I noticed a week or two ago that the latest volume published as part of the Library of America's American Poets Project is titled COLE PORTER: SELECTED LYRICS (ed. Robert Kimball). An excerpt from one of the editorial reviews at Amazon reads as follows: ". . .even in the absence of his melodies, his words distill an unmistakable mixture of poignancy and wit that marks him as a genius of light verse."

In your opinion, can Porter's-- or anyone's-- popular song lyrics really be appreciated as verse, light or otherwise, without benefit of music? Or are the words and the music inextricably intertwined? I've thought about this a lot, and I suggest that a few songwriters have indeed produced a few lyrics capable of being read on their own, i.e. as pretty decent poetry, without accompaniment. Porter is probably one of them. Maybe Oscar Hammerstein. What about Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Paul Simon? Or younger lyricists that a fogey like me has never heard of?

I'd be very interested in any thoughts-- and examples!-- that you might want to toss around on this matter.

Marilyn

Marilyn, I know many fine poems that have been set to music. I'm thinking of choral arrangements that started as poetry and were later set: "My Heart's in the Highlands" by Burns and "The Road Not Taken" by Frost and Rilke's rose poems come to mind. But in general I don't think song lyrics make for good poetry when they are stripped from their context because they depend on the music to cover poetic shortcomings which range from cliched and sappy tropes to inversions to metrical glitches.

In Cole Porter's case, his lyrics are wonderful and his music less so. I don't know which he wrote first or whether the words would work as stand-alone poetry, but I find much of his the music doesn't really do justice to the brilliance of his words.

Carol

A piece of evidence for this discussion is that on Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac" web page and radio program, the poetic selections read each day often include song lyrics. Those I recall seeing recently (sorry to be so vague; I can't look at it and this at the same time without having things freeze up) were blues songs--I think I've seen "Trouble in Mind" not long ago.

Now, people either love Keillor or they hate him, and we could go on for quite a while about what this evidence is worth. But my take is that, for a lot of people, certain sets of words are just as evocative in print as in the ear, with music. Perhaps that's only because the music is being heard in the mind.

An interesting topic.
Maryann

Hey Marilyn,

That's an interesting question. I just bought the Oxford Book of American Poetry, and it includes selections from Bob Dylan, Bessie Smith, and Robert Johnson. None, to my mind, are great poetry, although they're not the *worst* stuff in that book either.

It's not inconceivable that a song would work as a poem, but when I'm pressed to come up with examples, it's a bit difficult. I think one problem is the repetition of choruses and so forth. Often time the repetition in the words plays against a variation in the melody or musical, but you can't hear that on the page, so the result falls flat.

With some judicious tweaking to remove the song related artifacts, though, I think the poetry in the songs might come out better. Radiohead songs include plenty of good lines, but then the demands of the song weigh them down.

The breath of the morning
I keep forgetting
the smell
of the warm summer air

I live in a town
where you can't smell a thing
You watch your feet
for cracks in the pavement

High up above
aliens hover
Making home movies
for the folks back home

Of all of these weird creatures
who lock up their spirits
Drill holes in themselves
and live for their secrets.

etc.

or

In The Next World War
In a jacknifed Juggernaut
I am born again
In the neon sign
scrolling up and down
I am born again

In an interstellar burst
I am back to save the universe

In a deep, deep sleep of the innocent
I am born again
In a fast German car
I'm amazed that I survived
An airbag saved my life

No, I guess not. Oh well. They're great songs, though.

But here's one (not Radiohead) that comes close:

April come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain
May she will stay
Resting in my arms again

June she'll change her tune
In restless walks she'll prowl the night
July she will fly
And give no warning to her flight

August die she must
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold
September I'll remember
A love once new has now grown old

-Dan



[This message has been edited by Daniel Pereira (edited May 02, 2006).]

Daniel's post just tweaked my memory: In Camille Paglia's Break, Blow, Burn, a collection of close readings of famous poems, the final selection is "Woodstock." I love the song, it brings back my youth, but I'm sorry; it's not a poem in the same league as the others she includes.

On the other hand, "April come she will..." can make a better case. (And now I'm on a hopeless nostalgia trip.)

