Song lyrics that can stand alone as poetry

[Zothar]

it is hard to make a song sound like a poem if you constantly have the repeating chorus. take that out and it will sound much better.

"It's just a piece of paper,
It says IN GOD WE TRUST,
A little short-felt good,
But a lot is not enough

And everybody loved me
When I was on a role
And I thought i held everything
When I held the gold

But you're not my God,
You're not my friend,
You're not the one that I will walk with in the end

You're not the truth
You're a temporary shot
And you ruin peoples lives and don't give a second thought

You're not my God."

Not My God by Keith Urban

[NikolaiI]

This is a translation from Vladimir Vysotsky; his song Skazal sebe ya: bros' pisat'...


If you're not familiar with him I can't tell you much, I just found about him a month and a half ago. All I know is his music is beautiful and he was important in Russian history.
I did ``'s for the line indentions.
I think the last stanza is a little loose, but the rest of it, being a translation, stands pretty nicely.


I told myself:- must stop to write!
But stubborn hands will not comply,
Oh, help me mother! Friends - I'm in a fix!
I lie in bed - they grin at me,
They might attack me terribly,
I'm scared to sleep: they're noiseless, hopeless freaks.

The psychos vary here, and sure,
`` Not all are rowdy, some impure,
Receiving treatment - getting starved and beat,
But here is what surprises me:
`` These madmen here are walking free,
And all the food that I receive, they simply take and eat.

Great Dostoyevsky's fallen short
`` With the renowned, famous "Notes"!*
I wish the poor deceased could come and see!
The famous Gogol* I could tell
`` Such stories of this life in hell
That sure to God, this Gogol would most-boggled be!

Can't stand this! Spit on those baboons,
`` 'cause after all, they're rowdy loons!
They always aim to lick me on my face!
Just yesterday, in seventh ward,
`` One madman lost his mind and roared,-
He yelled, "America!" and stormed around the place.

I don't want fame, and just for now,
`` I'm still remaining sane somehow,
I've yet to lose my head, but that's my fate.
Here is the chief,- the woman nurse,
`` She's just a little crazed of course,
I yell that I am going mad and she just tells me: "Wait."

And I am sensing while I wait,
`` I'm walking on a sharpened blade,-
Forgot the alphabet,- my language's Greek to me!
And I am asking friends mine this
`` Whoever I'm of theirs is
Of him, to take, his, me away from outtahere!

[RitaKay]

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat
But always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed
I hope you still feel small
When you stand by the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you'll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Living might mean taking chances
But they're worth taking
Lovin' might be a mistake
But it's worth making
Don't let some hell bent heart
Leave you bitter
When you come close to selling out
Reconsider
Give the heavens above
More than just a passing glance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
(Time is a real and constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who)
I hope you dance
(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)
(Where those years have gone)

I hope you still feel small
When you stand by the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you'll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
Dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance
(Time is a real and constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who)
(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)
I hope you dance
(Where those years have gone)

(Tell me who)
I hope you dance
(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)
(Where those years have gone)

[Austin Butler]

I had an English teacher that introduced us to poetry in this manner: First, he asked how many of us had bought a book of poetry in the last year. A few people raised their hands. Then, he asked how many had bought a book of poetry in the last month. No one raised their hands. He asked these questions again, substituting a CD of music for a book of poetry, and everyone had their hands raised for both questions. He proceeded to tell us how he thought this was ridiculous, that songs are merely poems with additional music added to them since poems contain music within themselves, are inherently musical. I liked his introduction and would say that all songs are arguably poems. Some songs may not be good poems, just like some poems are not good poems. I think this raises an interesting question of why a song writer is a songwriter and not a poet, and a poet is not a songwriter. In my opinion, both are concerned with the music of the line, although one may lean on instrumentation.

[Stewed]

When I first heard this recording on Youtube I was surprised by how close to a song Yeats's reading of his own poem was. I actually prefer the voice in my head to Yeats's reading, terrible as that might be to say. But this makes me wonder if the divergence of song and poetry isn't more recent than we tend to think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2FT4_UUa4I

[JCamilo]

I had an English teacher that introduced us to poetry in this manner: First, he asked how many of us had bought a book of poetry in the last year. A few people raised their hands. Then, he asked how many had bought a book of poetry in the last month. No one raised their hands. He asked these questions again, substituting a CD of music for a book of poetry, and everyone had their hands raised for both questions. He proceeded to tell us how he thought this was ridiculous, that songs are merely poems with additional music added to them since poems contain music within themselves, are inherently musical. I liked his introduction and would say that all songs are arguably poems. Some songs may not be good poems, just like some poems are not good poems. I think this raises an interesting question of why a song writer is a songwriter and not a poet, and a poet is not a songwriter. In my opinion, both are concerned with the music of the line, although one may lean on instrumentation.

Because yout teacher with the good intention of showing that rhytimic language is not something gay and outdate and everyone can enjoy it, is teaching you wrongly.

Song - or Music - is an art on its own. It actually predates the existence of literature (and poems) for quite awhile. In fact, Poems and writer are trying to get the status of music, not the other way around, but fabricating a form of writing (not singing, which is what you do with songs) that produces on readers the "Illusion" of musicallity. When you read a poem, you have no real sound, music, just silence.

When you sing it, using words as lyrics, you move to another art (which is verbal) which is music. You do not even need to have the words written in first place.

That is why a songwriter is a songwriter. And a poet is a poet. They aim for things that may be similar but have different ends. (And of course, nothing stops a songwriter to be a poet, as some have been, but as one of the most fmaous today, Leonard Cohen would put, when he is writing a song, he is writing a song, when he is writing a poem, he is writing a poem).

