[Marilyn Taylor]

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

[Carol Taylor]

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

[Maryann Corbett]

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

[Daniel Pereira]

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).]

[Maryann Corbett]

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

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

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

[Michael Cantor]

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

[Carol Taylor]

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

[Golias]

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).]

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

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