Was Jake a poet?

[dmcgovern]

Well of course his verses are poetry – but it’s not as simple as that.

If you choose any one of his songs at random, and read the lyric, it can stand as a piece of poetry. In some cases it is clearly the words of a clever song, but there are others where the words stand on their own. For example, ‘Side by Side’ is a song I find obscure and difficult to appreciate, but reading the verses makes it comes alive. There are plenty of others where the tune is optional or incidental to the message or idea that Jake is expressing, and some where the tune is even a distraction.

Ian McMillan writes clever and observant verses, but because he doesn’t put a tune to them, they are poems, and he is a poet. Just as well, or he would be a mere songwriter!

There are obviously some technical definitions that I have overlooked, and there is no point in judging work against a different standard that it was not intended to meet. But it would be interesting to select a few candidates, to see how they might compare to proper pomes.

David

[dmcgovern]

Having started digging this hole, I’ll dig a bit further but then I may need filling in. There are quite a few people on the forum who write or edit poetry (I am not one of them) so I will try and explain where I was going with this. Apologies if I’m going over old ground.

A week or so ago I was browsing for shy blacksmiths, as you do, and found a poem ("The Village Blacksmith") by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that many people on the americanpoems forum said they thought touched a chord from their childhood. It didn’t do anything for me, and I noticed a comment from a critic who said it did not rank highly as a poem.

The story told by Lawrie Lee and Jake add a dimension (or three) and a certain poignancy, but because Jake wrote it as a song, the verses wouldn’t qualify in their own right as a poem. The verses may not have been written down to scan as a poem, and I doubt that, since Jake’s death, there would ever be a "right" way to do this. But I think there is more merit and enjoyment in many of Jake’s lyrics (on their own) than in many poems published by recognised poets.

So I’d be interested in views on whether an anthology of a selection of Jake’s lyrics would be meaningful, desirable, legal, worthwhile, or even an interesting exercise. There are various ways this could be done, involving further creativity from – us lot. But before going too much further, let’s decide if it would just be bizarre and banal.

David

[Judith]

dmcgovern wrote:

So I’d be interested in views on whether an anthology of a selection of Jake’s lyrics would be meaningful, desirable, legal, worthwhile, or even an interesting exercise. There are various ways this could be done, involving further creativity from – us lot. But before going too much further, let’s decide if it would just be bizarre and banal.David

Interesting idea, David. I don’t have an instant view, though given a quiet moment I may sit down and start reading, instead of listening, and see how I react . Sarah (Willans) could probably give us an informed opinion on whether it could work or not. I don’t know if she’s visiting the website regularly – if not it might be worth contacting her direct.

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