Maryann

In my opinion, song lyrics ARE verse/poems. I don't understand why we have this divide that says that if a verse is a song then it can't be poetry or that it's unlikely to be good poetry. I think this is stupid, a remnant of the New Criticism, which wanted to isolate all branches of Art from one another. An interesting academic exercise no doubt, but hardly conduicive to creativity!

What turned me on to poetry was song lyrics. I often used to sit with the sleeve notes and read all a record's lyrics before turning my attention to the music. And I think there is and has been tremendous poetic talent in a large number of pop/rock/country/soul etc. songs. It always strikes me as strange that people bemoan the lack of interest in poetry when in fact song lyrics are on the lips of millions.

I can certainly commiserate with those who point out that the STANDARD of the verse/poetry in many songs is appalling, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It behoves us as poets to try to lift the standard of the verse/poetry in songs by writing good songs that are also poems/verse.

For myself, most of my poems are also songs or become songs. And I doubt I'd bother writing poetry if it weren't for the musical element in poetry. Singing a verse is for me a far more natural way of performing it than speaking it.

I'm reminded of Larkin's essay where he complains about how some popular songs have much more poetry in them than a lot of contemporary verse (I don't have the piece to hand) and think: have we really come no further in 35/40 years?

Duncan

We've had a number of good threads on this topic in the past:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000377.html

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000293.html

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000525.html

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/001108.html

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000362.html


Dylan comes up steadily. My personal feeling is that almost all song lyrics - including Dylan's - suffer greatly when read as poetry. The music makes a massive difference. A good example is Joni Mitchell's Coyote, which I adore when she sings it. (It's somewhere on the first thread above, posted by Sharon Passmore.) Flat on the page - once you overcome the difficulty of washing Joni's voice out of your mind - it isn't very impressive.

(I will make an exception for Stephen Sondheim - I almost regard him as a poet first and a musician second.)

Michael

Duncan, isn't that the point? Songs don't have to contain good poetry to be good songs because the music makes up for whatever the lyrics lack on their own, and sometimes the lyrics may make up for what the music lacks on its own (as in the case of many of Cole Porter's hits). Synergy occurs--the combination is greater than the sum of its parts. But the question here is whether the words work as poetry by themselves, and most of them just don't. I've recently had the honor of having lyrics I submitted chosen as the text of what became a major choral and orchestral arrangement. Randol Bass, the composer, was flattering enough to say that his piece could never have been conceived or written without the poem, which he had in hand before he composed the first note. But I don't consider the poem itself, which is rather sentimental and has its broadest appeal to people who don't read a lot of poetry, to be fine poetry. Would a worse poem have made for a less breathtaking piece? Probably, though we'll never know. Would a better poem have made for a better piece? Maybe, I'm not sure. What did happen is that the composer was able to relate to the words and interpret them in the music, and what he did with them will outlive me and all my little poems, including that one.

Carol

Other great poems set to good music: "Drink to me only with Thine Eyes" and "Believe Me if all those Endearing Young Charms."

Two more recent examples of love songs that almost make it as poems, but show flaws we overlook because of the music, as Carol mentions, are: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,( from Roberta, music by J. Kern,lyric by Otto Harbach) and this one from the 1950's:

In the still of the night as I gaze from my window
at the moon in its flight, my thoughts all stray to you.
Do you love me as I love you?
Are you my life to be, my dream come true?
Or will this love of ours fade out of sight
Like the moon growing dim
On the rim of a hill
In the chill, still of the night?

Pretty nice verse, except for the horrible cliche in L4, or so it seems to me, but the long-line melody may have influenced my opinion of the lyric proper. Words and music are (surprise, surprise) by Cole Porter, but on the net they are ignorantly attributed to half a dozen others from Frank Parris to Ashley Judd. I like the absence of musical repetition in both Smoke and The Still of the Night, and I love Dinah Shore's voice for both songs.


G.



[This message has been edited by Golias (edited May 02, 2006).]