[stlukesguild]

I had an English teacher that introduced us to poetry in this manner: First, he asked how many of us had bought a book of poetry in the last year. A few people raised their hands. Then, he asked how many had bought a book of poetry in the last month. No one raised their hands. He asked these questions again, substituting a CD of music for a book of poetry, and everyone had their hands raised for both questions. He proceeded to tell us how he thought this was ridiculous, that songs are merely poems with additional music added to them since poems contain music within themselves, are inherently musical. I liked his introduction and would say that all songs are arguably poems. Some songs may not be good poems, just like some poems are not good poems. I think this raises an interesting question of why a song writer is a songwriter and not a poet, and a poet is not a songwriter. In my opinion, both are concerned with the music of the line, although one may lean on instrumentation.

I confronted this question some time ago in another thread devoted to the same question as to why 'good' songs were not also recognized as 'good' poetry:

Poetry... in written form... relies solely upon the words to create the music and the meaning. This is quite different from song. With a song (an aria, chanson, lieder, ballad, pop song, etc...) the music and the words combine to create the music and the meaning. If we take a song such as the Beatle's Norwegian Wood, the lyrics in and of themselves are not bad. There is something open-ended and surely more sophisticated than the usual teen age love song... but we are not talking Shelley/Keats/Blake/Yeats here. The "meaning" or aesthetic impact, however, does not lie solely with the lyrics, nor the music. Indeed, the song is greater than the sum of its separate elements.

Perhaps the greatest example of this is to be found in the songs of Franz Schubert, long acknowledged as the greatest classical song writer. Schubert famously set a cycle of poems by Wilhelm Müller known as Die Winterreise (the Winter's Journey) to music. The poems on their own are but mediocre to average examples of German Romantic poetry. They most certainly are not of the level of Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin, or many others whom he might have set (and did on other occasions). The musical accompaniment, however... the piano and the vocal... reinforce... expand... or even contrast with the actual lyrics making the end result far more profound that the lyrics standing upon their own.

The attempt to tear down an art form into separate elements seems wrong-headed to me. Just because a film works brilliantly, in no way means that if we dissect it we will find that each individual element will stand as a brilliant work of art independent of the whole: that the screen play will stand as great novel, the cinematography as equal to Anselm Adams, the musical score as worthy of standing along side Beethoven, etc... The whole in a work of art is not necessarily simply defined as a sum of the parts. Inflated claims for the "poetry" of John Lennon, Robert Plant, Lou Reed, etc... underestimates real poetry as well as it underestimates the the importance of the music in song and the merger of the two in creating a new art form... whole in and of itself.

[JCamilo]

I think people forget how writing is artificial and try to understand the musicality of a text or the rhytim (not a exclusive trait of poetry) as if it is the same as music. It is too much literal interpretation of a text. Just like a painting has elements that are artifical caused by the perspective but represent a real world, poetry does it with music and sounds. They are not there, they are represented and it is an aesthetic effect the impression we have that people are singing the poems to the point we vocalize the poems (or feel the urge for it).

Of course, several poems work well with music, of course, several metrical systems are born from lyrical experiments, but just like it is different the experience of a teatre and the reading of a dramatic text.

Most people would not know him, since he is brazilian, well, maybe would know his fame as musician, as his importance for Bossa Nova and being the co-writer of Girl from Ipanena, but Vinicius de Moraes was really the most talented (much more than Dylan, Reed or Cohen) lyricist -poet. His sonnet collection is widely read, some of the best sonnets collection of all portuguese literature, and of course, with him, it is extreme hard to put apart the lyricist and the poet. But this simple because he always said he was an amateur that knew good musicians, liked women, beach, drink and music and wrote thinking of poems that luckly went well sung.

[Silas Thorne]

Some prose works well with music too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMEacD_4VdI

Good fun and wonder will come to those who hear it.

[Stewed]

Even having this argument seems like a mistake to me.

[Silas Thorne]

Even having this argument seems like a mistake to me.

It's not really an argument, it's a discussion. A discussion can go off the thread topic, and then we can leave it behind and start a new one.

Actually, has no one mentioned Robbie Burns? His songs are often studied as poems, aren't they?
Still of course, they are much much better with the music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUs-5dHFksw

[TheRoxaxis]

Almost every song of Bob Dylan.

[YesNo]

Actually, has no one mentioned Robbie Burns? His songs are often studied as poems, aren't they?
Still of course, they are much much better with the music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUs-5dHFksw

I liked Eddi Reader's interpretation of that poem.

One of my favorite poems is Johnny Mercer's Moon River. Here is Andrea Ross singing the Henry Mancini song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwBjR...eature=related

I think the formatting of the text as a lyric should be different from the formatting of it as a poem. For example, the lyrics of Moon River are recorded as every word in the song: http://www.lyricstime.com/audrey-hep...er-lyrics.html

However, as a poem, I think just the first two stanzas are all that is needed. The repetition can be removed.

Whether any of these lyrics would actually get accepted today by a respectable publisher of poetry, I don't know. Nor care. I prefer the songs.

[stlukesguild]

There was also Thomas Campion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZsT4lWg5Go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUv8D0KUCz4

Of course you also have the examples... especially in classical music... when a great poem (or prose) is set to music by a later artist. Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, and Richard Strauss set poems of Goethe, Schiller, Morike, Holderlin, Novalis, Hermann Hesse, etc... French composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Hahn, Faure, etc... set poems by Verlaine, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Rimbaud, etc... Richard Strauss was especially attuned to the literary quality of his operas, employing librettos by Hugo von Hoffmansthal and Stephan George that stand on their own as literary theater.

[Stewed]

Yeah, you're right. re. discussion