(Appropriately: the word poetry is derived from the Greek verb “poiein,” meaning “to make.”) So to deny the label to song lyrics does seem like a value judgment. Most of us casually use the term “poetry” to refer to almost anything we consider beautifully made, from a cake to a sunset to a well-executed double Salchow. It is clear which of these was originally written to music, and not only because of the lack of rhyme in “21.” Take, for example, the opening lines of “Visions of Johanna,” by Bob Dylan, who has long been acclaimed as one of our most poetic songwriters:ĭeath silenced her pool the day she died hovered over her little toy dogs but left no trace of itself at her funeral Even for those of us who are more literary-minded, seeing lyrics written on a page often diminishes whatever pleasure they gave when embedded in the context of a song. And yes, to some extent, the more we define what is poetry and what it isn’t, the more of an uncommon, niche experience it becomes.īut ask a musician what he or she first hear in a song and the answer is never the words. The first poems may well have been lyrics themselves. And why not? Poetry and music have a long history together, from Greek rhapsodes to medieval troubadours. Song lyrics are one of our most common encounters with words, and it would be lovely to think that everyone attached to an iPod was in the process of digesting a poem. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.At the Smart Set, Kristen Hoggatt took issue with this dismissal of lyrics, writing that Collins is “pushing poetry to the elite fringe.” The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. Look at the ‘fire green as grass’, for instance. ‘Fern Hill’ contains some of the most arresting images in all of Thomas’s poetry (and he was a master of the arresting image!). It was written in 1945, just after the end of WWII. In this, one of Thomas’s best-loved poems, he revisits his childhood, using his visits to his aunt’s farm as the subject-matter. Glistening in steadfast stillness: like transcendentĬlean pain sending on us a chill down here …Ĭhristian-inflected visions of the mountains dominate this strange but bewitching poem from the prolific novelist and poet D. The mountain’s new-dropped summer snow is clear Lawrence, ‘ Meeting among the Mountains’.Īgainst the hard and pale blue evening sky One of the first great examples of the villanelle in English, this poem is a fine exercise in nostalgia, but also a wonderful example of how the villanelle’s built-in repetition can be put to effective use: ‘there is nothing more to say’, yet he will keep on saying it, that ‘they are all gone away’, because when we dwell on the past we are slaves to the same repeated statements and thoughts that the villanelle allows the poet to express.ĭ. Housman’s ‘Lad’ meets his sweetheart on top of Bredon Hill every Sunday, skiving off going to church, lying atop the hill so they could ‘see the coloured counties, / And hear the larks so high / About us in the sky.’ But things then take a tragic turn, as so often in a Housman poem…Įdwin Arlington Robinson, ‘ The House on the Hill’. Bredon (pronounced ‘Breedon’) is actually in Worcestershire, rather than the neighbouring Shropshire nevertheless, it is one of the most famous poems in Housman’s 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad.
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