Poetic Songs?

[Zombie_Fish]

By this I mean, can songs be poems?

[img_inline caption="Simon Armitage and his folder of works"]http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5656/simonarmitage2.jpg[/img_inline]​

The reason why I write this is because of a time back in May this year, when I went to a reading by British poet Simon Armitage[footnote]Simon Armitage is a poet from Huddersfield who writes poems appealing to the youths of the modern day, due to his choice in language and themes. As a result of this, he is one of the four poets every British student potentially needs to study for their GCSE English Literature Exams in May every year (one of the reasons for me going to this reading). Further information is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Armitage http://www.simonarmitage.com/[/footnote], at an Arts Centre in my home town, partially organised for the advertising of his new book, Gig, and partially organised by my local National Union of Teachers (a.k.a. N.U.T.) for the upcoming GCSE exam period. At the end of this session of reading and explaining of some of his poems, he had a question and answer session, in which something along the lines of the following was said:

Member of audience: Seeing as your new book, Gig, is about how you turned to poetry after failing to become a rockstar, do you think there is a similarity between songs and poems?

Simon Armitage: Recently, I have actually been hired to write songs for groups, and it is actually quite interesting how much the two styles differ. One example of this that I like to show is Bob Dylan: whilst Bob Dylan is an amazing songwriter, he is a crap poet. What I like to do in my university lectures to show this is I will take one of his songs and ask my students to analyse it, as you would with a poem. And after analysing it there are loads of things that don't belong in poetry: [long list of language features that I didn't understand] But the thing about songs is that they aren't just the words on their own, since they have the music in the background adding support to the words, so they don't need to be like poems.

Master of Ceremonies: And what about Joni Mitchell?

Armitage: I have the same opinion for her as I do for Bob Dylan.

[img_inline caption="Leonard Cohen: Poet, Songwriter, Poetic Songwriter?"]http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/57/leonardcohen2.jpg[/img_inline]Now, I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I personally find myself disagreeing with this statement. The main reason for this being that I don't view any forms of art as having set rules to follow, poetry and music being the same. Twentieth Century orchestral music is a collision of atonality and noise with no real consistency, yet it is viewed as one of the most interesting and rule-breaking forms of art in history. Same goes for Jazz: Bebop artists like Thelonious Monk and Louis Armstrong being widely viewed as revolutionaries of music; Thelonious Monk actually creating his own style and theory of music that there is no such thing as a wrong note.

As for poems, the same idea about lack of rules has appeared over time. When other poets used deep metaphores to emphasise their lovers in sonnets, Shakespeare created Sonnet 130, a poem explaining that his lover is nothing like that, yet he loves her 'As any she belied with false compare.' We also have rules being lost in structure, such as in Denise Levertov's poem What were they like?, which is set out in a structure unlike any other poem I have read, with a stanza of questions followed by a stanza of answers to them, as if a discussion between two people is being overheard.

However, another reason for my disagreement is some song writers and songs themselves. Leonard Cohen, famous for writing Hallelujah [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJTiXoMCppw] started out as a poet and only turned to songwriting in the sixties after deciding that poems weren't as popular as they were. I have always viewed songs by singers like Scott Walker and Nick Cave as almost poetic as they were, whether they were about Elvis talking to his dead twin brother, Jesse, from the viewpoint of a survivor of 9/11 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYyOkQUyJZM]; or Lazarus from the New Testament coming back to life in the modern world [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kV5XkBQsKU]. My mum (a Secondary School teacher in English), when organising a National Poetry Day meal at her school on the theme of 'Heroes' picked (along with lines from a poem about war heroes) to have lines from The King Blues song Save the World, Get the Girl [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EieyQ0VE0is] placed on coasters around the dinner tables.

But, seeing as this is an argument between a man who could potentially become Poet Laureate at some point and a student who has never written a poem in his life, I'm not sure if my own view of this is entirely good. So, seeing as we have a large number of writers on The Escapist, and a large number of poets as well (as [user]Labyrinth[/user]'s artist thread [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.72805?page=1] would imply), I have decided to bring this discussion to you guys.

So, do you think songs can be poetic or even be poems? If so, do you think you could list some that you think are poetic and possibly analyse them, if you want? Also, feel free to reverse this discussion and state whether or not you think poems can be songs and/ or list a few which you think could fit with a backing track.

 

[Inverse Skies]

Yes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieder

This form of music was used by some romantic era composers (most notably Schubert who wrote over 600 of them) and is a form of artist song which encapsulates poetry within them. I'm not sure if anyone still writes them today, but that would be a good place to start. I'm not sure if I have any of Schubert's Lieder, but he did write some amazing symphonies so I'm guessing they'll be pretty good.

