The Rock Poetry of Perman-Clarvit

The Rock Poetry of Perman≈Clarvit is an anthology of lyrics from the vast five-decade repertoire of Dennis Perman and Mitch Clarvit. These selected poems chronicle the adventures of two college friends who maintained their connection and their shared artistry for fifty years. Read from the beginning or open to any page for a glimpse into the mind of rock and roll.

It seems like only yesterday that I met Mitch Clarvit on the park benches outside the dorms at Johns Hopkins University, banging on Buzzy, his faithful Guild 12-string, but actually it's been fifty years that our partnership has endured. During that time, we became best friends, wrote hundreds of songs together, saw each other through an assortment of jobs and relationships (one for me, more for him) and in general did everything we could to capture the human condition in words and music. This anthology is a collection of lyrics that we felt could stand alone as rock poetry, expressing many of the slices of life each of us faces. Stripped of the chords and melodies, they remain sometimes stark, sometimes joyful, but always genuine representations, snapshots of living along the continuum of authenticity, self-awareness and creativity – sensual escapades, loves won and lost, heroes and anti-heroes and some just for fun. We are both sadly imperfect, but we always had a vision of Cherry Drops, a mythical fantasy world where Good triumphs over Evil, and the Guy gets the Girl, or if not, evolves through the heartache – it's the subject matter of our folk opera (Mitch's 8th grade fantasy about Susan turned into 6 credits of "A" for each of us from the Creative Writing Department.) Perfection, though, is in the eye of the beholder, and to our perception, these compositions tell a story of life well lived, of opportunities missed and rediscovered, and of love eviscerated and ultimately fulfilled. We can only hope that you will enjoy reading them as much as we enjoyed writing them. And as a special bonus, we included Mitch's monographs, his original art illustrating our songs, which you will not find anywhere else. We hope you like -- Dr. Dennis Perman, September 2020

Dr. Dennis Perman chose a good woman and a good job over stardom, and has only looked back a little. An award-winning author and international speaker, Dennis has been happily married to Regina for as long as anyone can remember. He's a write-a-holic, with seven books, hundreds of newsletters, more than 1200 online columns over 23 years, and a few songs, close to a million words in print. He'll try harder to get to the point. He likes the Yankees, chiropractic, the Beatles, the Dead and the enneagram. And makes a helluva salad.