Creating Poetry and Singing Songs

Joan Baez was a poetess and singer but published her first autobiographical book of poems only in 2024. For the first time in 1968, she released an album titled Baptism: A Journey Through Our Time, performing poems by famous poets such as Walt Whitman, James Joyce, William Blake, Henry Treece, John Donne, Arthur Rimbaud, E.E. Cummings, and Federico Garcia Lorca.

"Diamonds & Rust" is a song written, composed, and performed by Joan Baez. It was written in November 1974 and released in 1975.

Bob Dylan was not only a singer and a rocker but also a true poet. He was influenced by a wide genre of music, including blues, folk, country, R&B, and much more. Dylan was into poetry before he began recording music and into the scene of the Beats that started in the 1950s. Among the Beats poets were Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac. It all started in NYC, around the Columbia University campus and Greenwich Village. Later on many of the Beats moved to the West Coast; some became friends of rock stars such as Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Patti Smith.

In the 1960s Dylan began publishing poetry. Tarantula was an experimental prose poetry collection, and in 1973 Writings and Drawings with Songs, he wrote in the 1960s with poems and doodles.

Among his very best is “Mr. Tambourine Man,” which symbolized inspiration and the search for meaning and the tension between imagination and reality.

Leonard Cohen had his mind set on being a novelist and poet publishing books in the 1950s and early to mid-1960s. Just to mention some of the books he had published were Let Us Compare Mythologies, Book of Mercy, and Book of Longing, among many others. His biggest influencers in writing were W.B. Yeats, Irving Layton, Walt Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Arthur Miller. Cohen studied at McGill. He won the Chester MacNaughten Literary Competition for his poems “Sparrows” and “Thoughts of a Landsman.”

His first poetry book, Let Us Compare Mythologies, was published in 1956 and is the first book in the McGill Poetry Series, containing poems Cohen wrote between the ages of 15 and 20.

Canadian singer, songwriter, and poet Leonard Cohen is well known for many songs that he has entertained everyone with over the years, but one of my top favorites is and remains “Dance Me to the End of Love.”

Billy Corgan from the American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins was their lead singer and primary songwriter. He published a book of poems in 2004, “Blinking with Fists,” a collection of 57 poems.

Among the memorable songs written by Corgan is “Tonight, Tonight,” which is one of the most popular songs by The Smashing Pumpkins and featured on their 1995 album Mellon Collie. Often sung as an acoustic number in concerts, “Tonight Tonight” features the line: “And the embers never fade in your city by the lake/ The place where you were born.” It’s one more clear reference to Chicago, the birthplace of Corgan and of The Smashing Pumpkins.

Graeme Edge was the drummer for the English rock band the Moody Blues. He was known to incorporate poetry into their songs. On Days of Future Passed he contributed the poems “Morning Glory” as part of the opening track, “The Day Begins,” and “Late Lament” on the closing track, “The Night.”

He wrote a book of poems, The Written Works of Graeme Edge, with poems from Moody Blues songs and his solo work with annotations along with anecdotes on why and how he wrote these poems.

Art Garfunkel, from the American singing duo Simon and Garfunkel, is an avid reader. He began his journey with poetry when he studied at Columbia University in NYC in 1959. On his website you can read poems from his book Still Water, a collection of prose poems published in 1989. He was greatly influenced while touring Europe in the 1980s and started writing poetry.

His contribution to Simon & Garfunkel was his lead vocals to such great hits as “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

During the time he was a member of the Fab Four/The Beatles, he published two books of poems—In His Own Write, a collection of surreal short stories, poems, and line drawings, and A Spaniard in the Works, with nonsensical stories and doodles.

On National Poetry Day 1999, the BBC surveyed people in the UK and found that the most loved song lyrics were “Imagine.”

Jim Morrison was a poet and a rock and roller with the American rock band the Doors. Being an avid reader, he was greatly influenced by Nietzsche, Plutarch, Arthur Rimbaud, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Baudelaire, Molière, Albert Camus, Honoré de Balzac, and Jean Cocteau. When Morrison wrote songs he didn’t write them on guitar or piano but came up with vocal melodies for his lyrics and have the band contribute the chords and rhythm. During live shows, Jim Morrison would improvise spoken word poetry passages. He was friends with Beat poet Michael McClure.

He self-published his first volume of poems, The Lords and the New Creatures, in 1969. (pictured above) In the Lords section he described people, places, events, and cinema (what he studied at UCLA). The New Creatures section was the more poetic one. All of his other poetry books were published posthumously. Buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France, his one wish had been to be buried in the same cemetery as  Irish author, poet, and playwright Oscar Wilde.

The lyrics to the song “End of the Night” were written by Morrison, and it was featured on their debut album.

Van Morrison might not be a relation, but he was influenced by Jim Morrison. This Northern Irish musician became the first Irish rock star. He was influenced by American blues, jazz, folk, and Irish music. His album Astral Weeks is full of poetry and lovely lyrics. The album is a blend of blues, folk, jazz, and classical styles.

Among his most popular and well-liked songs from his album Moondance is “Into the Mystic,” written by Morrison.

Patti Smith is known as the punk poet laureate and is a prolific writer and has incorporated her poetry into her music. She has many published books of poems, among them “Seventh Heaven,” “Early Morning Dream,” and “A Useless Death.” Smith was a member of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project in the early 1970s and performed spoken word poetry on “I Wake Up Screaming” by Ray Manzarek.

One of her greatest collaborations, co-written with American singer and songwriter Bruce Springsteen, is the 1977 song “Because the Night.” It was recorded by the Patti Smith Group and featured on the album Easter.

Tom Waits sings songs in a wide genre of music including country, folk, and blues. His greatest influencers were Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation. He collaborated with photographer Micheal O’Brian on the poetry/photography book Hard Ground. Together, they created a portrait of homelessness to humanize those who have fallen on hard times.

Among his well-known songs is “The World Keeps Turning.”