h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

kelli, I think the different depends on the poet/lyricist. Oscar Hammerstein's lyrics often read like poetry, for instance, but others don't. A good lyric is one that fits the music like a glove (and the opposite is true as well, a good song tune should fit the lyric), whether poetic or not. You can do things with a song lyric, due to enforced pauses and emphases, that you can't do with poetry, but there are things you can do with poetry that just don't work when sung.

That's what I think anyway.

I think that, most of the time, much more is expected of poems than song lyrics.

There are sooo many song lyrics out there that are just crap if you take away the music. Sure, there are crap poems too, but not just as many.

Some of my favourite songs have been composed to fit poems - like Leonard Cohen and Dan Andersson (Swedish poet).

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