The 'essay' from 35/40 years ago I referred to above is in fact an interview with the Observer a mere 27 years ago, and the part of it I was thinking of is here:
http://www.looksmartcollege.com/p/ar...i=scl#continue

Carol, I don't think it's constructive to consider whether song lyrics are a better or worse kind of poetry. I think comparison is odious in poetry (except of course when someone awards a prize to a piece of mine). I do take issue with the notion that dismisses song lyrics as being an inferior kind of poetry. Song lyrics should be a cherished member of the poetry family. There's a kind of class war going on beteen song lyrics and other poetries. It's like poetry is a noble gentleman/woman fallen on hard times, while song lyrics is the nouveau riche upstart. And the gulf is just getting wider and wider. This seems a shame to me. Poetry purism is surely a dead-end street.

And, Michael, yes, I know what you mean about many song lyrics turning cold on the printed page. But who says the printed page should be the measure of what makes a poem a (good) poem? New Criticism! Some poems work best on the page, others off it. (Thanks for the links. I'll certainly check them out.)

Duncan

Let us not forget two classic British authors in the light verse-comic song genre: W.S. Gilbert and Noel Coward. Whenever I'm depressed, I only have to open my book of Noel Coward lyrics and read "Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington" to feel better for the rest of the day.

I guess this goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Even if a great song lyric may lose something divorced from the melody, that doesn't make it any less great. The fact that the words don't function in a way they were never intended to function does not mean they are less than successful.

Yet, once we know the lyrics of a truly great song, such as so many that Dylan wrote, it's as if our ears have become trained to hear a "meter" that we never would have heard had we not been trained by the melody and/or the performance, and that "meter" allows us to continue hearing the greatness of the words as if they were still accompanied by music. At that point, the words often pack the power of great poetry even without the music, but this happens only for those who learned through the music how much power the words contained.

I guess the reverse is true. A song melody, even standing alone, can become stamped with the words to a listener who has heard them both together. When I hear an instrumental of "Stardust," I don't need the words to know it's the melody of love's refrain.

Dear Michael,

Thanks so much for directing us to previous threads on the matter of song lyrics. As a newbie, I wasn't aware of them; if I had been I might have thought twice about introducing this topic yet again.

Still, I'm fascinated by the responses so far, particularly by Daniel's notion that "with some judicious tweaking to remove the song related artifacts. . . the poetry in the songs might come out better." I do think that very often it's those artifacts (respectable conventions in the context of song, of course) that are solely responsibile for weakening the poem on the page. I refer to things like repetition; or the occasional (and clearly irrelevant) "oh yeah" or "wo-wo-wo"; also a lot of guesswork involving line breaks, a good example of which I'll try to dig up.

Meanwhile, I'd love to see a few more examples of lyrics that overcome all that. What about Simon's "The Boxer", for instance, or Ira Gershwin's "My Ship", or Fred Ebb's hilarious "Razzle Dazzle," or Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns"? I'm sure there must be many others that would qualify, especially after their scaffolding is removed.

Marilyn

I'm a big fan of Paul Simon - I have hardly had "Rhythm of the Saints" out of my CD player since Christmas. I think his "Duncan" is pretty strong as a poetic lyric, as well as "America" and "American Tune". On "Graceland", "The Boy in the Bubble" is incredibly imagey, if less than clear.

Here's the lyrics to the latter:

The Boy in the Bubble

It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slow motion
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry

It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slow motion
The way we look to us all o-yeah
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry

It's a turn-around jump shot
It's everybody jump start
It's every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art, think of
The Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all o-yeah
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry

Bugsy

There are, of course, many examples of poems set to music, as noted above. But I do think that the two are simply different animals. For example, I've always loved the lyrics of Black Flag's "My War." The first verse goes (if memory serves):

My war!
You're one of them.
You said that you're my friend,
But you're one of them.

Typed out, it's godawful, but barked out by Henry Rollins over a hideously wonderful guitar line by Greg Ginn, it works.

Quincy

del.

[This message has been edited by Robert Meyer (edited May 28, 2006).]

This Travis tune haunts my dreams. Certain lines just resonate with spiritual significance. Yet, on the page, the storyline seems a bit daft. So I suppose it's another example of how so-so or confused lyrics can still make a super song when set to music.

