Rap = poetry?

[ArcaNiNe]

What is your personal opinion on this? There are a few people who like to class them in the same category, but I personally wouldn't agree with them.

e: and no I'm not talking about mainstream rap artists

[laura.]

I believe it's a form of poetry, yes. I think all songs can be classed as poetry. The only difference between songs and what most consider "poetry" is that they're set to music. And this really isn't that groundbreaking, considering way back when, a lyre accompanied some Greek poetry (hence "lyric poetry").

[Manchegan]

Of course rap is poetry. The whole thing is about rhythm and rhyme and neat sounding word play. Some of it is atrocious and the subject matter is genuinely below that of traditional poetry. But some rap is amazing.

Here's my favorite line from a Gift of Gab song:

"...lost all innocence from drunk nights and incidents when, on too many instances, he couldn't finish sentences."

[Manchegan]

*oops double post. how to delete?

[JBI]

... to what extent? if we say all rap is poetry as the above posters all mentioned, it then implies that all rap fits into poetry, all music fits into poetry, and pretty much all forms of spoken language are poetry.

Does one say rap cannot be poetry? no, it can be. Is rap poetry? is everything written prose?

But then again, everything month the forum seems to be flooded with such posts as these that eventually get absorbed into a well padded thread by the moderators, before being flushed to the bottom of the forums.

[laura.]

The idea of what constitutes a poem has changed so much over time, that it's really hard to actually define what a poem is nowadays. There are so many varying forms and styles of poetry, that I suppose if one tried hard enough, a person could define any piece of spoken language as poetry.

But I think it's fairly safe to say that all songs can be classed as poetry. I don't know how many times I was asked to analyze song lyrics as I would a typical poem back in high school English class, and I've taken a class in college treating Bob Dylan's lyrics as poetry. I mean, lyrics are typically the most basic form of poetry that everyone's familiar with: they rhyme, they have an obvious rhythm, etc.

[JBI]

The idea of what constitutes a poem has changed so much over time, that it's really hard to actually define what a poem is nowadays. There are so many varying forms and styles of poetry, that I suppose if one tried hard enough, a person could define any piece of spoken language as poetry.

But I think it's fairly safe to say that all songs can be classed as poetry. I don't know how many times I was asked to analyze song lyrics as I would a typical poem back in high school English class, and I've taken a class in college treating Bob Dylan's lyrics as poetry. I mean, lyrics are typically the most basic form of poetry that everyone's familiar with: they rhyme, they have an obvious rhythm, etc.

If all songs were poetry, we wouldn't think of songs as a genre. Simply put, a song is not necessarily a poem - an example would be songs that repeat themselves over and over again with the same 4 words - "I Get Knocked Down" for instance, which clearly isn't a poem.

Seriously, just because your mediocre teacher probably asked you to analyze mediocre songs as poetry doesn't make all songs poetry. We don't analyze the song "S Club Party" as poetry, because you cannot. So why is there this assumption?

Such flawed inductive reasoning is the product of mediocre education systems, not proper experience or analysis.

Dylan, who has published as a poet, is probably the closest mainstream singer-songwriter. Neil Young and Gordon Lightfoot as well as Leonard Cohen are also noteworthy, as are a few others I can name off the top of my head, and a very long slew of French and French Canadian, as well as other artists. Quite simply put though, that doesn't make all songs poems, or all songwriters poets. Ice Ice Baby is not a poem, unless you stretch the meaning, in which case, we get to the point where one needs to question what isn't a poem, and what the purpose of the term poem signifies.

[laura.]

I still stand by what I said, even if it is due to my lack of a decent education.

When you look at a song, written down, it's poetry. It has meter, it has stanzas, it rhymes; I'm not quite sure where you don't see that it's not a poem, unless we have differing views on what can be considered poetry.

I'm not saying it's good poetry, and I never did claim that it was good poetry. Bad poetry exists, but it still constitutes as poetry. There are terrible romance novels, yet we still can call them novels.

[Le_Iris]

Yes, it's a form of poetry. Theoretically. However, poetry is something more than rhyme and meter. There are so many amateurs, but not all of them are real poets, isn't it? There is a big difference between poetry and rhymed lines. But as a whole, rap is a special poetic style.

[Mrs. Dalloway]

Absolutely! Why don't you consider rap as poetry?

