Lyrics as Poetry

In honor of National Poetry Month, we’ve been hosting a series of blog posts about our festival poets, Committee member’s favorite poems, etc. For two committee members — festival founder and City of Gaithersburg Councilmember Jud Ashman and me, Robin Ferrier — current favorite poems happen to be song lyrics.

Which may leave you thinking: Should we consider songs poetry?

Jud and I are arguing “yes” by highlighting the two songs below as part of a National Poetry Month series of posts. There’s an insightful discussion of this debate in a 2012 issue of the Boston Review: “The Difference Between Poetry and Song Lyrics” by Matthew Zapruder.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the debate below. (And I will admit that I can’t read the words to my favorite song lyrics without singing them.) In the meantime…

From Jud Ashman:
My favorite poem at the moment is actually the lyrics to the Bob Dylan song, My Back Pages.

This is about growing older and wiser and realizing that all those things you thought you knew for sure when you were younger — all the goods and bads, the rights and wrongs, the justice and injustice — weren’t really all that simple after all. In fact, the more you learn and experience in this life, the more you realize you don’t know. The refrain encapsulates it so well, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

And, on top of that, it’s also a statement written about a revolutionary time in America.

Bob Dylan wrote the song when he was 23 years old, and I have the hardest time understanding how he could’ve had such a great perspective. I know middle-aged people who don’t have that perspective!

From Robin Ferrier:
I’m actually a huge fan of “I Hope You Dance,” which is performed by country musician Lee Ann Womack. Maybe it’s not as revolutionary as The Honorable Jud Ashman’s choice, but the song has personal meaning to me. When the song was released, my mother sent me (and my sister) a copy of the CD with a note that the song expressed her hopes for us. I thought it was sweet at the time.

Now that I’m a mother with a daughter, I understand even more what she  meant when she said that. I hear the song and listen to the lyrics — and the message to love and experience life and be happy — and I know just what my mother meant and why she wanted to give me that song. Someday, when my daughter is older, I’ll play it for her and we’ll dance around the living room to it and I’ll let her know that the song and the sentiment is being passed down from her grandmother to me to her.