The best LitRock Songs is a spinoff from a feature called Issa's Sunday Service at the poetry blog, Issa's Untidy Hut.   The idea is a simple one: once a week, a song is selected that bridges rock and literature in some fashion. Each song is available for listening via the fine folks @ Grooveshark and the songs can be heard in their entirety at the links below .  Suggestions are actively being sought, so send any ideas along to lilliputreview AT google DOT com.  If your suggestion is accepted, you'll receive the two current issues of Lilliput Review free.

Week 1:     Common One by Van Morrison                            (Romantic poets, plus Eliot, Joyce etc.)
Week 2:     Rejoyce by Jefferson Airplane                            (James Joyce)
Week 3:     The Way by Donovan                                        (Lao Tzu)
Week 4:     Persecution & Resurrection of Dean Moriarty        by Aztec Two-Step  (Jack Kerouac)
Week 5:     Desolation Row by Bob Dylan                              (various and multitudinous)
Week 6:     Neal, Jack, and Me by King Crimson                    (Jack Kerouac)
Week 7:     Tales of Brave Ulysses by Cream                         (Homer)
Week 7.5:  Hallelujah by Popa Chubby                                 (Leonard Cohen)
Week 8:     Mercy Street by Peter Gabriel                            (Anne Sexton)
Week 9:     Kaatskill Serenade by David Bromberg                 (Washington Irving)
Week 10:   I Am the Walrus by The Beatles                          (Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allen Poe, King Lear)
Week 11:   Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar) by the Doors            (Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill)
Week 12:   Tangled Up in Blue by Bob Dylan                          (Petrarch)
Week 13:   Ophelia by The Band                                          (Hamlet, Ophelia)
Week 14:   You Can't Judge A Book ... by Cactus                   (Literature)
Week 15:   Lorca's Novena by the Pogues                              (Federico Garcia Lorca)
Week 16:   Babe, I'm on Fire - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds        (Walt Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca)
Week 17:   San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native)              by Fever Tree (Thomas Hardy)
Week 18    Wild Children by Van Morrison                              (Tennessee Williams)
Week 19:   Stuck Between Stations by The Hold Steady            (John Berryman, Jack Kerouac, "Sal Paradise")
Week 20:   Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits                           (William Shakespeare, West Side Story)
Week 21    It's Too Late by the Jim Carroll Band                      (Raymond Chandler)
Week 22    There She Goes, My Beautiful World by Nick Cave    (John Wilmot, Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas et al)
Week 23    Paperback Writer by The Beatles                          (Edward Lear, Frere Jacques)
Week 24    Small Flowers Crack Concrete by Sonic Youth          (d.a.levy)
Week 25    Wreck of the Hesperus by Procol Harum                 (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Week 26    Home I'll Never Be by Tom Waits                           (Jack Kerouac)
Week 27    White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane                        (Lewis Carroll)
Week 28    Ramble On by Led Zeppelin                                   (J. R. R. Tolkin)
Week 29    She Blinded Me with Science by Thomas Dolby          (Poetry)
Week 30    Adam Raised a Cain by Bruce Springsteen                (Genesis Book 4, John Steinbeck)

If you dig poetry, visit Issa's Untidy Hut, the blog of the print magazine Lilliput Review.  Click the mag's homepage for sample issues with hundreds of poems.

Last Update: 11/22/09