The Poetics of American Song Lyrics
The Poetics of American Song Lyrics
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Abstract
This is a collection of academic essays that regards songs as literature and that identifies intersections between the literary histories of poems and songs. The essays, by well-known poets and scholars including Pulitzer Prize winner Claudia Emerson, Peter Guralnick, Adam Bradley, David Kirby, Kevin Young, and many others, locate points of synthesis and separation so as to better understand both genres and their crafts. The essayists share a desire to write on lyrics in a way that moves beyond sociological, historical, and autobiographical approaches and explicates songs in relation to poetics. Unique to this book, the essays focus not on a single genre but on folk, rap, hip hop, country, rock, indie, soul, and blues. The first section of the book provides a variety of perspectives on the poetic history and techniques within songs and poems, and the second section focuses on a few prominent American songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Michael Stipe. Through conversational yet in-depth analyses of songs, the essays discuss sonnet forms, dramatic monologues, Modernism, ballads, blues poems, confessionalism, Language poetry, Keatsian odes, unreliable narrators, personas, poetic sequences, rhythm, rhyme, transcription methods, the writing process, and more. While the strategies of explication differ from essay to essay, the nexus of each piece is an unveiling of the poetic history and poetic techniques within songs.
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Front Matter
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Part One Poetic History and Techniques Within Poems and Songs
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The Day Johnny Cash Died
Lamar Alexander
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Reduced to Rhyme: On Contemporary Doggerel
David Caplan
- The Sonnet Within the Song: Country Lyrics and the Shakespearean Sonnet Structure
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Rap Poetry 101
Adam Bradley
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It Don’t Mean a Thing: The Blues Mask of Modernism
Kevin Young
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Gangsta Rap’s Heroic Substrata: A Survey of the Evidence
John Paul Hampstead
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At the Crossroads: The Intersection of Poetry and the Blues
Keith Flynn
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Country Music Lyrics: Is There Poetry in Those Twangy Rhymes?
Jill Jones
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Similarities and Differences Between Song Lyrics and Poetry
Pat Pattison
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Words and Music: Three Stories
Wyn Cooper
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The Day Johnny Cash Died
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Part Two Analysis of Twentieth‐Century Songwriters
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The Triumph of Icarus: Sam Cooke and the Creative Spirit
Peter Guralnick
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The Joe Blow Version
David Kirby
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A Nobel For Dylan?
Gordon Ball
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Lyric Impression, Muscle Memory, Emily, and the Jack of Hearts
Claudia Emerson
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Don Khan and Truck‐Driving Wives: Dylan’s Fluctuating Lyrics
Ben Yagoda
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Thoughts on “Me and Bobby Mcgee” And the Oral and Literary Traditions
David Daniel
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The Soup that Could Change the World
Beth Ann Fennelly
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Laughing in Tune: R.E.M. and The Post‐Confessional Lyric
Jeffrey Roessner
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Sweetness Follows: Michael Stipe, John Keats, And the Consolations of Time
Eric Reimer
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Sweeping up the Jokers: Leonard Cohen’s “The Stranger Song”
Brian Howe
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Facing the Music: The Poetics of Bruce Springsteen
Robert P. Mcparland
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Coming Into Your Town: Okkervil River’s “Black”
Stephen M. Deusner
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Still Holding at the Seams: Magnolia Electric Co.’s Josephine and the Contemporary Poetic Sequence
Jesse Graves
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Not to Oppose Evil: Johnny Cash’s Bad Luck Wind
Tony Tost
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The Triumph of Icarus: Sam Cooke and the Creative Spirit
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End Matter
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