THE WEIGHT

I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin' 'bout half past dead
I just need some place where I can lay my head
"Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand, and "No" was all he said

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me


Picked up my bag, went lookin' for a place to hide
When I saw Carmen and the Devil walkin' side by side
I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on, let's go downtown"
She said, "I gotta go, but m'friend can stick around"


Found on:

"Coming Around" (CD2)

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me


Go down, Miss Moses, there's nothin' you can say
It's just old Luke, and Luke's waitin' on the Judgement Day
"Well Luke, my friend, what about young Anna Lee?"
He said, "Do me a favour, son, won't you stay an' keep Anna Lee company?"


Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me


Crazy Chester followed me, and he caught me in the fog
He said, "I will fix your rack, if you'll take Jack, my dog"
I said, "Wait a minute, Chester, I'm a peaceful man"
He said, "That's OK, just feed him when you can"


Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me


Catch a cannon ball now, to take me down the line
My bag is sinking low and I do believe it's time
To get back to Miss Fanny, you know she's the only one
Who sent me here with her regards for everyone


Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me

I'm a huge fan of Leonard Cohen, much more of the words than of the music. I could type out a number of songs of his whose lyrics I really enjoy. This song, for example, from Various Positions, is called "The Captain."

The captain called me to his bed.
He fumbled for my hand.
"Take these silver bars," he said,
"I'm giving you command."

"Command of what? There's no one left;
There's only you and me.
All the rest are dead or in retreat
Or with the enemy."

"Complain, complain, that's all you've done,
Ever since we lost.
If it's not the Crucifixion,
Then it's the Holocaust."

"May Christ have mercy on your soul
For making such a joke!--
Amid these hearts that burn like coal
And the flesh that rose like smoke."

"I know that you have suffered, lad,
But suffer this awhile:
Whatever makes a soldier sad
Will make a killer smile."

"I'm leaving, Captain, I've got to go,
There's blood upon your hand!
But tell me, Captain, if you know
Of a decent place to stand."

"There is no decent place to stand
In a massacre.
But if a woman take your hand
Then go and stand with her."

"I left a wife in Tennessee
And a baby in Saigon.
I risked my life, but not to hear
Some country-western song."

"Ah, but if you cannot raise your love
To a very high degree,
You're just the man I've been thinking of,
So come and stand with me."

"Your standing days are done!" I cried,
"You'll rally me no more.
I don't even know what side
We fought on, or what for."

"I'm on the side that's always lost
Against the side of heaven.
I'm on the side of snake eyes tossed
Against the side of seven.
And I've read the bill of human rights
And some of it was true,
But there wasn't any burden left
So I'm laying it on you."

Now the Captain, he was dying,
But the Captain wasn't hurt.
The silver bars were in my hand.
I pinned them to my shirt.

Not sure what I would say if this were posted as a poem; as a song though one is impressed by the formal choice of the ballad meter and the dialectical treatment of the subject. I might criticize it for being allegorical and ungrounded, but at least the allegory is interesting, and there are some great lines ("I'm on the side of snake eyes tossed / against the side of seven"). There are some bad lines too I think (the bit about the "hearts that burn like coal," which even though clever, still feels overly "poetic" to me), and things that I don't really get (the stanza beginning "I know that you have suffered"). Also, certainly, he does things we don't do in Poetry (the Captain, he), and there are metrical glitches the singing covers up. In general, the mode is weird for a contemporary poem. Even so, though, I think it's pretty cool, and as a song, driven by an ironically jaunty piano melody and Cohen's sardonic pseudo-crooning, I think it's really cool. Maybe that's just me, though.

Chris

It is a strange song indeed, but Eliot and Pound get a mention in it:

"Desolation Row" by Bob Dylan

They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says," You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid

To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row

Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They're spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words

And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get Outa Here If You Don't Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row"

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

Bob Dylan is one thing -- in the sorta category. But my answer has to be that song lyrics can be poetry. Much of what we read as medieval or ancient poetry are really the older equivalent of reading the collected Cole Porter lyrics. Consider the Psalms:

Psalm 137 (granted the King James is not the most lyrical of the translations of Psalms)

1: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
2: We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
3: For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
4: How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?
5: If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
6: If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
7: Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
8: O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
9: Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

I think it is also worth keeping in mind that music and drama are considered in Aristotle's
Poetics; though of course the word means something a bit different today, but it is true that song and poetry were at one point considered the same. Ultimately, a song's lyrics are as poetic as the writer feels like making them.

