Music and poetry
What is the difference between lyrics and poem? Is there one?
Regretfully, I'm not terribly well-versed in poetry, yet somehow I ended up teaching it for a couple of semesters, and I had to delve into it to keep on top of my classes. That became the perfect excuse to get more acquainted with it, and at the end of the process I can say I have a makeshift definition of poetry: poetry is lyrics' big cousin, more complex, often more profound, and freer from the meter point of view (at least contemporary poetry). That said, in some traditional cultures, like the Chinese, poetry and music do not separate, poems were written always with a specific melody and meter in mind.
I can think of a few examples of poems that have become lyrics to a song: one is The Highwayman, a poem from Alfred Noyes first published in 1906.
The second is a song by a Spanish band called Radio Futura, really popular in the 80s. They used the Spanish translation of the Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee as lyrics, and made a lovely song with it, check it out.
Sometimes the artist itself is both a poet and a musician, like Leonard Cohen. I have no words to describe how much in awe I am of this man, how much I admire him and enjoy his work. Just listen to it, it speaks for itself. My students loved it too, it was one of the most successful poems in the whole course.
Sometimes the music is only a reference in the title, like W.H. Auden's Funeral Blues (you might recognize it as the poem read at the funeral in "Four Weddings and a Funeral").
As for me, I have to say I resemble the Chinese, I can't do without the music part, although I have tried, every attempt of writing poetry instead of lyrics has always ended up only being good for the bin. Meter and rhyme, which at some point were thought of by poets as a restraint to their power of expression, actually help me find my way through all the possible words that I can fit in there to convey my meaning, so I'm actually thankful for that restraint. But I do have a song that's fitting for this post, it's called Railing and it's not a definite version, but with the permission of Teddy Strings, who produced it and mixed it, I still would like to show it to you. The song has a poem read in the background called La Ciudad, from Constantino Cavafis.
Poetry is a nice thing indeed.