On Monday, September 29, 2003 at 4:53:57 AM UTC-4, Emperor Bungle wrote:
> "Ironywaves" <irony...@knology.net> wrote in message
> news:vnfnr3o...@corp.supernews.com...
> > "Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan : Poetry and the Popular Song."
> > by Frank Davey, in Alphabet No. 17, December 1969
> <snipped incredibly boring dirge>
> One long-winded self-absorbed tract deserves another. Here's mine:
> 1) Why can't you make your own defence of songwriters as poets instead of
> relying on others?
> 2) Why this pathetic need to give songwriters respectability by classifying
> them as poets? Why can't you just let them exist on their own terms, as
> singer-songwriters?
> The answer to the latter is snobbery and idleness. Snobbery, because people
> who say songwriting is really poetry see poetry as a higher art with all the
> cachet that implies. They're the same people who insist on calling films
> like "Once Upon a Time in America" operatic--who say 'film isn't
> respectable, but if we start discussing it in the frame of reference of
> another, higher, art form, it will become respectable'.
> Idleness, because if poetry is the form that songwriting secretly aspires
> to, why don't they go and try to find out about the best poetry? Because
> they can't be bothered; the best poetry takes too much effort to read and
> understand. For all their relativistic bleating about self-expression, they
> have a vague feeling, an instinct that there's a scale of values in all art
> forms, but their only solution to that is to see pop music as poetry, but
> they're unwilling to actually explore that proposition.

There's a third reason as well (and one that is ably demonstrated by "Ironywaves," a.k.a., Will Donkey on a daily basis): ignorance. The people who demand that pop/rock/folk music be included as forms of poetry do so because 1) it more or less rhymes, 2) more or less has a recognizable meter, 3) because their familiarity with poetry is limited to passages quoted in comic books, and 4) because they're too stupid to understand poetry.

When those same people write "poetry" as well, they have a personal stake in the argument, viz. that their "poems" read like lyrics to popular/folk/rock songs.

> Why they do this only to pop music is beyond me. After all, nobody calls
> hymns poetry even if the words can sometimes be subject to favourable
> criticism in the same way as poetry. Nobody calls opera poetry. Or the
> tensons, ballades and jeux partis of the troubadours.

They hone in on pop/folk/rock music for the same reasons: ignorance and stupidity. They are possess only a rough idea as to what hymns and opera are, and have no interest in trying to learn about them. They like the music they get drunk/stoned to with their friends, and want to write music in a similar vein. The problem is that they don't understand the first thing about music, can't play a musical instrument, and as virtually every 14-year old on the planet dreams of becoming a rock star, they have too much competition from those who are musically talented. So they decide that the song lyrics they write are "poetry." All that they need to do is to print up a few copies, staple them together, and pass them out to their friends, or post them online -- and they can claim that they've been "published."

> There's a good reason why pop music isn't poetry. It's too far from the
> Apollonian and too close to the Dionysian. Its mimesis takes place at that
> end of the scale where jouissance is found. It appeals to the heart far more
> than it appeals to the brain. Poetry, even oral poetry, tries to balance
> its appeals; pop music doesn't bother.

It's also a different art form, as music requires singing/and or musical instruments, whereas a poem need only be recited/read aloud. IOW: A poem can stand alone on its own merits, whereas a song lyric requires a musical format and presentation.

> All of which seems to suggest that poetry must be better than pop music.
> But that's something I don't agree with. Pop music is different from
> poetry.

Agreed.

Michael Pendragon
“This is poem takes place way ahead in the future, by the way, written in 1996 about the events of 1995.”
-- Will Dockery, prognosticator extraordinaire.
https://imgur.com/gallery/dpR2ESh
https://imgur.com/gallery/rtvGMMt