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Jaime, I think we are in agreement on this. My love of song has never been predicated, anyway, on whether it is poetry or not. I think that whatever it is, it has, perhaps, had more relevance culturally since the 1960s than most poetry has had in this period (maybe Ginsberg’s poetry was an exception) but that’s another matter. I sense you will disagree with that, and that’s ok. It’s just how I see it. On 28 Oct 2016, at 19:04, Jamie McKendrick wrote: Hi Jeff, I'm much relieved that up to this point you follow my argument. Both points you've understood are very decidedly my view. A minor adjustment to the first, however, would be that all poetry (and probably all song) is susceptible of metrical analysis - including Whitman. (Let's assume for simplicity's sake we're talking about English because French might provide another set of problems.) As is prose - susceptible - for that matter, and one or two critics have made the arduous attempt. As is speech if transcribed. But it's easier to scan poems and songs because they are or can be arranged in lines. So yes, this not a peculiarity of poetry, and I certainly don't assume poetry needs to have any regularity in its metrics. The last person who believed this probably died six and a half years ago. On the second point, again you're absolutely right - I've had a lot of trouble dispelling this assumption which has repeatedly been made about my argument. If I have to say again how much I love Dylan, I'll start hating him! Obviously we can all argue for an aesthetic preference, for Milton over Dylan, for Joni Mitchell over the last two laureates, but none of that follows from my argument. I still feel I'm missing an essential part of what I've been trying to articulate, which is probably why I'm doggedly pursuing it. I'm hoping with the Dylan song I mean to post that some of these obscurer elements will become clear. I don't think you'll be in agreement, but that's fine. At this stage, I'd happily just settle for not being misunderstood. Jamie On 28 Oct 2016, at 15:06, Jeffrey Side wrote: Jamie, thanks for your explanation. It has cleared up a few things for me. I just wanted to be certain that you were not saying that all poetry that lacked prosody or metre was not poetry, and that song was of lesser artistic or aesthetic value because prosody and metre usually don’t figure prominently in most instances of it.