I think she could be called a poet. If you have read the book containing all of Joni's lyrics, called "The Complete Poems and Lyrics," you can see that many of her songs work marvelously as written pieces. Take "Paprika Plains" for instance. The entire middle section of the song, which doesn't appear on the album as sung lyrics, is incredible. I think, as a rule, you can say that most of her songs are poetic, but not necessarily poems, in and of themselves. Not all of them work as poems, however. Generally, there is no difference between lyrics and poems, except that lyrics are traditionally sung and poems are either read silently or spoken. Would the words of a poem become lyrics if they are sung? I'm not sure. There was an album tribute to Shakespeare recently with songs by Rufus Wainright that changed Sonnet 39 into a song. Do lyrics become poems when they are written on a page? Again, I don't really know. "The Complete Poems and Lyrics" seems to indicate that they can. You'd probably have to consult a book of poetry rules for the answer, and there are many rules to the various different kinds of poetry, from iambic pentameter to odes, villanelles to limericks, haiku, sonnets and rhyming couplets. -Andrew [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:I know Joni would consider herself a poet,but objectivly could she be called a poet?What exactly is the difference betweena poetry and song lyrics,anyway?
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