Whats the difference between poetry and song lyrics?
The question of whether poems and song lyrics are the same, or whether they’re different, I think turns on the fact that song lyrics can get away with supporting themselves with the melody. So that you can say something like: “I love you” or “Love, love, love” over and over again, if there’s a sufficiently good melody to – if you like – assist the word. Poems can’t usually get away with that kind of repetition or ordinariness. There has to be something about a poem that is more intriguing, more surprising to draw you in. But that said, there’s plenty of song lyrics that in fact if you just put them on the page, they read really well. Take McCartney’s Black Bird, or one of the most well known poems in the English language The Owl and The Pussycat, which was probably written as a song anyway.
