Sir, - John Boland's virtual ridiculing of the possible poetic value of the lyrics [sic] of Noel Gallagher and some of his more illustrious predecessors (Book worm, October 5th), is in one way a welcome check to the lamentable homogenisation of canonical poetry and pop lyrics by both the British Arts Council and the BBC but in another, it displays an equally damaging failure to discriminate. While few would disagree with Mr Boland's view that the words of Da Doo Ron Ron, or lines like "I can't get no satisfaction", repeated ad nauseum by no stretch of standards constitute notable poetic achievement, it must be noted that he is careful to select some of the more obviously vacuous examples.
This is particularly so in his complaint against Bob Dylan's nomination for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Now, I for one do not think Dyland deserves such a prize, but neither does he deserve to be included in the same pantheon of mediocrity as the likes of Oasis. Mr Boland seems somewhat indignant that Professor Christopher Ricks (who, he tells us, "wrote a fine book on Tennyson") can also give serious attention to Dylan's lyrics.
Certainly, Ricks's focus on the worth of the words of If Not for You, which Mr Boland recalls, is unfortunate, but one must refer to The Force of Poetry (Clarendon, 1984) to find his more informed analysis of Dylan's work. Aidan Day has also provided a serious analysis of the Dylan oeuvre in his Jokerman: Reading the Lyrics of Bob Dylan (Blackwell, 1988). Much, arguably most, of Dylan is not poetry, but some certainly stands well alongside, say, some of the prurient antics of Larkin - and that without the famed harmonica.
While Mr Boland is certainly correct in pointing out that songs which appear impactful in performance simply don't stand up as mere words on a page, he must remember the work of the Troubadours and the Elizabethans, which has canonical status, appears these days without the original instrumental accompaniment. To misquote John McGahern somewhat, there is verse and there are pop lyrics, and poetry can happen in either.
It is not enough these days to take the stance of the countercool, convinced reactionary. Mr Boland should pay attention to Ricks's summation of Dylan's lyrics, and not get "proudly trapped in the illusion that you can free yourself from cliche's by having no truck with them". - Yours, etc.,
Merchant's Road,
Galway.