What pieces of writing do you find yourself returning to again and again in your thoughts? They could hold the key to your unique voice as a writer.
Every lyricist is influenced, consciously or not, by her favorite pieces of writing. What are yours?
In this post I suggest a simple exercise: take a few minutes to list out your five favorite pieces of writing.
Your top five can include writing of any form: song lyrics, short stories, poems, even novels. The format doesn’t matter; all that matters is that you list out five texts that have resonated with you the most. Here are my favorites:
- Tao Teh Ching
- Bhagavad Gita
- 1,001 Arabian Nights
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau
- “Warming Her Pearls” by Carol Ann Duffy
If you’re having a hard time fleshing out this list with five solid entries, consider whether you could add a little pleasure reading to your day – even if it’s just twenty minutes. Reading is a great way to become a better lyricist.
Why those five?
Take a look at your top five list. Why did each one find its way onto your list?
- What qualities does each piece of writing have that you admire?
- What topics and ideas does each piece explore?
- How does each piece approach those ideas and express them in words?
This is a great opportunity to reflect on what impression each piece made on you. As a reader, what pushes your buttons? Your influences reflect your sensibilities as a writer. My top five seem to share a sense of mystery, nature, and philosophy. What, if anything, do your choices share in common?
Reunited, and it feels so good
Choose one piece of writing from your top five and resolve to reread it. If you don’t happen to be reading anything right now, you could begin rereading it today. Make yourself a mug of tea and settle in. Reading an old favorite can be a lot of fun, like reuniting with an old friend.
Photo by Horla Voran; cropped and filtered by Nicholas Tozier
Reader: what are your top five favorite pieces of writing? Why did each one win a spot on your list? I’d love to hear about it in the comments section below.
My list of 5 written influences from which I draw inspiration for my songwriting (in no particular order):
1. Songs of Solomon from The Bible
2. Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
3. Deaths and Entrances by Dylan Thomas
4. Shakespeare’s Sonnets
5. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations 16th Edition
I finally got around to giving Shakespeare’s Sonnets a proper reading this year, and it was really encouraging. Lots of repetition of the same basic idea, just reappearing in different phrasing. This guy practiced writing the way a pianist practices piano.
Thanks for sharing your favorites, Michael!
You’re right, Nicholas. I hadn’t thought of it that way but that’s exactly what Shakespeare did. Like a pianist who uses repetition to develop muscle memory, Shakespeare wrote as much to the sound of words when spoken as he did to their meaning. Repetition, pacing, beats, all the things we think about in songwriting. Good point!
Thanks for this opportunity. Here they are:
1. The Sacred Writings of the Baha’i Faith
2. Women Who Run With The Wolves
3. Tao Te Ching
4. Seeing Heaven In A Black Man’s Face
5. The Norton Anthology of Poetry
That Norton Anthology’s a good one, eh?
I couldn’t resist this one. This is today’s snapshot. There are too many to choose just five. I am a writer and grew up a reclusive introvert. Books are worlds.
* The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling — Ever since I first opened this book, it has accompanied me. It’s the one my grandparents gave as a gift to my father in 1941 to take to Boyscout camp. It’s in German and printed in the “old font.” It’s time to read it again.
* Winnetou by Karl May. Fueled my fantasies through childhood and eventually brought me to Death Valley (where May had never been though he wrote about it extensively).
* The Wall by Roger Waters/Pink Floyd. Mindscape. Musicscape. Why I haven’t thrown the towel on practice. It’s complicated.
* Tao De Ching by Lao Tzu. A brief summary of life.
* The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer. No matter what the voices say, how bad it is, I do art.
The Tao De Ching is on three out of four lists so far!
First of all, I wanted to say great post, and thank you for all the wonderful specific ideas and prompts. Your songwriting notebook post really helped me get organized in creating new, fresh songs, and finishing those little somethings that have been glaring at me since 2013 and onward. As for my top five, here they are in no particular order. (Believe me, they’re all fantastic.)
1. When We With Sappho by Kenneth Rexroth.
A lyric poem in which the speaker and a lover relax in a field of New England farmland, during late summer. Only present are the speaker, the lover, and “the fragmentary words of this dead Greek woman”. The words are very descriptive and romantic. The basic idea resonates with anyone who has loved another.
2. As Red As Fire, Tasting of Smoke by Siavash Kasraii (one book in a series of contemporary Persian poetry)
This is a collection of poems, recently translated into English. Found within are sensual poems, but also those involving politics, tradition, and daily living. This poet is all over the place in terms of subject matter, but none of it lacks. The wording in Persian Dance invokes a feeling of two parts longing, one part lust, and one part caring as he watches a dancer.
” …
Hold up your skirt and make a basket
hand pick stars, sort through them
look to the sky toward God,
pray.
If you don’t see God,
come call on me.
…”
3. The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry; T. S. Eliot’s Clark Lectures
Collected transcriptions of lectures delived by Eliot at Clark University. In it he attempts to convey the meaning of “metaphysical” poety and explores works by Donne, Dante, and other contemporaries. I have used this book as a “how to” when writing poems and metaphyical lyrics. There are so many gems found within! Underlined in my copy is the following: [The type of poetry…] “elevates sense for a moment to regions ordinarily attainable only by abstract thought, or on the other hand clothes the abstract, for a moment, with all the painful delight of flesh.”
4. Flutie by Diane Glancy
A “coming of age” story about a girl growing up on a reservation in Oklahoma. Flutie struggles to find her voice (literally at the beginning of the story), and after her own road of trials, finds her resolve. The prose is written in a lyric format, reminiscent of the epic poems of antiquity.
5. Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo
An autobiographical account in extremely poetic language. Harjo describes growing up with her mother and father, and often adds ghostly family stories to the account. Sprinkled within are her own poems which are an inspiration in and of themselves.
Hey, congrats on finishing up some loose ends and getting songs finished. It’s never easy, eh?
Thanks for taking the time to write such nuanced descriptions of your favorites. “Two parts longing, one part lust, and one part caring” sold me on checking out Siavash Kasraii. I’ve added that volume to my reading list. Thanks again!