Hello there!
I hope all is well with you and yours in what by my count is Week 4 of Isolation (in my neighbourhood, at least.)
I want to talk today about the poets among us. Not all poets live on the pages of thin volumes found at the back of library shelves. Some poets are much more evident, although we might not always recognize them as such. I’m talking of course about songwriters!
Regardless of the era or part of the world you hail from, you likely have at least one favourite song, and likely that song means a lot to you because of the lyrics that go with the music. Yes? Think about what song(s) you’d name as perennial favourites and think about the message, or story, or refrain, that embeds itself into your mind and heart every time you hear it. I guarantee the songwriter is in fact, a poet.
I could name many poet/songwriters who continually speak to me through the words they put to music. One of my top picks: Paul Simon. Do you know his song, “Hearts and Bones”? It’s about Carrie Fisher (of Star Wars Princess Leia fame), to whom he was briefly married. The lyrics are a poem about the ending of the relationship, set on a trip that may have actually taken place, or may be a metaphor for their journey together, or may be both. As a musician, he evokes the sound of wheels on pavement in the rhythm of the music. As a poet, he tells this story in words that evoke images to describe the love affair. You can can read the lyrics as you listen:
So what did you think? Did you hear the wheels? That’s a master musician at work. The physical landscape? The lightning, the burning, the twining of hearts and bones? That’s a poet!
I have one more example for you: an early Bob Dylan protest song, performed in a very early music video. “Subteranian Homesick Blues” is very different than the Paul Simon song, with a much stronger emphasis on rhyming words and rhythm, two other things that poets are known for playing with.
Before you listen, I will add one more thing: just for fun, I updated Dylan’s lyrics into something more topical, called “Subdivision With COVID Blues.” Note the two titles have the same number of syllables, which is something else poets find very fun to play with. (Yes, really.)
Try listening to the song once, then maybe play it again while reading my new lyrics, here.
Poets! They’re among us, sometimes where we don’t expect them. You can always recognize a poet by use of rhythm; words and phrases that evoke images in your mind; and sometimes even rhymes.
I’d love to hear about the songwriters who bring poetry to your life!
Lee Ann
The Beatles eight days a week find lively and I really enjoyed the lyrics because their upbeat And fun
Oh, yes, Lennon and McCartney: definitely poets!
Hi from your Anglo-Canadian 2nd cousin. I so agree with you. Think of the great Canadian song-writers. Every time I fly above the clouds, I hear Joni Mitchell’s “Both sides, now”. Leonard Cohen was probably the most poetic of them all. I can almost see Suzanne’s place near the river, “where she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China”. The most Canadian – Gordon Lightfoot, singing of a time “when the green dark forest was too silent to be real” in his Canadian Railroad Trilogy. The anger and heartbreak “Now that the buffalo’s gone” in the voice of Buffy Sainte Marie, and the desperate yearning for a lost home in Robbie Robertson’s “Acadian Driftwood” – “they call my home the land of snow”. Not forgetting the incorrigible Neil Young, who keeps on “Rockin’ in the Free World”. Write on. Roll on better days.
Hi, Chris, lovely to hear from you! I think you’ve identified all the greats here (someone will surely correct me if I’ve missed anyone…