Song lyrics that can stand alone as poetry

[desiresjab]

Just like condensed milk, songs are seldom poetry without the water added. Phrasing to a musical bar is different from solo poetic scansion. The notes of the melody determine where the beats fall.

Not that there is not great stuff out there on occassion, but everyone must admit poetic songs become better with the music added, usually at least a hundred percent better. This means that on fifty percent of their power they would equal the poems of masters. This cannot be true. Bob Dylan on half power is not as good a poet as W.B. Yeats or T.S. Elliot. Once one adds the water to the powdered milk, perhaps then there is a contest, but certainly not until.

I am willing to believe stand alone song lyrics are poetry, just not the best poetry. Otherwise, once the water was added, song would exceed all poetry by far, and I do not believe this to be true either. I do believe that lyrics+music is a powerful combination somtimes as powerful as the greatest poetry, with the added advantage of reaching the emotions of listeners more quickly. If that is all there was to poetry, songs would be the champ.

To demonstrate how powerful music itself is, consider that we have all cried over songs with mediocre lyrics. I believe this to be a fact. If I have, then I know you sentimental saps have, too. It does not even take decent poetry to wrench our emotions strongly if the music grabs us. We can be affected mightily in spite of mediocre lyrics.

Stevie Wonder is arguably the greatest musical artist of the pop/rock era, as lyricist and songwriter, singer extraordinaire, and brilliant soloist on two instruments. He does not blow his solos on a little diatonic harmonica, which the best players can get plenty out of, but a chromatic harmonica capable of much more.

Musically, he was way above the era he participated in, respected by all. A dozen or song creators will stand out, I believe, when historians and musicologists of the future are able to gaze back on the 20th century. Stevie is likely to be one of those dozen.

The amazing thing is, he was only an average lyricist. There was nothing special about his words, they simply worked for his material. He was a mundane but adequate lyricist in the overall, which does not prevent many of his songs from being classics.

With songs it really is mostly about the music, especially once the song leaves the format of one person on an instrument singing and becomes highly produced with top musicians, added string sections, backup singers et al.

Great words can get in there which will stand alone as poetry, i.e. interesting words with line breaks. Those words came out as part of a melody, not as scanned poetry, which have to confrom to the melody, so it is difficult and unusual to also confrom to poetic scansion as well, and still sound good musically. On the other side of the coin, I have heard the works of some of the greatest poets set to music, and I did not feel their words were elevated by the experiment but struggled to equal themselves solo.

Absolutely wonderful songs can have so-so lyrics, that is how strong the music is.

My favorite lyrics of Stevie Wonder are in a little song called Lately. I do not know if they are poetry. I think they must be. Because we know the artist and that he is blind, the lyrics become even more meaningful than usual. I guess you cannot fool the nose of a blind person either, along with their ears, but I had never thought of it. Once you add the water to these lyrics where they are contextually metered within the melody, you have a piece of art, in my opinion, that will stick around for a while, and that any great poet must strugle to equal for a piece of similar duration.

I once set to music some words of Robert Herrick, which may have originally had music, for all I know.

WHENAS in silks my Julia goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free:
Oh how that glittering taketh me!

Image-wise, these are great words, in spite of (maybe because of) mediocre meter, if any. Nonetheless, the four hundred and fifty year old poem was found in an anthology of English poetry covering a six hundred year span, where there was only space, presumably, for the best poetry from any period, with some wiggle room for the editor, who in this case was Oscar Williams, a poet so great I have go look up his name in the middle of this sentence, and who included by privilege of that wiggle room some of his own poems and, one might reasonably imagine, a few of his friends as well who were possibly over-represented in the modern period, yet the high standards of the tome did not noticably suffer.

I also tried setting some Houseman to music. It worked, but the poems of Houseman I wanted were so short that I needed to stitch a number of them together, and this did not work, musically. They all had their own melodies.

[Agliomby]

I just love that Robert Herrick poem! I first encountered it in "A Prosody Handbook" by Shapiro and Beum, which I read when I was struggling to define "poetry" for myself. Of course, many call themselves poets and what they write, poetry. Impact with brevity would be my paramount requirement. But, desiresjab, setting those Herrick verses to music could not reduce their inherent impact; nor, then, can you say song lyrics must depend on their music.
In my opinion, poetry has become ridiculously academic, always trying to break new ground or be deliberately obscure. Thus here we get poetry by a poet laureate that is nothing but a list of childhood toys, no metre or rhyme, gaining attention by nostalgia only. Read in front of a sycophantic audience, evoking sycophantic appreciation.

[YesNo]

I like the Herrick poem also. It is justifiably famous, but it is very simple like a song lyric and yet it teases the reader's attention even today years after it was written.