[JBI]

English is spoken with rhythm, in forms, therefore English is poetry, by your definition.

In truth, we could reduce it and say sound is poetry automatically, and anything written is poetry, and anything experienced is poetry, as it all has an order to it. Tell me then, is not this post poetry, as I am writing in the form of sentences, in a rhythm befitting Canadian English speech?

[Mariner]

There are alot of hip-hop "artists" who do not write poems as lyrics. There are many who write very bad "poems" for lyrics. There are even more who write "poetic" lyrics. But there are few hip-hop artist who create poetry to use as lyrics.

I don't know much about slam poetry, but isn't that what we're thinking of? Using poems against beats? Could someone clarify?

[stlukesguild]

But I think it's fairly safe to say that all songs can be classed as poetry... I mean, lyrics are typically the most basic form of poetry that everyone's familiar with: they rhyme, they have an obvious rhythm, etc.


Umm... I'm uncertain as to just how safe your assertion is. All songs are poems. Then are all poems songs? What exactly differentiates a song from a poem... and if there is no difference why do we have two separate terms? For you to argue that all songs are poems you would seemingly need to offer some definition of what constitutes a poem... and ideally that definition would go beyond the suggestions that lyrics are the most basic for of poetry because everyone's familiar with them, they have an obvious rhythm, and they rhyme... or do you assume that poetry is defined as something that has an obvious rhythm and rhymes.

Personally, I see no need for the continual attempts to suggest that lyrics of music be counted as poetry... as literature. The entire concept seems absurd... misguided... and somewhat suggestive of feelings of inferiority in the desire to define one art form (the song) as something else... something "superior"? (poetry). Each art form has its own strengths and weaknesses... but somehow I feel that the attempts to dissect a given art form and redefine the separate components as something other than what they were intended as, is misguided. A film is a self-contained work of art. The screenplay may be well written, the music may be quite lovely, and the cinematography may be gorgeous... but I see no need to redefine all these separate elements as something other than what they were intended as. We could go into further analysis and discuss the manner in which the lyrics of a song often have little or no real inherent rhythmic structure when read as text... but rather the rhythm is often imposed through the manner in which it is woven with the music... but really the main point is that a song was intended as a song and not a poem.

Duchamp implied that the artist's intentions are the measure of when something becomes a work of art. Somehow I doubt that Mick Jagger had any intentions of writing poetry when he famously moaned, "I can't get no... Satisfaction." The other measure of an art form is its acceptance by those who have the most invested within the field: the critics, academics, art lovers, and subsequent artist devoted to that art form. By this measure there are certainly lyrics that have been accepted as poetry... the lyrics of Sappho, certain folk ballads, Thomas Campion, quite possibly Bob Dylan. On the other hand, a good majority of those here who seem intent upon defining all song lyrics as poetry have shown little interest in reading or discussing poetry, including even a single work of poetry among the never-ending lists of "My favorite books" or "The 100 greatest books" that plague the site, orexploring poetry outside of the realm of that which is taught in every Lit 101 class. But don't let that stop you.

[DanielBenoit]

For the most part I agree with SLG. That said, I would usually define something as poetry as whatever I'm willing enough to read as poetry. Bob Dylan is probably the only songwriter to do this, which may be because his songs are very visual and don't make extensive use of repetition as pop has, such as The Rolling Stones.

Either way, I think the reason why many people seem to want to consider a particular music they love to be "poetry" is because terms like "poetic" has always in non-poetic fields to be high praise. One can say, "Miles Davis is a poet of jazz" which is high praise, but it doesn't make him anything close to a poet. The term "poetry" in critical regards should not be taken so lightly as to call anything worthy of the simile of "poetic".

Musical lyrics for the most part have a hard time being poetry because they are sung out loud, almost always slowly and in a manner that amplifies its effect (hence, music). Satisfaction, when read to oneself as a poem, it sounds like a somewhat sophomoric rant on sex and commercialism in America. But when put to music, the words come alive. All and all it's quite hard to read that song without thinking of the music, but for a person who has never heard it, reading the lyrics (and reading them as poetry) they sound quite unpoetic.

[gingerkid101]

In a sense, almost all "music" is poetry. I would, however say that it is definitely poetry on a lower level than what most would consider to be good poetry.