VEGANGELICA

Thank you, Tonyytoniitonee! That is high praise!

I agree with you that studying other people's writing opens up your mind in ways that would be almost impossible if your mind were locked up by itself. For example, learning how Shakespeare crafted his plays and poems made me consider my own writing methods more carefully when I was in high school How to Analyze a Shakespearean Sonnet - Steps to writing an essay on a sonnet by Shakespeare.

I used to read his plays out loud for my mom just for fun from a big book of Shakespeare's collected works my parents got for me. Later, I read all of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets. Though they aren't song lyrics, of course, his plays and sonnets show techniques that we can use in song lyrics: alliteration, assonance, antithesis, enjambment, metonymy, synecdoche, oxymoron, personification, internal rhyme, and sexual puns and double entendres, my favorite! (I just learned what "enjambment" and "metonymy" are today! )

Shakespeare was great at using word play, analogies, and extended metaphors. I appreciate his cleverness and the thought he put into expressing emotions and dramatic plots that raise questions about or pass judgement on human character and choices.

As an example of his cleverness at word play, while I was watching "Romeo and Juliet" with Claire Danes the following line struck me especially because Shakespeare used two meanings of "long" in quick succession: "Be not so long to speak. I long to die," says Juliet to the priest as she feels desperate and impatient, ready to kill herself because her situation has become nearly intolerable.

One criticism I level at Shakespeare's works is that they can become too showy as the craft takes over the message. Also, he has a tendency to become melodramatic so that people who are less passionate in their feelings might not be able to relate to his poems. (I relate to them well, though!) Finally, his style of writing can get repetitive, which you really notice when you read all 154 sonnets. For example, he frequently uses tired rhymes, such as "life" and "strife." Modern song lyrics often suffer from these problems, too, I feel.

However, the path Shakespeare's mind takes is still enticing and interesting enough for me to have read all his sonnets. Two that I've been rereading and appreciating recently (despite his rhyming of "life" and "strife" in both!) are #75 Shakespeare's Sonnets and #63 Shakespeare's Sonnets, because the feelings in them are so universal and touching and he expresses those feelings succinctly and vividly.

I wish more modern song lyrics had such depth. I like song lyrics that have a feeling of intellect swimming under the words. One of my big gripes with song lyrics is when they are so simplistic that they make me groan, which often happens when I read lyrics sung by the "Black Eyed Peas," a band whose music and lyrics I almost always dislike.

So here's a question: who do you feel are "The Greats" among songwriters whose lyrics you'd most recommend reading?

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