Thinking about EmptySeraph's idea of the "shape" of a poem, song lyrics illustrate that poetry has no shape. True there are standard ways to represent the poem metrically in a text, but if one were listening to a YouTube video displaying the lyrics, no one would complain if that video reformatted that standard display. The display, or shape, is not part of the poem.

However, there has been an attempt to add shape to poetry. When poets insist that line breaks are inserted where they originally put them or when extra spaces and indentations are copied just as they submitted them, they seem to be implying that those shapes of the written text are part of the poem itself. They do seem to restrict their liberties only to the shapes that an early twentieth century, manual typewriter could construct which is odd. Why not insist that the paper be of a certain color or the font be just as they presented it to the editor?

Shape, that bizarre peppering of a text with line breaks and needless spaces, is something that needs to be removed from modern poetry. It is not something modern poets removed from traditional poetry.

[Agliomby]

I like the Herrick poem also. It is justifiably famous, but it is very simple like a song lyric and yet it teases the reader's attention even today years after it was written.

Thinking about EmptySeraph's idea of the "shape" of a poem, song lyrics illustrate that poetry has no shape. True there are standard ways to represent the poem metrically in a text, but if one were listening to a YouTube video displaying the lyrics, no one would complain if that video reformatted that standard display. The display, or shape, is not part of the poem.

However, there has been an attempt to add shape to poetry. When poets insist that line breaks are inserted where they originally put them or when extra spaces and indentations are copied just as they submitted them, they seem to be implying that those shapes of the written text are part of the poem itself. They do seem to restrict their liberties only to the shapes that an early twentieth century, manual typewriter could construct which is odd. Why not insist that the paper be of a certain color or the font be just as they presented it to the editor?

Shape, that bizarre peppering of a text with line breaks and needless spaces, is something that needs to be removed from modern poetry. It is not something modern poets removed from traditional poetry.

But isnt that just changing the definition of poetry? Or, indeed, including prose in your definition?

[YesNo]

I don't think prose has any "shape" either.

[Agliomby]

I don't think prose has any "shape" either.

Okay...That takes some explaining and digesting. Syntax, are you talking about? Surely the construction of a sentence attempts to predict the way most minds process information, thus a complex sentence can be very satisfying, if one can stay with it throughout its twists. For me, prose trumps poetry nearly everytime.

[Agliomby]

But "Julia turns me on" doesnt quite sound as good as the way Herrick puts that fact.

[YesNo]

What I understood EmptySeraph to mean by "shape" was formatting the words on a page. Usually poems have special formatting distinct from prose, but in both it is the sound that gives us the meaning. It doesn't matter if we ever see it formatted on some medium.

[Agliomby]

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[YesNo]

I see you understand the "shape" concept. It is all in the formatting.

Here is the question: For language, does the shape matter? I would say no. You could write what you posted as "But if we don't hear it all we have for clues is the format". Now it is true that I might not understand the language being used or misread the words, but that doesn't mean the shape is part of the language.

I also don't think there are "images" in a poem (or in prose). Images might inspire words, but words do not contain images. They are meaningful sounds, or as Frost mentioned, the "sound of sense". I might not understand what Frost means by "sound of sense", but I don't think there are images involved in it.

[desiresjab]

Of course, many call themselves poets and what they write, poetry. Impact with brevity would be my paramount requirement. But, desiresjab, setting those Herrick verses to music could not reduce their inherent impact;

I my case, it didn't, because I got lucky and found a good melody with a nice Elizabethean feel and sound. Do it wrong, for instance with heavy metal music, and you could certainly reduce the impact of the words rather than enhance them, my friend, for anyone listrening to that performance.

nor, then, can you say song lyrics must depend on their music.

I did not use the word must, did I? What does it matter? You know what a melody is. Perhaps you know that a melody makes many demands of accents, it holds certain words as half notes or whole notes. In my opinion this makes most great poetry unsuitable for musical adaptation, sticking strictly to original texts. This is because of accentual exigencies of the melody you have not thought about. What fits with a great melody is often not great poetry, or even good enough to be called stand alone poetry, though the line is arbitrary and personal in every case.

In my opinion, poetry has become ridiculously academic, always trying to break new ground or be deliberately obscure. Thus here we get poetry by a poet laureate that is nothing but a list of childhood toys, no metre or rhyme, gaining attention by nostalgia only. Read in front of a sycophantic audience, evoking sycophantic appreciation.

Okay. I believe something like this, too. Almost every well known poet teaches somewhere in academia. I cannot blame anyone for the fact that poets need to have day jobs, though, except the readers of poetry or the poets themselves. I look at journals and I cannot read most of what is presented as quality poetry. It bores me. All it has to do is interest me. That is all any words have to do, and it is the first and hardest job simply to be interesting. I can usually tell from the first few lines of a poem or story whether an author is going to bore me. If the author simply keeps my interest going, that is a huge plus in his/her favor.

