Lyrics and Poetry

Songs and lyrics evolved into what we know as poetry today more or less.  Can you still use lyric writing for your poems?

If you are telling stories within your poems, it is certainly a good start.  You can take memories and put them together as verses in a song and even use a common refrain or phrase throughout the poem.

What does a lyric mean to you?  Is it a full song?  Maybe a few lines from a song?  Maybe a verse or two. 

Say your poem out loud - what's the lyrical quality to it?  Is there rhythm or not?  Does it rhyme?

Lyrics of sorts can weave back and forth through your words.  It's like having an overall theme or notes to follow to complete the work as a whole.

Poets used to perform their poems out loud on stage, on street corners (and some still do.)  Spoken word poets are reciting their lines in lyrics, but poem like ones, so to speak. 

A poem needs no music, but it can sound like a song all the same ... that gentle or fast flow, that repetitive catchy hook, those end line rhymes or not. 

Writing a lyric poem will gives another way to work out the flesh of a poem just in more of  form, albeit a loose one.  After you've written it, say it out loud, sing it out loud, put it on the page -- which way do you like it the best?  The nice thing about poetry is that you can pick one way or two or all three and still come up with a good poem.