1st Edition
Guns N’ Roses, Rock & Roll, and the Sounds of the Lyric Tradition
Introduction
1. The Poetry of Sound
2. Oh Baby / Baby / Oh Baby
3. Side G: Guns
4. Rocket / Rock It
5. Side R: Roses
6. Nothin’ Lasts Forever
Coda: Bob Dylan?
Acknowledgments
Index
Biography
Mike Chasar is Professor of English at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, USA. He is the author or editor of five books including The Poetry of Bob Dylan: Thirty Essays on Thirty Songs (2025) and Poetry Unbound: Poems and New Media from the Magic Lantern to Instagram (2020).
"Chasar's brilliantly conceived book, executed with streetwise style and infectious verve, applies lyric theory to the spectacularly unlikely limit case of Axl Rose's barbaric yowl. The howling vowels of Appetite for Destruction become, in Chasar’s hands, hidden keys to the album’s narrative crux and to the chart-busting appeal of its sensuous form, the way it engineers maximum feeling. Poetry and rock have rarely got along so well." - Matthew Kilbane, Assistant Professor of English, University of Notre Dame
