Hi Jamie
I didn't understand everything you said but if I were to perceive and argue for lyricism in a phone-book context that would be very far indeed from conceiving it as a practical song-text, so I think Van Morrison's hypothetical honour would be saved.
Obviously the shared assumption of this classic of blurb-hyperbole is that the telephone directory is NOT a good song-text; and of course I agree with this. Popular song is very much wedded to the drama of shaped syntax so I don't think name-lists or street-signs have a lot of potential as song-lyrics. For me one of the core fascinations of sound poetry is how do you give it that line in the absence of syntax, how do you stop it being just a succession of sound-effects.
I think most of us recognize a list to be a mechanical sort of thing, something it would be a challenge to put any feeling into reciting. But there's no doubt that a list can sometimes be very eloquent. I always eagerly examine the shopping lists that other people leave in supermarket trolleys, though it feels a bit intrusive to be doing it, they betray so much about someone's life. Few diary-entries can evoke memory so precisely as an old list of , say, debt-juggling or gift ideas for relatives. We nature-lovers are addicted to itemizing our field experience in "arid" lists.
The counterintuitive prominence of the list as a structural component in modern poetry maybe has something to do with a recognition that description always detracts from the bare name. Say "elm" and in a certain sense you say all; more than if you try to evoke "the scrubby tangled weave of coarsetoothed leaves" or something of that sort.
I'm rambling.. blame the web conference I'm listening to.
