Song lyrics--poetry's forgotten form

When we talk about poetry, we tend to omit what I consider an important genre--song lyrics. There are a lot (a whole lot) of bad song lyrics, yes, but there are a lot of bad poems of all kinds. But there are also song lyrics that--while they are always best experienced with the accompanying music--stand on their own as poems.

In 2006, Camille Paglia edited a book of poems, Break, Blow, Burn. And while I generally have nothing good to say about Paglia (who, ironically, holds the writer whom I consider our greatest contemporary lyricist in total contempt), I like it that she included a song lyric in the collection. The song she selected was Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock," certainly a worthy choice.

Last year, I was fortunate to be interviewed by poet Lisa Mary Armstrong for her "Poets in the Pandemic" series. At the conclusion of the interview, Armstrong asked me to provide one of my poems, and another poem that I liked. My offering was Joni Mitchell's "Amelia," which I consider Mitchell's masterpiece. There are, however, many songs in the body of Mitchell's work that stand as fine poems.

Perhaps song lyrics aren't looked at seriously because so many of them are written in rhyme and meter, and--for a long time--rhyme and meter were looked down on by the poetry establishment (that's another complaint entirely). And perhaps because "cleverness" wasn't considered worthy of admiration. I'm thinking of Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin, extremely clever lyricists, who wrote some of the greatest popular songs in our cultural collection.

But not all songwiters write conventional lyrics. Stevie Nicks brought stream-of-consciousness poetry into popular music. Amy Winehouse wrote lyrics that were both terribly clever and heartbreaking at the same time. Hip hop lyricists like Tupac Shakur, Jay-Z and Eminem changed the way that song lyrics are woven into the culture.

Bob Dylan is one of the most highly respected lyricists of the modern age (though not one of my favorites), and Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith and Neil Young aren't far behind. Two of the most prolific modern lyricists, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, did it all. Their lyrics were sometimes clever, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes activist in nature, and sometimes delightfully silly. 

My favorite contemporary lyricist is Taylor Swift, especially since the release of her groundbreaking album, Folklore. Swift has gone from being a very clever lyricist to being a lyricist of sometimes heartbreaking depth. 

Whether a lyricist writes her own music or has a partnership with a composer, she has a complex job: She must write a poem, but the poem has to meld with the musical composition. That's a task worthy of a lot of respect.