I'm coming in late to say that I am so ancient, I was a full-on young professional classical singer in London at the height of the Beatles' dominance. From the point of view of a working musician I found the group to be a PR contrivance manipulating the public at a very naive level--from the haircuts on. I attributed the better elements of their music to the serious classically-trained professionals who orchestrated the music.

Then I listened to the words and they genuinely reached me. "She's Leaving Home" usually reduced me to tears because it reflected part of my own story. But I came to the conclusion that the real strength of the appeal of the Beatles was in their lyrics, not the nice tunes which still seem pretty hohum to me despite the grand treatment many have received.

Runs for cover ;)

On another level. For me, one of the greatest setters of great poems, in such a way as to fortify but not distort, was the French composer, Henri Duparc. His settings of Baudelaire and other poets always fills me with fresh astonishment, every time I hear them.
Listen to the frustratingly short excerpts of "L'Invitation au Voyage" (Baudelaire)and "Phydilé" (Leconte De Lisle). At the bottom of this site:
Duparc

Henry Purcell's setting of "Music For a While"
I am used to Michael Tippet's setting of Purcell's ground bass (map of harmonic progress of accompaniment which musicians used to fill out) but there is a good sample snatch of the song in this rather interesting article:
Purcell and Dryden

Kate, that was Robbie Robertson's song and it was first recorded on The Band's first album, <u>Music From Big Pink</u> (1968). Robertson was the lead guitarist and principle songwriter of the group. They were the backing band for Bob Dylan (especially for touring in 1965-66, before Dylan's motorcycle accident in mid 1966).

"Big Pink" was Dylan's house (painted pink) in Woodstock, NY; and its basement was fitted out as a small recording studio. While recuperating, Dylan wrote a bunch of songs so he and The Band recorded them to demo to other acts (The Byrds, Manfred Mann, Joan Baez, The Hollies, Earl Scruggs, etc) who recorded their own versions of the songs (two of them were featured on The Byrds' album <u>Sweetheart Of The Rodeo</u>) and three of those songs were re-recorded for <u>Music From Big Pink</u> (minus Dylan himself, of course). Dylan's demo tape (or a copy of a copy of a copy...) ended up in some anonymous bootlegger's hands to become known as the <u>Basement Tapes</u> album, and several of the songs were on the famous (or infamous) 2 disc bootleg called <u>The Great White Wonder</u> (disc 1 was all a coffee-house concert from 1961, folk standards with no original material, although there is a point when Dylan tries a bit of stand-up comedy with a joke about a coffee-house that uses chess pieces as currency).

One of the reasons why the Woodstock Festival was held near there (Woodstock, NY) was the vain hope that they could coax Dylan on stage (of course, it never happened).

Robert Meyer


[This message has been edited by Robert Meyer (edited May 04, 2006).]

In response to Chris's post--all the elements you mention, Chris, as potential drawbacks to the Cohen's song being taken as poetry, are, in fact, part and parcel of the genre of the ballad genre(as repeated lines are part of literary epics, though they originate in oral tradition). The allegory, the dialogue, the occasional cliche (hearts that burn like coal--not far from milk-white horse, etc.), and the metrical "glitches" if you will, are all part of ballad tradition, and argue as much for the self-conscious literariness of this lyric as for its folk roots. Enjoyed.

[P.S. If you've ever wanted to rewrite song lyrics, come over to FunXcise.]

Good points all, Alicia, & I have to admit I was stretching to find things not to like. I guess the issue in my mind evaluating that as poetry would be, that it's a fine line navigating between the conventions of a form, particularly one with as archaic a patina as the ballad, and of contemporary verse and language. I only meant that I would probably have been a little bit uncomfortable with that song as a contemporary poem, but that might just be an unfair double standard of my own.

