.

September 2016  North Andover, Mass.