& (Perfect by Ed Sheeran)

÷ (Divide) - Ed Sheeran

Album Cover

Artist: Ed Sheeran
Song: Perfect
Album: ÷ (Divide)
Label: Asylum Records / Atlantic Records
Year: 2017
Genre: Pop


Song Selection/Research:

I’m not going to lie; I did no research on this one. Outside of searching the lyrics and the album details above, there was no search for meaning or history of this song. Still, that doesn’t eliminate the fact that there had to be some thoughts behind the choosing of this song.

Admittingly, I had thought about using this song previously, but after a brief cursory look I did not think I could find a cabeza that really struck me. There were definitely lines that spoke to me, but four consecutive lines. The added difficulty with this one is that it is a male artist singing about a girl. While I’ve worked with this before, I am usually able to work around the reference to girl, woman, she, etc. That said, I dismissed this song. Then It popped up on the radio this past week and again I drifted back to it and listening thought, “maybe I could use those lines,” as I sang along.

But even more importantly, I began to think about the female references in the lines and thought that while the cabeza would have them, I could tweak the line for the poem – turn them around so they met the perspective of the female. After all, typically when I select a song by a male artist about love, I do take it from the perspective of the female in the song. This gave me a completely different outlook and while I toyed with a couple of different possibilities I did finally settle on a line which included gender terminology, “be my girl, I’ll be your man.”

This was the first interesting twist the cabeza and glose would take on. The second came as I sat there looking at the four lines and the lyrics – back and forth and back and forth, until I decided I just couldn’t end on the fourth line, nor could I start alternately with the second line. And while I’m not sure if you followed that logic, this led me to creating a cabeza not with four lines, but five. What does this mean for the glosa? Well, instead of a 44-line poem with a four-line cabeza and four ten-line stanzas, this will have a five-line cabeza with five ten-line stanzas for a total of 55 lines. Yay, my first glosa variation!


Cabeza:

"Darling just hold my hand
   Be my girl, I’ll be your man
      I see my future in your eyes
         Baby, I’m dancing in the dark, with you between my arms
            Barefoot on the grass, listening to our favorite song."


The Writing Process:

(03/03/2018)
Having finally decided to go for a five-line cabeza, I mapped out my lines as usual. This, of course, included a rewrite of “Be my girl, I’ll be your man” to (for the moment) “be my man, I’ll be your one,” though I may end up with girl. I had thought of using woman as well, but not really true rhyme-worthy.

That done, I began my oddest writing process yet. All line nines, except for two (as I have yet to settle on the final word), have been written. In addition, stanza one and three also have their tentative sixth line. And, at this point, I must admit…I am particularly fond of line six of stanza one, “with you I’ve finally found my ampersand.” I mean, come on, with all the titles of his albums using the word for & seemed fitting. While it’s not a math symbol, I still think it a neat idea. I’d use the actual symbol if I could guarantee it was read by its name and not by its meaning (e.g., ampersand as opposed to and).

Anyway…there is still so much more to write. Particularly as this will include an extra ten-line stanza for the fifth line of the cabeza. But I’m up for the challenge.

(03/04/2018)
I would wager this piece is half finished, though it’s not so easy to tell as this piece has not quiet written itself in order. The first thing I did was add line six to stanza four, leaving both stanza two and five without a line six and only stanza two without. And of course, I still have yet to settle on a final word for line ten. At this point, I’m leaning towards girl over one.

Next came the line “nothing is perfect,” which very quickly decided it felt best positioned at the start of stanza three. So, yes, the first fully completed stanza one the one smack dab in the middle. While composing this stanza, I made some additional choices. First, line three now also fists the rhyme scheme with six, nine and ten. In fact, I decided (and have managed to hold true to it for two other stanzas) to use the final word as the end of line three. And by happenstance, lines seven and eight rhyme with each other.

Upon completion of stanza three, I decided to move onto stanza one. But just as I began pondering this, I decided the line that had initially popped into my head, “nothing is perfect,” was quite perfect and altered the start of stanza three to “I am far from perfect.” Then I stared at the blank lines of stanza one. You know what’s coming, right? I didn’t, but I suppose I should have. “Nothing is perfect,” became the first line of the stanza. The rest flowed relatively smoothly. Hand appearing at the end of both line three and ten. Lines seven and eight rhymed with each other and as an added bonus (one that I am not sure I will maintain), they rhymed with seven and eight of stanza three.