Here's another one by Leonard Cohen that I think is beautiful. I don't know if the short lines will work so well on the page, or if they have to be said at as slow a pace as he sings them for full effect.

If It Be Your Will

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before,
I will speak no more;
I shall abide until
I am spoken for,
If it be your will.

If it be your will
That a voice be true,
From this broken hill
I will sing to you.
From this broken hill
All your praises, they shall ring,
If it be your will
To let me sing.

If it be your will,
If there is a choice,
Let the rivers fill;
Let the hills rejoice.
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell,
If it be your will
To make us well.

And draw us near,
And bind us tight,
All your children here
In their rags of light,
In their rags of light
All dressed to kill,
And end this night,
If it be your will,
If it be your will.

It seems this discussion is limited to popular commercial recordings. In that light I think that Janis Ian's At Seventeen is a fine poem (or could be with a little editing) as well as a very good song.

I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired.
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth.
And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say come dance with me
and murmured vague obscenities
It isn't all it seems
At seventeen.
A brown eyed girl in hand me downs
Whose name I never could pronounce
said, Pity please the ones who serve
They only get what they deserve.
The rich relationed hometown queen
Married into what she needs
A guarantee of company
And haven for the elderly.
Remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
Indebentures of quality
And dubious integrity.
Their small town eyes will gape at you
in dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received
At seventeen.

To those of us who know the pain
Of valentines that never came,
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball.
It was long ago and far away
The world was younger than today
And dreams were all they gave for free
To ugly duckling girls like me.
We all play the game and when we dare
To cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say, come dance with me
and murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me
At seventeen

I am intrigued by the lack of rapport most poets exhibit towards the historical closeness of song and poetry. Above all I am fascinated by the different levels of their musical and literary tastes. I have always wondered whether for some people poetry is a substitute for music?



[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited May 04, 2006).]

Charles Simic says, in his introduction to THE ESSENTIAL CAMPION, "Campion's poems are printed here without his music as is now mostly the case. With most songwriters this would be disastrous. The music is usually --- and it is --- an integral part of the whole. For example, only a few of the most heartbreaking blues song texts can stand alone as poems. Campion is an exception. His lyrics are some of the best poems in the language."

What a snob.

Bob

I don't know, Janet. The lyrics are very fine, and of the highest caliber. But on the page without the music, they come across as slightly self-pitying. The music--and indeed the performance in this case--makes all the difference in how we perceive the voice of the speaker.

Alicia,
You mean the Janis Ian songs? (The Beatles?) I agree. I was discussing Dylan (Bob) today (because of this thread) and the consensus was that the menace and anarchy of his delivery in "The times they are a changing" was what drove the song and that in the hands of any other performer it wouldn't have gripped our imaginations as it did when he sang it.

When we read poems we are the performers. Unless we "perform" the poem in our heads in a sympathetic way the poem eludes us. That's why I believe the author owns the poem, not the reader. A reader may make something personally satisfying, different from the author's intention, of a poem but that is a bit like using the poem rather than experiencing it.

I guess I'm used to poems which are already a success being subjected to musical interpretation by trained composers who may not have the necessary respect or insight. Schubert is one of my very favourite composers and his treatment of repeated stanzas is a contradiction of all that I consciously believe about setting of words. He had a gift of summing up the spirit of a poem and not losing the inner strength even when the same repeated melody dealt with an utterly different aspect within the same poem. He did set a lot of second rate poetry and raised it beyond its natural level but when he set fine poetry he hardly ever failed the original. Inexplicable.
And Schubert survives really bad performances.
Janet



[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited May 05, 2006).]

It is easy to forget that the plenitude of stanzaic forms we so admire in Renaissance poetry, stanzas with five different left-hand margins, etc., can partly be attributed to their original musical settings. Even some of Shakespeare's most beautiful songs are (Admit it!) rather difficult to say aloud.

It does embarrass me to read those awful "Poetry in Motion" posters in the New York City subways. Many of the "poems" are Tin Pan Alley lyrics, great songs, but untrackable without their melodic lines.

