Rock poetry... Artistic powerful lyrics

[Nijinsky Hind]

A good point and one I often wonder myself. Had I been born with manual dexterity or a non-tone deaf ear or patience to practice a musical instrument--had I been born with any one or combination of those talents and had studied music theory instead of rhetoric and literary criticism in college, would I view things differently? Would I be able listen to Wire's Pink Flag the same if I knew it only had three or two or--gasp--only one chord (and I guess I actually do know this because I've been told so)? Or would I still find something enjoyable in the simplistic confines of the music? I don't know that there is an answer.

But by way of analogy, it is a problem I have when I read. I cannot turn off the analytical part of my brain. Sometimes it works to my advantage. I hate The Scarlet Letter. It's boring, the syntax is ponderous and pompous, the plot is facile. But every semester I teach the book, I find something challenging in the rhetoric to latch on to to make it entertaining, some new twist, some new interpretation. Unfortunately, I'm always looking for this kind of depth when I read, and I forget that I don't need to. This is why I often shut down my brain and just read superhero comics for pleasure (which is undoubtedly offensive to those who make an intellectual pursuit of superhero comics, but you can't please everyone and everyone will not be pleased).



Thank you! It's good to engage in discussion even when we disagree.



I suppose you're right, but it's difficult for me to divorce the intention from the actuality. They are too closely related in my head. And, yes, I think it's easier to make a poem into a song than vice versa.

I suppose we could play a little game?

Which is the song lyric and which is the published, canonized poem? To make it fair (because the song lyric is published with minimal punctuation) I have removed most of the punctuation from both texts and moved some lines around in the poem to make it read more line-by-line rather than idea-to-idea

"Eden on the Air"

Plain we make it
How we love plain and even
This is even
Things are fine odd
But we all like it even
This is even

You're on the air
You're on the water

Water's always welcome on the deck
But we like it dry
Odds call in all day
But they ain't get any answers

You are on the air
You're on the water


"Three Airs"

So many things in the air
soot, elephant balls, a Chinese cloud
which is entirely collapsed
a cat swung by its tail
and the senses of the dead
which are banging about
inside my tired red eyes

In the deeps there is a little bird
and it only hums, it hums of fortitude

and temperance, it is managing a foundry
how firmly it must grasp things
tear them out of the slime and then
it mischievously drops them in the cauldron of hideousness

there is already a sunset naming
the poplars which see only, watery, themselves

Haha... Yes those two lyrics illustrate your point well.... The second is obviously a poem. The first a song. I sometimes wish I had a more analytical mind... I'm old enough now to realize that I'm "Nothing but a dreamer" as the Supertramp song says and have gotten along well enough with this disability. The part of my brain that should be analyzing, rationalizing, and compartmentalizing shut down long ago... Hahah. My folks called it laziness. Lol.

Fortunately i was blessed with the gift of manual dexterity and an ability to actually love physical labor, and thats what butters my bread.

[rcarlberg]

Lyrics must fit the music, to work for me, rather than vice versa. But then I prefer instrumental music most of the time, so for me music is paramount.

In poetry, what little of it I can stomach, I prefer stuff like Billy Collins that is more free form and non-rhyming and not metrical. To me "poetry" means clever or innovative wordplay, not rhyming.

Some people can do that with lyrics too but not many. Maybe that's why I prefer instrumental music.

[Nijinsky Hind]

I like instrumental well enough for sure... Sometimes a good lyric can really give a song great power though.

[Nijinsky Hind]

Perhaps, but I bet you know the difference between good and bad regardless of the context.

Greg Lake rightly gets criticized for the "get me a ladder" lyric. The metaphor he creates by forcing "ladder" into the rhyme scheme is odd to say the least.

Or maybe it's not a metaphor? Maybe he wants a literal ladder? Maybe he wants to recreate Belushi's famous window scene in Animal House?

Or maybe it's synecdoche and what he really wants is a fire truck? Maybe that creates another metaphor (his heart is on fire; the fire truck will put the fire out)?

Or maybe it's metonymy, and he's become so frustrated by his inability to get the girl (or whatever the fuck that song is about), that he's turned his pursuit to a stereotypical and undoubtedly offensive pursuit of homosexual sex at the the local fire station???

None of that, however, stops me from singing the stupid lyric when ever the song comes up and the mood strikes me.

Hahah... I always assumed he needed the ladder to escape from the madder and the sadder! Hahah.

[Nijinsky Hind]

Heres one by Keith Reid lamenting his lost England...


They say this fair city
Has ten thousand souls
Some live in mansions
And some live in holes

Some eat from silver
And some eat from gold
Some sift through garbage
And sleep in the cold

I saw a great highway
That stretched to the stars
I saw a deep river
All choked up with cars

A babe in a cradle
And a cat with the cream
An old English church yard
And an old English dream

Once we had a country
And thought it so fair
If you look through the mirror
You can still find it there

But now our great country
Is broken and torn
And all of its promise
And liberties worn

I saw a great highway


That stretched to the stars
I saw a deep river
All choked up with cars

A babe in a cradle
And a cat with the cream
An old English church yard
And an old English dream

I saw a great plain in winter
All covered in snow
Ten thousand soldiers
That marched to and fro

I saw a broken down building
With ten thousand doors
But none of them open
And none of them yours

I saw a great highway
That stretched to the stars
I saw a deep river
All choked up with cars

A babe in a cradle
And a cat with the cream
An old English church yard
And an old English dream

[The Dark Elf]

Look back up at the lyrics that have been posted. A foundational tool of poetry is missing.

This, of course, is punctuation.

Punctuation is a tool of poetry, but all poets do not use it in same proportion as other poets, nor should it be a factor in considering the worthiness of a poem, lyrical or otherwise. Certainly, the necessity of rhythm and meter in, say, blank verse requires stress-ed syllabification to achieve the appropriate effect in pacing. However, saying punctuation is an end-all, be-all that disqualifies lyrics from being great poetry is absurd, and is perhaps the reason so many students flee the rigid regurgitation of constipated professors ready with a ruler to wrap the knuckles of unruly rhymers.

Now, if I've been effective in my rhetoric, I have achieved a pretentious and pompous tone.

Not only have you achieved your desire, it is the culmination, nay, the very acme and apex of pretension!

Take a very moving, very famous poem by William Blake:

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green & pleasant Land

It can be read with great emotional impact, but (and this is very germane to current events) a band like ELP can present the poem within an appropriate musical arrangement and have it be just as impactful, punctuation be damn-ed. Some poems are not meant to be merely read but performed to reach their full potential. Subtlety, nuance and insinuation, where not stressed in the actual wording or punctuation of the piece, adds a layer of interest to even Shakespeare's work (listening to Sir John Gielgud reciting Shakespeare is far different than simply reading it, even for a student versed in iambic pentameter).

Now, nowhere am I saying that rock lyrics have, for the most part, reached beyond the level of banality and doggerel verse (and here I think of Ronnie James Dio's penchant for the incessant rhyming of occult words, or Robert Plant's use of babe or baby in nearly every song), but when lyric and music reach a sublime accord, so rare in rock, surely, it should be celebrated, not denigrated, or lacking in some essential necessary for being great poetry.

Dylan and Ian Anderson have been mentioned, I would also add Van Morrison, Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen as proud practitioners of lyric verse.