Is Poetry a Good Way to Practice Lyric Writing?

Dear Internauts,

How ya doin?

The following is a response I posted on Quora.com to the question:

Is poetry a good way to practice lyric writing? (Specifically, writing poems without the construct of a song.)

Yes.


How helpful writing poetry is toward songwriting depends on how willing you are to be purposeful with your practice. Though writing poems for their own sake is great and the more you write the better you may get, it will be even more helpful if you start to deconstruct the poetic aspects of your writing so as to grow your skills, not just your page count.


Simply writing poems—no matter the structural form or even rhyme scheme—can allow you to work on developing your wordplay skills, descriptive imagery, symbolic/metaphorical language, and perhaps most importantly, working on the economy of words and syllables.


Ultimately, writing poetry is a great way to practice lyric writing. Still, if you’d like to be more mindful in that direction.

Here are a few things to consider.


Wordplay - More than just finding rhymes you like or working in a few clever puns (though those can both be great tools to carry over into songwriting), examine the way a phrase sounds by conveying the same idea using different word variations. Don’t worry about melodies at this stage, but still pay attention to how the length of a total phrase, the amount of syllables per word in that phrase, and the comparative lengths of the phrases nearby shape the rhythm of a verse/stanza. Assonance and alliteration are only some of many great poetic tools that can help here as well. The key is how a line flows from one sound to the next. Don’t even worry about a beat so much here, but let your words tell you the rhythm. Whether within a line or at its break or from segment to segment (stanza, verse, whatever…), something should give the reader or listener a sense of a cut or a pause. It can’t be just where a break appears on the page either, because though that works for a lot of written poetry, you should start to get a feel for what breaks feel most natural when the words are audible. Rhymes will stand out like bolded letters no matter how loud or soft or where they fit in the line. Witty and/or poignant hooks either draw too much or too little attention to themselves if their overly emphasized or hidden away, respectively.


Descriptive Imagery: While a lot of the mood in a song is purely in the realm of the musical arrangement, the words can conform to or contrast that mood in ways which can be either helpful or detrimental to your song. Hot take: all the best songs are stories, even if the lyrics don’t tell a story. Whether you’re fighting the man, nursing a broken heart, hitting the dance floor, falling in love, walking along the beach at night, doing the monster mash, or just pacing through a day in your life, there is a world and situation in which you as the writer exist and must in some form embody in order to draw your audience along for the length of the song. In songwriting as well as poetry it can be as blatant as a short story told poetically or a picture painted in emotions, sensations, and ideas. Always, though, you must find a way to connect one idea to the other. If you cannot do that, you cannot connect to the listener. That’s the journey of a story from one verse to the next, with the theme in the chorus, and the twist or exultation in the bridge. Or forget that format entirely and just do what feels right. At this stage, just writing the poetry down, the key is finding a way to connect what you mean with what you’re actually saying. Sometimes that means be as literal as “I hate this town!”, but more often it’s about the way you show us the grit of the street or the glare of the lights or the way the scent of sweat and manure sticks to your clothes even after you leave like regret you can’t shake. It’s rarely about finding the prettiest words or even the best words from a poetic standpoint (because in lyrics the rhythm and sound will matter more), but it is about finding as clear and simple a way as you can to translate what’s in your head and heart into the brainwaves of a stranger. Tough, but with practice you’ll find your own style.


Symbolic language: Honestly, most pop hits are pretty straightforward. Yeah, there’s plenty of gimmicky double entendres, but base an entire song on that and you’ll either have to be very smart or have a great beat to get much mileage out of it. There are always exceptions, but as with imagery, if you want your lyrics to stick with folks beyond simply being catchy, there has to be something they can mentally grab a hold of (though being catchy can get you pretty far). Sometimes the best answer is to just say what you mean as clearly and succinctly as possible. You can use this to great affect in a refrain or chorus, so finding the best way to be the most clear is good practice for that. Again, just like with imagery, going more symbolic can be a great way to paint a picture for the listener. Work on simile’s first, not just telling us why one thing is like the other but really thinking about how and why that’s the case. The more you understand the reasoning behind your comparisons, the more clearly you can convey it to us. When in the course of a song you make such comparisons is key as well. If it’s quick or just for a line, the less obvious (or weirder) the analogy, the more it can affect your rhythm. That’s why the wittiest hooks or rhymes are often saved for the end of a verse or before a pause. Give the listener a second to be affected by what you just dropped on them. If it’s something obvious or more immediate, you can go from saying you’re free like a bird in one line to light like a feather in the next with little pause. If the association asks only a little of us, we’ll be right there with you, but if it is more absurd or obscure (say, free like an armchair to light like a monogram), we may still be trying to process it and miss the next line or two. On the other end of things, there’s the big metaphor, either for the whole piece or a big section of it. This is a style choice, but remember to think about connecting what you mean to you and what it may mean to someone hearing the actual words. And as with everything else, no matter how much you practice your descriptions and analogies, we as listeners will still interpret however we feel like.


Economy of Syllables: You don’t have to wait until you’re trying to match up lyrics to a melody or vice versa to start mastering rhythm. No matter the form or kind of your poetry, consider the pronunciation of words and which syllables are stressed. Yes, singing can allow for some very creative variations on pronunciation that you might get away with. However, whether or not you’re writing for your own voice or someone else’s, it can be extremely helpful to consider clarity from the start. Not only does the line rhyme, but does the syllable count fit with its rhyming pair line in a way that doesn’t make you have to strain to fit everything in your meter. Study Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, or other poetic children’s authors as well as much good rap as you can get your hands on. The giants of hip-hop lyricism are able to get a bit tricky with meter and form because they have a deeply ingrained sense of the most basic syllabic rhythm before they even start a metronome or begin shaping a beat in the studio. Go through your poetry, line by line, as an exercise, and mark the stressed and unstressed syllables. Find the simplest way you can get each thought across per line. Make it sound as tight to the meter and robotic as you can while still saying what you mean to say. Get ruthless with cutting out extraneous words and syllables. Change tenses if you have to. Forget about complete sentences or grammar. As long as it makes your meaning and your rhythm blatantly clear, cut it up. Say it with a metronome like you’re reading shakespeare in fifth grade in front of the class on the day the teacher introduced iambic pentameter. And when you are sick and tired of all this nonsense, set it aside. Go back to working on the more fun, more abstract stuff. Just remember that if it has some kind of clear rhythm when it’s just words, you’ll have at least a foundation for arranging it with the music later on. Melodies don’t need to follow normal syllable accents and can hold out or shorten words in whatever way fits the song, but practicing something more concrete at this stage can mean you have the option to be creative melodically later. You’ll be able to do what you want, knowing you have a basic rhythm behind it all, instead of being stuck having to work melodic gymnastics because of your uncooperative lyrical form.


AND FINALLY: Do whatever you want. Have fun. Be real. Be as form-fitting or free-style as you want. Use your poetry to practice the most important bit of lyricism—genuine expression.

Thanks for reading,

Odist