Sorry for being off-topic, but I have a question for StLukes, and that simply is: What do you think of teachers introducing students to poetry by using song lyrics as examples?
Sorry for being off-topic, but I have a question for StLukes, and that simply is: What do you think of teachers introducing students to poetry by using song lyrics as examples?
I think St will not mind, as the method of a teacher is his own turff. Oral Storytelling, Movies, Music, Painting, all can lead to reading.
You can easily use Dylan, who used traditional techniques once or while to write his lyrics and move from there. You cann't end there. You start there, and shows that a poem is written, it has the artificial music, while Dylan music is not artificial, it is real music.
Another day I read a dialogue between Borges and Bioy Casares. They are upset with teachers that go to define poetry and call it music, while has no sound, it tell very little of the language work, many techniques would not be good for music. Bioy for example said he had no notion of music at all and Piazallo (a famous musician) had no idea what a verse is. Nothing of this stopped both from writing poems that imitate music forms (or even record it), but just like a traditional storyteller with an oral version of a faery tale is not a short story by Perrault, a musician is not exactly a poet.
As the poetry of both (i do not think the answers are cleary towards only the published poetry and excluding their lyrics), Dylan hands down. Morrison is very very poor.
Dylan - he wrote a zillion songs and all are so fine...and still going strong....
"It's so mysterious, the land of tears."
Chapter 7, The Little Prince ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Leonard Cohen is better than both of them, plus he was an honest to goodness poet who was a critically acclaimed author prior to being a singer.
Dylan's music is better though.
Originally Posted by Leonard Cohen
Last edited by OrphanPip; 06-27-2011 at 03:45 AM.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
I disagree, but this is why we talk. I love the beatles too, but Dylan out-writes and out-wrote everybody.
Just my opinion.
"How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?"
Answer: "One".
Very few song lyrics stand up as poetry -- and, as sometimes happens, when musicians try to make a song using a poem they like for the lyrics, it's usually lousy, too.
Dylan, I believe, is going to go down in history with literary and academic types. He's one of the few songwriters who actually has a legitimate (albeit long) shot at a Nobel Prize.
Morrison, on the other hand...Well, he's become a big part of stoner iconography. That counts for something, I guess.
Exactly right. I second this. Jim Morrison is the perfect Beat.
Bob Dylan's early prose poems are quite decent poetry. And I can't listen Desolation Row or Visions of Johanna without listening the chords in my head, but I'm sure they still working.
I'm a big The Doors fan, but Dylan was by far a better performer. None of the four Doors's released live album are close to the second rate Dylan's concerts, let alone 3/17/66, 10/31/64, 2/14/74 (ok, The Band were better than Densmore & so, but not all that much).
It's hard to tell if Dylan was better than Lennon/McCartney. That Dylan was better songwriter than Lennon and McCartney separately is an undertatement.
How prophetic was this?
I thought they were both songwriters !? Keats was a poet. Robert Browning was a poet....
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