when janet jackson sang, ‘when I was seventeen
I did what people told me—that was long ago,’
she was nineteen. legend has it,
‘saving all my love’ wasn’t going
to radio, but when whitney sang it, her long-
limbed voice bending gently around sax notes,
every woman at the concert levitated.
some record exec, god of love in a good
disguise, nodded his head at another.
bells rang, but too stricken to be a wedding,
when amy sang ‘I died a hundred times.’
three years she had left. twenty-seven, gone
as janis joplin, the first ever ‘rock star’
queened in print, who never read that headline.
one year older, martha wainwright’s debut
album, first track—she sang ‘bloody mother
fucking asshole’ to her father, who
so injured her sullen mother that she
recorded the sound of a single teardrop
hitting her guitar string. carly simon wrote
her best-loved love song on her honeymoon
plane while j.t. slept. her first few piano notes
a tentative welcome, then
eight, nine, & ten like a doorbell,
like new york sunshine waiting
for a window to open. when she sang,
‘I know what I think I’ve known
all along,’ she was persuading
herself, delusion a double need you understand
if ever you married addiction, as we did.
christine mcvie had to tell her husband
when she sang ‘you make lovin’ fun’
she’d written it for the family dog,
not another member of the band.
she was the same age as mama
cass on her last night in london, who rang
michelle in l.a. to say that they’d loved her
at the palladium, she was drowning in ovations,
finally full. she sang ‘what’s gonna happen’s
gonna happen to me.’ such conviction
in carly’s melody all seven times she vocalized,
‘loving you’s the right thing’ before
she arrived at ‘I’m in love, babe’
and underlined it. her memoir—she read
each word into my ear. I became carly
simon for one month. guess who
was the first man who didn’t love her well?
how is it we survive saying goodbye
to at least one lover every year?
When I encounter art I like—books, movies, music—I want to know everything I can about what inspired its creation. I also think the art we appreciate most has emotional memories attached. These emotions don’t need to come from our own lives: we can cultivate them through learning more about our favorite artists. For me, listening to Carly Simon’s memoir Boys in the Trees in 2024 was the most unexpected and complete experience I have had of seeing myself reflected in a book.
Anthony DiPietro is a gay sex poet and arts administrator originally from Providence, Rhode Island. A graduate of Brown University with honors in creative writing, he also earned a creative writing MFA at Stony Brook University. Now serving as deputy director of the Rose Art Museum, he resides in Worcester, MA. His debut poetry collection, kiss & release (Unsolicited Press, 2024), was longlisted for a Mass Book Award in Poetry.
www.AnthonyWriter.com
IG: @ant.providence
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