Poetry
Writing Poetry From Song
How to be a poet inspired by lyricists
Have you ever sung the lyrics wrong? The answer is a highly likely yes. Your mind is insistent on some set of words that are not actually being sung. When most people realize they are singing a set of lyrics wrong they switch to singing the song correctly.
Yet, sometimes there is beauty in the mistakes. Sometimes an off singing of lyrics yields its own beautiful words that already spawn from a given rhythm. Poets, why not use an established melody as basis to conceive of own words to write? After all, is this not done by lyricists.
Kendrick Lamar’s Mortal Man transforms snippets from an interview with Tupac to yield a new discussion. Another example is Childish Gambino’s cover of U Don’t Have To Call which uses the lyrics of Usher’s original to platform in new verses.
Still, even these examples are limited to direct samples. All one has to do is realize they are singing one line wrong beautifully and this can be a springboard into an entire poem.
I cannot speak for others but a personal example of this is in my poem Adventure To Nowhere in the line, “And our ghosts will say what we have said.” This line came from singing a line in Iron & Wine’s song Resurrection Fern wrong, with that line being, “In our days we will say what our ghosts will say.”
Much of my poetry spawns from song lines I have sung wrong. At first this was an accidental discovery. However, now at times when making poetry I start with a song that I perceive to posses beautiful language and purposely sing the lyrics wrong. Typically this method only yields only a line or two from one song if it yields anything at all. When two lines are yielded they often are incorporated into separate poems but not always.
There are advantages of sampling in poetry and inventive ways to do so. This system is just one of many means to incorporate sampling into poetry. Sampling in poetry quite often yields beautiful results and is not unfounded. For example, Gregory Pardlo samples from Goethe’s Faust for his poem Alienation Effects.
The method of poetic sampling as far as I know is unique to myself. However, I see no need to keep the simple technique to myself. Lyricists are some of the finest poets out there. Why then not be inspired by lyricists? Lyricists often are greater poets than poets. So sing the lyrics by your favorite lyricists wrong and hear for yourself what words it yields.
