Singing the Everyday, Sign(al)ing the World. On catalogic poems

This article analyzes three poems: Jacques Prévert’s “Tentative de description d’un dîner de têtes à Paris-France” (1931), Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” (1965), and Jaume Sisa’s “Qualsevol nit pot sortir el sol” (1975). They are interrelated examples based on the list concept and loosely interconnected as all of them elaborate lists of people that can be found in, or are related to a specific place. In these three poems we can recognize a mixture of Eco’s distinction between the “poetics of everything included,” and the “poetics of the etcetera.” Similar to Proust’s use of the enumeration, they establish relationships and divisions, and this has a therapeutic function. The three poems are written against the grain, opposing the mainstream thinking of the day, based on enumeration chaotically cataloguing, and with perceptional attention to the everyday: class differences and the monotony and beauty of working (Prévert); claiming a place where to live (Dylan); enjoying friendship, celebration and happiness as post-hippie values based on a magical childlike world (Sisa). Everyday life is filled with the unorganized accumulation of objects and beings and the unbearable inclination to make sense of it all. These are long catalogic poems that sing the everyday, signaling alternatives to the world, helping us reassess it.