Poetry readings are one type of event where poetry goes public, so naturally it has different manners than it has at home. A spirit comes over some readings, call it the spirit of sychophancy, if you must, but I have seen good spirit at readings, too.

What works at a reading may not be great poetry, and great poetry may not work at a reading. So much depends on the audience and what they will respond to, what they are used to etc., etc. There is no law that says great poetry has to sound good at a reading. But anyway, some of the stuff they are calling fine poetry these days does not sound good, look good, or read good.

Poetry may have begun as an oral art, but for hundreds of years there have been poems that are meant to be read in the silence of your study, because they read better than they sound. Part of the way they read is the way they look. This is why poems have different looks, and looks are important, because they change the silent reading, and because silent reading is a huge and valuable part of appreciating poetry.

There is not one among us (I hope) who thinks Sailing To Byzantium is just as effective written in straight prose across the page. That is really nonsense. Not only would it affect the silent reading, anyone reading it aloud would also have to practice it more extensively to get it to sound like it should, unaided by the visual cue of line breaks. So changing the geometric shape of the poem alters both the silent and the oral reading of it.

Call it custom, but the vocabulary of songs is an extremely limited one. I think it is more than custom. Small common words can fit in with the demands of the melody better than larger, less common, awkward ones.

This limited vocabulary may be a hidden demand of the meeting of words and music, and a hidden reason that stand alone song lyrics can seldom if ever acheive the highest poetic level. Great poetry in song essentially has to be acheived with only the vocabulary of a teenager who is a perenial "D" student. This is another reason it hardly ever happens.

People do not want to hear a lot of big words sung, but they will read them. Perhaps this is cultural, but it has been so since song began, as far as I can tell.

Looking closer at the Herrick poem, it has a lynchpin--the word liquifaction. Without that one highly unusual word, the poem is not special anymore, and it would not have been found in the anthology by Mr. Oscar Williams. The second verse is, in fact, rather mediocre as a whole. The power and grace of the first verse and the single word holds the reader's attention for another few short lines. But everything comes from that graceful first verse and its unusual word.

It has no exact rhythm of its own, and does not read aloud as well as it reads silently. Because it contains so little identity rhythmically, perhaps, it came alive aurally with my melody, I must admit. It seemed to help it, which I think is extraordinarily unusual with great poetry.

[Patrick Bell]

I would say some that are great poetry are...

'The Stranger Song' Leonard Cohen:


"Stranger Song"

It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender,
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.
And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much
not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger

And then leaning on your window sill
he'll say one day you caused his will
to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger.

But now another stranger seems
to want you to ignore his dreams
as though they were the burden of some other
O you've seen that man before
his golden arm dispatching cards
but now it's rusted from the elbows to the finger
And he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter
Yes he wants to trade the game he knows for shelter.

Ah you hate to see another tired man
lay down his hand
like he was giving up the holy game of poker
And while he talks his dreams to sleep
you notice there's a highway
that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder.
It is curling just like smoke above his shoulder.

You tell him to come in sit down
but something makes you turn around
The door is open you can't close your shelter
You try the handle of the road
It opens do not be afraid
It's you my love, you who are the stranger
It's you my love, you who are the stranger.

Well, I've been waiting, I was sure
we'd meet between the trains we're waiting for
I think it's time to board another
Please understand, I never had a secret chart
to get me to the heart of this
or any other matter
When he talks like this
you don't know what he's after
When he speaks like this,
you don't know what he's after.

Let's meet tomorrow if you choose
upon the shore, beneath the bridge
that they are building on some endless river
Then he leaves the platform
for the sleeping car that's warm
You realize, he's only advertising one more shelter
And it comes to you, he never was a stranger
And you say ok the bridge or someplace later.

And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind ...

And leaning on your window sill ...

I told you when I came I was a stranger. "

Or 'Alice' Tom Waits:

"Alice"

It's dreamy weather we're on
You waved your crooked wand
Along an icy pond with a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond
They spell Alice

I disappear in your name
But you must wait for me
Somewhere across the sea
There's a wreck of a ship
Your hair is like meadow grass on the tide
And the raindrops on my window
And the ice in my drink
Baby all I can think of is Alice

Arithmetic arithmetock
Turn the hands back on the clock
How does the ocean rock the boat?
How did the razor find my throat?
The only strings that hold me here
Are tangled up around the pier

And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice

And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice
There's only Alice"

Or 'The Magical Bird in the Magical Woods' by Current 93:

