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I'd go a bit further and say that song lyrics are poetry in its most populist and accessible form. The distinction is artificial. Of course there's a very wide
by danenania 6y ago
I'd go a bit further and say that song lyrics are poetry in its most populist and accessible form. The distinction is artificial.
Of course there's a very wide range of quality, but lyrics written by the best songwriters are also much better as poetry than the vast majority of what gets produced by ivory tower poets who consider themselves above all that. The gatekeeping, obscurantist mindset that has taken over in contemporary poetry is really unfortunate. You won't be taken seriously as a 'real' poet unless your work is completely impenetrable to the average person.
- philwelch 6y agoThis is particularly true of rap.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago> The gatekeeping, obscurantist mindset that has taken over in contemporary poetry North America and the UK are now at least two decades into trends like slam poetry being ascendant, i.e. poetry that emphasizes being accessible to the public, tackling real-world hardships and political struggles, etc. The publishing decisions of major poetry presses like Faber & Faber are now largely centered around that. Sure, there are still more hermetic or ivory-tower poets around but the heyday of their influence was only up to about the 1980s or 1990s. Nowadays they are mainly publishing in small-press editions that few people will even see copies of (especially due to the death of the bookstore), let alone read.