Circa 1985, a pretentious young teenager in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I painstakingly typed out, on a typewriter, the lyrics to a song by an obscure English punk band—“Outdoor Miner,” from Wire’s 1978 ...

Because I use pop lyrics in my poems and review records for SPIN and elsewhere, people sometimes ask me whether I think of song lyrics as poetry. Looked at in certain ways, they obviously are; in ...

Poetry and song were originally the same art. In the ancient world, all poetry was sung or chanted. Indeed, it was often ...

Now almost 40 years old, rap burst out of the Bronx to become one of the dominant musical and cultural forces in this country. A new book, The Anthology of Rap, tracks the development of the genre -- ...

Thirty years ago, during my second year of teaching humanities at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts (1985-86), I created an elective two-semester course called “Lyric” that began with ...

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in literature last year, renewing an old debate: Are pop lyrics poetry? (Lex Van Lieshout/European Pressphoto Agency) Michael Lindgren is a frequent contributor to The ...

Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize has reignited the debate about whether song lyrics can ever be considered literature. Is it time to finally tear down these cultural barriers? Every now and then an esteemed ...

Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize has reignited the debate about whether song lyrics can ever be considered literature. Is it time to finally tear down these cultural barriers? Every now and then an esteemed ...