"I saw the slot of the sun
The final cut of the sun
Start like a hare
Over the shoddy grey walls
I saw you dimple and crease
And turn a card from the pack
By your bed
As though swords, cups, discs and wands
Might tumble into your head
And give you a glimmer of something profound
But your gods made no sound
The gods made no sound
Your gods made no sound
You were cartwheel and sommersault
But not at your ease
I was not at my ease
As through unfolding vistas
Of dullness and deadness
I saw the metal buckets
Fatigued and buckled
With nimbus of rustflowers
In sheds by the lake
I was already falling and fallen and lost
And it was not at your cost
And I was not at my ease
And it was not at your cost
By aimless pools with no surprise
I counted the flickerings of your eyes
And saw the magical bird
In the magical woods
Fly over the hills
And far away
From the sea it's you I see
By the glowing seashore it was you that I saw:
The magical bird in the magical woods"

[Red Terror]

During the Great Depression (1929-1940) bank robbers plagued the USA --- John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd, among others.



Pretty Boy Floyd
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

If you'll gather 'round me, children,
A story I will tell
'Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw,
Oklahoma knew him well.

It was in the town of Shawnee,
A Saturday afternoon,
His wife beside him in his wagon
As into town they rode.

There a deputy sheriff approached him
In a manner rather rude,
Vulgar words of anger,
An' his wife she overheard.

Pretty Boy grabbed a log chain,
And the deputy grabbed his gun;
In the fight that followed
He laid that deputy down.

Then he took to the trees and timber
Along the river shore,
Hiding on the river bottom
And he never come back no more.

Yes, he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.

But a many a starvin' farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes.

Others tell you 'bout a stranger
That come to beg a meal,
Underneath his napkin
Left a thousand-dollar bill.

It was in Oklahoma City,
It was on a Christmas Day,
There was a whole car load of groceries
Come with a note to say:

"Well, you say that I'm an outlaw,
You say that I'm a thief.
Here's a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief."

Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.

[Red Terror]

Phil Ochs was up there with Bob Dylan but later committed suicide.



Oh, I marched to the battle of New Orleans
At the end of the early British war
The young land started growing
The young blood started flowing
But I ain't marching anymore


For I've killed my share of Indians
In a thousand different fights
I was there at the Little Big Horn
I heard many men lying, I saw many more dying
But I ain't marching anymore


It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the saber and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all


For I stole California from the Mexican land
Fought in the bloody Civil War
Yes, I even killed my brothers
And so many others
But I ain't marching anymore


For I marched to the battles of the German trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh, I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain't marching anymore


It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the saber and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all


For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky
Set off the mighty mushroom roar
When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning
That I ain't marching anymore


Now the labor leader's screamin'
When they close the missile plants
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore
Call it Peace, or call it, Treason
Call it Love, or call it, Reason
But I ain't marching anymore
No, I ain't marching anymore

[Shoucatie]

My entreaties died in the caverns of your eyes.
And my flags surrendered to the winds of despair.
My days escaped to find your door closed.
Layla
And what transpired with the object of my cries?

Two years and she didn't hear the melody of my strings...
And she didn't the see light of my sky.
I freed the love in my heart and squeezed it...Then I drank grief
From a dirty chalice.

And I became torn. I had no prestige or luxury to tempt you with.
So then leave me with my grief ..
If you squeeze the years of my life completely,
The blood from my wounds would flow.
If I had riches, you would not have refused my love.
But I am in a state of difficulty, a state of poverty, a state of weakness.

I suffered... I suffered
But I do not reveal my sorrow, and you did not know a thing about my suffering .
I walk and smile, oh Layla, because I'm stubborn.
So I hide from the people, my approaching death.
For if the knew what is the matter, they would try to console me.
And I knew that they could not.
Deprivation rests upon my brow and sucks my blood.
And only he can allow me to smile.
You are forgiven for aborting my hopes.
The fault is not yours; it was my foolishness.

I wasted my procession in the desert.
And I came, looking for myself in your eyes.
And I came, looking for happiness in your embrace.
Like a child, I formed my innocent dreams.
And you planted your palms and uprooted my veins.
And you are planted without the kindness of my pleasures.

And she emigrated...
My lost cities emigrated away from me
And my sails never left her.
I was exiled and the strangers settled in my country
And they destroyed all my beloved things.
Your eyes betrayed you.
With forgery and lying
Your confusion decieved you.
My lady.

came as a butterfly to place within your hands, the colors of my wings.
Then injustice burned my wings.
I screamed while the sword was implanted in my chest.
And the betrayal destroyed my huge hopes.
And you also, I perished on your hands.
I perished from your hands.
Because you preferred my murder and loved the sound of my groans.
And so I deleted your precious ssss from my sssssssss.
Therefore, they will be told without Layla... Layla
Therefore they will be told without Layla, my stories

This is an Arabic song by Kazem Saher, Called Ana w Layla