So where does that leave us? Well, with the word perfect used in the first line of two stanzas. No, make that three. “Perfect is hard to live up to,” jumped into my head next. And while I had been pondering stanza two as I had just finished stanza one, this line led me to thinking more about stanza four and five. After a short debate, the line found its way to the beginning of stanza five. Now while this decision was not made because it would then place perfect in all the odd stanza leaving me free to go another direction with the even stanzas, that idea still lingers as a nice possibility.

Anyway, at this point, I have written the first three lines of stanza five with line three ending with song matching line ten. Plus, I finally found line six. This leaves me with four lines to go in the final stanza (four, five, seven and eight), practically all the lines in stanza two and most of the lines of stanza four.

(03/07/2018)
So, I finished the poem three days ago. Logic would have had me journaling the same day or the next, as time works like waves against the shoreline, slowly eroding what once was. But I’ll try my best to at least run through the highlights. The first stanza (of those left) to find completion was the last. Really the only notable thing with those four lines would be that (a) I maintained the fact that lines seven and eight have been rhyming, (b) the two rhyming lines match rhymes with those respective lines of stanza one and three, and (c) line seven in the final stanza is actually a repeat of line seven in stanza one.

This, of course, brings me to the even stanzas. I did begin with two. Having settled on the first four lines, I finally decided on the final modifications to line ten, “be my man, I’ll be your one.” With that being decided, I then managed to find first my line nine and then my line six. Seemed to feel right to address those next as most of the line nines and sixes were the first to be composed in the other stanzas. I followed this up with lines seven and eight, which while they rhymed, I went with a different rhyme than I had used in the odd stanzas. The final touches came with the addition of line five.

While stanza two came in a bit of randomness, stanza four ran smoothly from top to bottom. The only moment of decision came with lines seven and eight. Either they would match the rhyme from stanza two or not at all. Oddly enough, I never thought of rhyming them with the even stanzas, leaving only two to be different. And truthfully the decision was not hard; the rhymes flowed quite easily matching those of stanza two. With that, my first glosa variation (using a five-line cabeza and thus a glose of five stanzas) was complete.

Oh, I forgot one other interesting decision to come out of writing the even stanzas. I decided to go back to the lyrics of the song and pull from some of the other lines that struck me. This led to the stanzas starting off in a similar fashion. Working from the lyric, “your heart is all I own,” I found stanza two beginning, “This heart is all I own” and stanza four beginning, “Your heart is all I need.” There are a couple of other hints at the lyrics within the stanza, but the beginnings to me are the most notable.

The final piece to the puzzle is the title. As I picked up the poem to read it over and contemplate the title, I stopped on the word ampersand. And while I had to use the word itself in the poem for the rhyme, the symbol seemed quite fitting as the title.


The Finished Piece
(03/04/2018)

Again, I will be sharing the cabeza and opening stanza for this glosa. That said, here’s the opening stanza of “&”.

"Darling just hold my hand
   Be my girl, I’ll be your man
      I see my future in your eyes
         Baby, I’m dancing in the dark, with you between my arms
            Barefoot on the grass, listening to our favorite song."
                                                                                              –Perfect
                                                                                                Ed Sheeran

Nothing is perfect,
but I think I’m starting to believe
every time your hand rests within my hand.
Maybe there is such a thing
as the perfect fit; it’s true for with you
I’ve finally found my ampersand.
No longer do I fear just being me;
as ling as you & I are a part of this we,
together there’s nothing we can’t withstand;
darling, please just hold my hand.

…

…

…

…



Work Cited

Sheeran, Ed. “Perfect.” ÷ (Divide), Asylum Records, 2017.

Shepard, Jack. “Ed Sheeran new album Divide release date, album cover and tracklist revealed.” Independent, 11 January 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/ed-sheeran-divide-tracklist-new-album-a7521321.html.