Michael Slipp

[This message has been edited by Mike Slippkauskas (edited May 09, 2006).]

Michael,
I think they are no less poetry for all of that. We come to those songs with pleasure because the words are already loved and known. That must be because of the separate power of the words.
Janet

This is another Paul Simon, from Rhythm of the Saints.


The Cool, Cool River


Moves like a fist through the traffic
Anger and no one can heal it
Shoves a little bump into the momentum
It’s just a little lump
But you feel it
In the creases and the shadows
With a rattling deep emotion
The cool, cool river
Sweeps the wild, white ocean

Yes boss. the government handshake
Yes boss. the crusher of language
Yes boss. mr. stillwater,
The face at the edge of the banquet
The cool, the cool river
The cool, the cool river

I believe in the future
I may live in my car
My radio tuned to
The voice of a star
Song dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edge of a thunderstorm
And these old hopes and fears
Still at my side

Anger and no one can heal it
Slides through the metal detector
Lives like a mole in a motel
A slide in a slide projector
The cool, cool river
Sweeps the wild, white ocean
The rage of love turns inward
To prayers of devotion
And these prayers are
The constant road across the wilderness
These prayers are
These prayers are the memory of god
The memory of god

And I believe in the future
We shall suffer no more
Maybe not in my lifetime
But in yours I feel sure
Song dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm
And these streets
Quiet as a sleeping army
Send their battered dreams to heaven, to heaven
For the mother’s restless son
Who is a witness to, who is a warrior
Who denies his urge to break and run

Who says: hard times?
I’m used to them
The speeding planet burns
I’m used to that
My life’s so common it disappears
And sometimes even music
Cannot substitute for tears

Much is lost when the lovely melody is subtracted, but I still thinks this stands up:

WHEN I'M GONE
Phil Ochs

There's no place in this world where I'll belong when I'm gone
And I won't know the right from the wrong when I'm gone
And you won't find me singin' on this song when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't feel the flowing of the time when I'm gone
All the pleasures of love will not be mine when I'm gone
My pen won't pour out a lyric line when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't breathe the bracing air when I'm gone
And I can't even worry 'bout my cares when I'm gone
Won't be asked to do my share when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't be running from the rain when I'm gone
And I can't even suffer from the pain when I'm gone
Can't say who's to praise and who's to blame when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

Won't see the golden of the sun when I'm gone
And the evenings and the mornings will be one when I'm gone
Can't be singing louder than the guns when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

All my days won't be dances of delight when I'm gone
And the sands will be shifting from my sight when I'm gone
Can't add my name into the fight while I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone
Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

Just heard this Dylan song on the radio - sounded like a poem to me.

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,
Poisoned in the bushes an' blown out on the trail,
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair.
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost
I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed.
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I've heard newborn babies wailin' like a mournin' dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love.
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an' they gave me a lethal dose.
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Superficially, I disagree with Carol about Cole Porter, because I’ve loved musicals for years and I’ve always preferred his music to his lyrics, which are excellent by and large. I tend to think that Stephen Sondheim’s skill as a lyricist exceeds that of his music, which I like, but in any case Porter and Sondheim are two of the very few lyricists I’d judge as actual poets on the basis of quality light verse. Importantly, apart from the actual effort taken for the lyrics, they tend in Porter’s case to read off the page according to the music in a way most modern lyrics, even good ones, patently do not, and hence the general difference between poetry and words for songs.

I disagree that at the best of either there should be any distinction made. I’m certainly agreeing that, by and large, song lyrics are not poetry because they don’t have the same intention and do not obey the same rules. For a poem to be poetry, it has to contain both lyrical expressiveness and music. A song lyric has no necessity for functioning as anything other than words to be put to music in order to gain the same effect, with good lyrics, as poetry without it being so on the page.

This can be easily demonstrated, for example (and this is coming from an avid listener of most types of current music), by taking a poem also meant as a song by virtue of its metrical melodiousness, or even that of free verse: and comparing them to the sorts of thing which people commonly cite as a defence of the argument that lyrics in song can be poetry which were meant, first and foremost, as words to be set to music but having independence of the music itself.

