Re: Is Joni a poet?

[Timothy Spong]

On. Nov. 20, "curious in connecticut," also known as Relayer 211, wrote (in part): " ... objectively, could she [Joni] be called a poet? What exactly is the difference between poerty and song lyrics, anyway?"

... and several people chimed in, the thrust of some of the remarks being mainly that song lyrics are written for that purpose, and poems written to be poems, and sometimes they are interchangeable, and sometimes not.
I thought something was missing here. In high school, or before, I learned that some, but not all, poetry has form, but all poetry has content which distinguishes it from prose. Formwise, the most familiar form of poetry has rhyme and meter, and some poetry has more elaborate schemes dealing with numbers of verses and stanzas, internal rhymes and repeated words, phrases or lines, from limericks to sonnets to triolets. But there is also blank verse, which has meter and not rhyme, and free verse, which has neither rhyme nor meter, but still, it has the essential content that distinguishes poetry from prose?
The defining mark of poetry, contentwise, as I was taught, is imagery. What is said may paint a picture or establish a mood; these are types of imagery, but do not exhaust the possibilities. Devices such as simile, metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche may be employed.
Much commercial music has song lyrics with rhyme and meter, the form of some sorts of poetry, but has no significant imagery, being as pedestrian as ordinary prose, and thus, fails to qualify as poetry. I think we can all agree that Joni's lyrics have imagery galore, as well as, often, layered meanings, and thus, fulfills this content requirement for poetry. We can all think of other songwriters whose lyrics also qualify in this sense.
On Nov. 21, John Irving mentioned that poetry is characterized by condensation, the stripping away of the superfluous while retaining the essential, and used the simile of reduced stock in cooking. I haven't thought of that, and it is probably correct, and he may be right, therefore, that on that count, Joni's song lyrics don't qualify as "real" poetry.
Someone else on the list mentioned Patti Smith as a songwriter who also writes poetry separately from song lyrics. Others that come to mind are Rod McKuen -- anybody heard about him lately? -- and Joan Baez. On the Joan List, to which I also subscribe, Joan is quoted as saying that she doesn't want to write songs anymore, but wants to continue to write poetry as well as recording and performing live. Of course, the obvious is: Someone else -- some composer -- could set those poems to music.

Tim Spong
Dover, Del., U.S.A.


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