Poems and Popular Songs: Kissin’ Cousins or Closer?
Over the years we’ve written a lot on this site about the intermingling of poetry and music — see the list below for a sampling of our posts. The two arts flow together most closely in one particular stream, the song lyric, which is not quite the same thing as a poem written first and then set to music. There are some interesting ideas on this in a new set of Interviews with Songwriters on Songwriting and Poetry, just posted at The Argotist Online. Some are known primarily as poets (if you’ve read broadly in the contemporary American poetic avant garde, you’ll recognize names like Jake Berry, Jack Foley, Michael Rothenberg and Chris Stroffolino); some identify themselves first as musicians and songwriters (the interviews include Linda and Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention). All were asked the same six questions:
- Do you think of your lyrics as poetry?
- Do you think it is important that songs rhyme and if so why?
- Do you think song lyrics must conform to recognised song structures such as clear rhyming schemes, choruses, refrains, hooks and bridges or that songs can also be like free verse?
- When you read poetry in school or elsewhere did you recognize any connection to the music you enjoyed?
- Was there anything about poetry in books that influenced your songwriting?
- Why do you think songs are more popular with people than poetry is?
Related articles:
Poetry and Music, Sister Arts Allied (2007)
Listen to the woodlark’s song: “Lullula” (2006)
Jazz & poetry on the road together in Copenhagen, Amsterdam & London (2005)
Are songs poetry? (2004)
Poetry + music, an inspired collaboration (2004)
Caught in the Act, The making of a live poetry + music CD, by Whitman McGowan (2004)
Ngoma: Entering the Dreamtime with Music and Poetry (2002)
Comments
Yes, I do think of many lyrics as poetry. As a child, we sang and chanted nursery rhymes. Certainly the lyrics of Cole Porter (”Night and Day,” for example) contain poetry. Bob Nolan’s “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” is poetry. I seldom see a tumbleweed without wondering if it is “pledging its love for the ground,” an image that fascinated me as a child. Hank Williams was a poet. Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan are poets. Dylan’s special Pulitzer this year suggests that many consider his lyrics poetic.