A course on the "poetry of rock"?! I wonder how that got approved by the english department. After all, rock-poetry and plain poetry are still worlds apart in many ways. Still, I sure wish I were doing it though, one of the recommendations for an exercise is, would you believe it, to listen to some of Dylan's albums! Ahhh, now that's a homework exercise. Although, dissecting lyrics, like dissecting poems, would be painful.

On the subject of rock-poetry, the critic Robert Christgau has an interesting article on his site entitled Rock Lyrics Are Poetry (Maybe). Essentially, he asserts that most of rock-poetry is simply good songwriting, and that it's wrong to consider rock-poets as modern-poets in the conventional sense of the word. In it, he makes what I think is a crucial point, that often lyrics are endowed with "...nebulousness that passes for depth among so many lovers of rock poetry". Debatable, but of late I think I'd side with him on this one. There are definitely a lot of cases where I find myself thinking "Wow, this is really deep", when in fact what I really mean is "Wow, this is really indecipherable". However, having said that, let me make two further points. Firstly, that the same holds for normal poetry - it isn't immune to this equation of vagueness to genius. Second, that for every case of mystification, there is another case where there is no clear meaning, but there is a powerful feeling generated. Yet, in many cases, this is through the musical backing. So, rock-poetry is an interesting beast, really. I'd consider it as the child of poetry and music (when it's done right), but it's a bit of a stretch to say it's supersedes either parent in terms of pure artistic merit (probably in terms of "relevance" and acceptance, though).

Which leads me to form the opinion that the power of rock-poetry is usually quite closely tied to the musical backing. The gothic, majestic "The Crystal Ship" reads pretty good on paper, but it just isn't the same without the piano: the words take on a new meaning when set to music. As always, there will be exceptions - "Horse Latitudes" reads equally good on paper, in fact the song is possibly inferior to the poem!

It's an interesting exercise to try and figure out what exactly is there in the words that we shouldn't call rock-poetry as just plain poetry. In general, even without backing music, I'd say that rock-poetry can be held as normal poetry, only it's the quality is what's debatable (is this a semantics issue? I truly don't know, it depends what other people mean when they say "This isn't poetry!"). I wonder what rock-poetry is bereft of to motivate me to say that the quality is debatable. I think one of the main reasons is because it does have some sort of predictability to it, and the boundaries as they stand have rarely been transcended. The verse-structure for one is for the most part fairly predictable. It's definitely true that surrealist and psychedelic imagery has been thoroughly explored, and it's interesting that most rock-poets have written a lot of their work in these forms. Not exclusively, of course, at least, not the cream of the crop.

Another big factor is perhaps the range of subjects covered, and the way they are addressed. It was only to the end of the '60s that rock became truly introspective, and rock-poetry I think matured greatly after 1966 or so. It's true that the love song is still alive and well, and it risked becoming a cliche in the early '60s. Still, I think rock-poetry has done well in the way it has managed to deal with these things - starting off with the simple naivety of '60s pop, we now have (as I talked about yesterday) songs like "Where The Wild Roses Grow". It's not only a dark song, but it's done with style, and it's warming to see that rock has at the very least matured over the years.

I think that rock-poetry has definitely touched upon more subjects than you would think, it's just that the way it's been done has sometimes left a little to be desired; it takes the best of the lot to pull it off. Neil Young's "Powderfinger" comes to mind as a touching, tragic song about fading away, and a wasted life, definitely no pedestrian topic, and it's definitely no pedestrian lyric. Still, a good poem? Why do I hesitate to call it so?

I think the doubt in my mind about whether rock-poetry is good poetry is also it's because of the relative lack of complexity. Which makes me think that I must be wrong, for surely something which communicates an idea in a complicated way is no better than something that does the same in a simple way? Ouch, my brain's hurting, I've confused myself by repeatedly changing my mind in the writing of this post. Hmm, it's true that a lot of classical poetry can be fairly abstract, whereas most rock-poetry is dismissed as wordplay or cliche. Yet is it also the fact that it can be easy in most cases to digest rock-poetry, to figure out intent? Is it the lack of understated subtlety, the economy of expression and the sublime grace of the words that the best poetry offers? Bleh, I don't know anymore! Heck, is this a poem or a lyric?

