From an Introduction to English Poetry: A Special AP2 Supplement

American Poetry Review, The, Nov/Dec 2002 by Fenton, James

Nevertheless, I said, a different poet might take a different view, and I mentioned the name of a friend who was an experienced librettist. The composer approached my friend, and recounted what I had said. But he had thought of a solution. He would set the words in his usual way, but the opera would be performed with subtitles as a matter of course. My friend thought this a reasonable solution to the problem, and the commission went happily ahead.

It went happily ahead because the situation was clear to both parties.

But here is another situation involving the same friend. He is asked to write a libretto for a so-called soap opera workshop, and does so. He and the composer and the director meet up for a discussion. The director says: Fine, the workshop can go ahead and you won't be needed for the next few weeks. My friend says: One moment-you may make all kinds of changes to my text, but such changes as are made must be made with my approval. A few days later he is told that the project is `dead in the water.'

The two examples. are enough to remind the poet, at the very least, to ask himself before any collaboration what terms he wants and can expect. WorkIng alone on a poem, a poet is of all artists the most free. The poem can be written with a modicum of technology, and can be published, in most cases, quite cheaply.

What I want, when I write a poem, is no more than this: that it be preserved in some published form so that, in principle, someone somewhere will be able to find it and read it. That is all I need, as a poet, and that is the beauty, the luxury of my position. My lyric is mine and remains mine. Nobody can ruin it.

When I write a song, on the other hand, I must start to think of the implications of collaboration. Am I writing a poem which is to remain mine, as all my other poems do, or is it to be handed over, to become in some sense and to some degree someone else's property?

Some of the considerations involved are simply legal, and can be sorted out by an agent. But some of the considerations are artistic and need to be faced by the writer, if he is not to be driven mad with frustration and bitter with disappointment.

The optimum position is this: I write a song lyric which is, first and forever, my own inalienable property. This means that I am free. Within my lyric I can do as I please, and it remains mine forever. When a composer turns up who wants to use it, he may be given a license to do so, but that license is not exclusively his. In such circumstances, a composer cannot harm a song, because the text remains forever mine. He may do a bad job. Another composer may come along and do a better one.

The disadvantage of this position may be untroubling to some poets: no composer may come along, no setting may ever be made. But to others this failure to be performed may feel like a catastrophe.

In that case, we need a composer, a collaboration. We need perhaps a sacrifice to some of our sovereignty, our valued poetic independence.

People often want to know, when the subject of writing for music comes up, whether the music or the text comes first. If the music does indeed come first, then the lyricist had better think of this work as something rather less than poetry, for it is rather too much to expect that words fitted to pre-existent music can amount to much more than a very professional job.