Jamie, in another thread you quote Peter as saying:

"It's unlikely that a "song" as generally understood can reach to the extended seriousness or sublimity that poetry can. The sing-song quality of songs, the closely repeated rhythmic units and rhyme tend to make songs small-scale. Small-scale is fine but not everything."

"The point, then, (Tim) about the kind of music is that I don't see how we can deny Jamie's point that the spoken/read poem offers much greater opportunities for subtle emphases and re-emphases, delicate sub-textual phasing, disturbances such as enjambement etc. A song setting of the same poem cannot possibly retrieve all this, it is too fixed to the temporal dictates of the tune."

But I mentioned earlier how many songs by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell belie this statement. If it is true then what Peter is saying is that all songs are shallower than poetry. That's the only conclusion I can come to from this statement.

Also, Mitchell performs enjambment on some of her longer lines.



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Jamie McKendrick wrote:

I should say that Peter's argument is different from my own. This at least is how I understand him (and apologies if I'm wrong). He treats song and poem as two aspects of the same impulse, not only historically entwined but also inherently joined, and I believe he sees no useful purpose in a separation. I'll give three extended quotes, as I think he knows more about the technical aspects of song than I do, and his argument may also offer the kind of summary that Kent was asking for.

"A song, strictly and traditionally speaking, offer less opportunity for shifting the meaning in performance. The words follow a syllabic and rhythmic pattern dictated by the music, and each verse has to conform to that pattern or it would not fit the music. Extra unstressed syllables etc. can be slipped in but that's about all. If you speak the lyrics of a song without the music this difference becomes immediately apparent."

"I'm definitely of the opinion, Tim, that the skill required to write song lyrics is basically the same as that which is needed to write poems. This doesn't mean that songs can always be judged by the same standards -- it's a technical skill in handling words and form. Songs can certainly be as effective as poems, when sung or not. And possibly  as subtle or ambiguous , though some of that might depend on the performance. It's unlikely that a "song" as generally understood can reach to the extended seriousness or sublimity that poetry can. The sing-song quality of songs, the closely repeated rhythmic units and rhyme tend to make songs small-scale. Small-scale is fine but not everything."