Four o'clock in the afternoon
And i didn't feel like very much.
I said to myself, "where are you golden boy,
Where is your famous golden touch?"
I thought you knew where
All of the elephants lie down,
I thought you were the crown prince
Of all the wheels in ivory town.
Just take a look at your body now,
There's nothing much to save
And a bitter voice in the mirror cries,
"hey, prince, you need a shave."
Now if you can manage to get
Your trembling fingers to behave,
Why don't you try unwrapping
A stainless steel razor blade?
That's right, it's come to this,
Yes it's come to this,
And wasn't it a long way down,
Wasn't it a strange way down?

There's no hot water
And the cold is running thin.
Well, what do you expect from
The kind of places you've been living in?
Don't drink from that cup,
It's all caked and cracked along the rim.
That's not the electric light, my friend,
That is your vision growing dim.
Cover up your face with soap, there,
Now you're santa claus.
And you've got a gift for anyone
Who will give you his applause.
I thought you were a racing man,
Ah, but you couldn't take the pace.
That's a funeral in the mirror
And it's stopping at your face.
That's right, it's come to this,
Yes it's come to this,
And wasn't it a long way down,
Ah wasn't it a strange way down?

Once there was a path
And a girl with chestnut hair,
And you passed the summers
Picking all of the berries that grew there;
There were times she was a woman,
Oh, there were times she was just a child,
And you held her in the shadows
Where the raspberries grow wild.
And you climbed the twilight mountains
And you sang about the view,
And everywhere that you wandered
Love seemed to go along with you.
That's a hard one to remember,
Yes it makes you clench your fist.
And then the veins stand out like highways,
All along your wrist.
And yes it's come to this,
It's come to this,
And wasn't it a long way down,
Wasn't it a strange way down?

You can still find a job,
Go out and talk to a friend.
On the back of every magazine
There are those coupons you can send.
Why don't you join the rosicrucians,
They can give you back your hope,
You can find your love with diagrams
On a plain brown envelope.
But you've used up all your coupons
Except the one that seems
To be written on your wrist
Along with several thousand dreams.
Now santa claus comes forward,
That's a razor in his mit;
And he puts on his dark glasses
And he shows you where to hit;
And then the cameras pan,
The stand in stunt man,
Dress rehearsal rag,
It's just the dress rehearsal rag,
You know this dress rehearsal rag,
It's just a dress rehearsal rag.

-- Leonard Cohen, "Dress Rehersal Rag"

It's probably unfair to use Cohen though, he was a poet before he became a songwriter. One mighty dark lyric, wouldn't you say? It seems to be about a man who stands in front of a mirror and contemplates slitting his wrists, but pulls out at the last minute because it's "a dress rehersal rag". Scary stuff! An equally good choice of lyric that is mighty close to being a poem would be "Famous Blue Raincoat":

It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert
You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record.

Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You'd been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody's wife.

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane's awake --

She sends her regards.

And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way.

If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.

Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear

Sincerely, L. Cohen

Anyhow, I truly don't know what my opinion is on the finer points of this issue.

A strange, confusing post this one. I hope I didn't come off as contradictory, heck I'm not sure what I think anymore. I started off writing with the intent of defending rock-poetry, and I have, but not in the sense I originally planned. Basically, I think it definitely can be poetry, just perhaps not as good/refined as the poetry of yore (although maybe it is, I can't say anymore), although in a musical context it takes on a life on its own. I suppose something like "poetry for the masses", in that in most cases it's easier to digest than reading a poem (helped no doubt by the musical backing). Whether that's a good thing or not, well... I'm definitely enamoured with rock-poetry, given my limited intellect and capacity to absorb (and write) real poetry, and even if it has its limits, it's mighty rewardin!