Compare then, Swinburne’s ‘Itylus’, Hardy’s ‘The Voice’, or the ode to death in Whitman’s ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’ to the average lyric by even Dylan or Cohen and some differences are apparent. The poetry I have mentioned is not just hypnotically melodious, but is so mellifluous, in fact, that any attempt to set it to music would in a certain sense be redundant, because it would be forced to follow the exact musicality of the language, instead of the other way about. There is no intrinsic musicality, one of the fundamental attributes of good poetry, in even many straight lyrics that seem poetic in this fashion only when physically set to song. The second main characteristic to consider in the poems that I’ve mentioned is the beauty of the language and the onomatopoeic suiting of the language to the melody and mood. By contrast, the average lyric by even Dylan or Cohen is overly wrought and diffusive, filled with dead lines, bathos, filler lines which mean little but are used because they just sound good, occasional manglements of syntax purely to suit the backing music, and frequent use of clichés. The ability to write a lot of words in an affectedly mock literary style is not a thing which constitutes poetry. Lyricists first and foremost will always tend to be distinct from lyric poets for all of the reasons I’ve already given. This is not simple snobbishness on my part, simply, as a lyric poet myself, an objective outlook. I grant that there may be some exceptions to the rule.

Iain

[This message has been edited by Iain James Robb (edited May 22, 2006).]

A poem with music is such a different beast. But, that is how they started way back, and to the old Athenians the poem without music was the oddity until someone broke the strings and had to just - read. And, don't forget the rap (some may want to)

All,

Many of you have glanced the side of this issue, and I'm not taking any credit for a completely new take here, but wouldn't it be to a song's detriment if it had the density, complexity and detail we expect in poetry? I think the two art forms can be about equal in emotional impact but for different reasons. I only know Wagner's (and others') German, but as I listen to Strauss's Four Last Songs the Hesse and von Eichendorff texts are very far from my mind. Strauss and Wagner in their own libretti often came to grief through overelaboration. All that being said, I think there are some Tom Waits lyrics that best some Ray Carver free verse. Jagger/Richards perhaps? . . . but, no, not on the page. And they're greater artists for knowing it.

Best,
Michael Slipp

All,

Many of you have glanced the side of this issue, and I'm not taking any credit for a completely new take here, but wouldn't it be to a song's detriment if it had the density, complexity and detail we expect in poetry? I think the two art forms can be about equal in emotional impact but for different reasons. I only know Wagner's (and others') German, but as I listen to Strauss's Four Last Songs the Hesse and von Eichendorff texts are very far from my mind. Strauss and Wagner in their own libretti often came to grief through overelaboration. All that being said, I think there are some Tom Waits lyrics that best some Ray Carver free verse. Jagger/Richards perhaps? . . . but, no, not on the page. And they're greater artists for knowing it.

Best,
Michael Slipp

Mike: Yes, yes, yes. I'm thinking of a song I have on constant repeat right now, Elvis Costello's "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror." The first verse is sooooo good! (As a lyric, that is.)
That's a little flat on the page, but man, when Elvis starts belting it over that brass band, I wonder if you can have a pulse and not feel something.

The remaining verses arguably are more "poetic," but sung they feel somehow over-written. Here's the second verse:
Ugh. That belabored conceit with the tumbleweed . . . a fiberglass tumbleweed, no less! Elvis's reach exceeds his grasp; it seems to me like he's self-conscious of writing "good" lyrics, i.e., lyrics of the kind that Dylan made it okay to write.

There are about a million examples of this.

I wonder if there are any examples of poems successfully being set to contemporary, and specifcially, to popular music? (Apologies if this came up in the thread already; I haven't read the whole thing.) I've heard Joni Mitchell's try at shoehorning Yeats's "The Second Coming" into a song. Blech. Van Morrison does a pretty embarassing job of declaiming some of Blake's prose over an overwrought arrangement; on the other hand, he does a nice job of putting "Before the World Was Made" to music. (Is that the right title? The one that begins "If I should paint the lashes dark" and talks about an "original face / Before the world was made.")

Others?

--CS


[This message has been edited by Clay Stockton (edited May 23, 2006).]