 

[traceur_]

The song, And they played waltzing matilda is a good war poem.

 

[Zombie_Fish]

Yes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieder

This form of music was used by some romantic era composers (most notably Schubert who wrote over 600 of them) and is a form of artist song which encapsulates poetry within them. I'm not sure if anyone still writes them today, but that would be a good place to start. I'm not sure if I have any of Schubert's Lieder, but he did write some amazing symphonies so I'm guessing they'll be pretty good.

Wow, that's quite an interesting genre. As for whether or not it is still around:

The tradition was continued by Schumann, Brahms, and Hugo Wolf, and on into the 20th century by Strauss, Mahler and Pfitzner. Austrian partisans of atonal music, Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern, composed lieds in their own style.

So it kind of continued into the twentieth century, but the article doesn't mention anything about what happened after that. Orchestral music was starting to become an acquired and obscure taste by that point in time anyway, underneath the rise of other styles such as Jazz, Rock 'n' Roll and Pop music.

Thanks for bringing this up, though. My dad/ main source of orchestral music doesn't have much of a liking for the Romantic period, so there isn't much chance of me being able to find any in his collection, but I've just looked up a couple of examples given in the article and it may be something for me to try and find sometime, I reckon.

 

[Inverse Skies]

Wow, that's quite an interesting genre. As for whether or not it is still around:

The tradition was continued by Schumann, Brahms, and Hugo Wolf, and on into the 20th century by Strauss, Mahler and Pfitzner. Austrian partisans of atonal music, Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern, composed lieds in their own style.

So it kind of continued into the twentieth century, but the article doesn't mention anything about what happened after that. Orchestral music was starting to become an acquired and obscure taste by that point in time anyway, underneath the rise of other styles such as Jazz, Rock 'n' Roll and Pop music.

Thanks for bringing this up, though. My dad/ main source of orchestral music doesn't have much of a liking for the Romantic period, so there isn't much chance of me being able to find any in his collection, but I've just looked up a couple of examples given in the article and it may be something for me to try and find sometime, I reckon.

I'm glad you liked what I found out, it's good news that I've given you something more to explore. Schumann, Brahms, Mahler and Strauss would probably all write nice ones, but I don't think I have any of their works either. I hope you find something you like in them then, because it certainly seems like a genre which you would enjoy or find interesting at least.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

I don't think I can delve nearly as deep into theory as you people do, but I'll add my tupenny anyway... In Poland, we have a bit of tradition of poetic songs. Most of it, I have to admit, is poetry at its finest (as far as I can tell) with crappy music, unfortunately, but there are a few shining gems, most commonly achieved by a pairing of a poet with a professional songwriter. I'm not going to quote examples though, since they are impossible to translate into English...

I think you can only speak of poetic songs if you have proper poetry and proper melody in there. Most songwriters try to make their lyrics poetic, but they just end up rhyming a bit. And a lot of poets add musical accompaniament to their poems, but that doesn't cut it either - I mean, Greek poetry was recited to the accompaniament of a lyre (hence the term "lyric poetry"), and that didn't make it songwriting...

 

[Zombie_Fish]

I don't think I can delve nearly as deep into theory as you people do, but I'll add my tupenny anyway... In Poland, we have a bit of tradition of poetic songs. Most of it, I have to admit, is poetry at its finest (as far as I can tell) with crappy music, unfortunately, but there are a few shining gems, most commonly achieved by a pairing of a poet with a professional songwriter. I'm not going to quote examples though, since they are impossible to translate into English...

I think you can only speak of poetic songs if you have proper poetry and proper melody in there. Most songwriters try to make their lyrics poetic, but they just end up rhyming a bit. And a lot of poets add musical accompaniament to their poems, but that doesn't cut it either - I mean, Greek poetry was recited to the accompaniament of a lyre (hence the term "lyric poetry"), and that didn't make it songwriting...

Any opinion is welcome, regardless of detail or knowledge in the subject at hand. My post is only that big because I've been contemplating whether or not to make this thread and putting it off for several months and thinking what I should mention in it as well over that time.

I agree with you, though, balance is a problem with trying to merge the two styles; most writers will only be experienced enough to cater for one extreme, so the other point of the extreme will seem poor in comparison, as the writer can't cater for it in equal quality. Even Simon Armitage, the poet I referenced to in the OP, I suspect would only actually write the lyrics for the songs he has been asked to write, and not the whole song from scratch. So finding equilibrium, I guess, is an important key to writing songs that can be viewed as being poetic.