Perhaps the most convincing way to demonstrate that the best of rock lyrics are effective poetry is to show how skillfully certain techniques are used to develop themes which these techniques are organically suited to treat. The relatively more objective poems employ drama, irony, implication, and ambiguity to treat the theme of daily restriction, whereas the more subjective songs present their worlds solipsistically and surrealistically to develop the themes of non-conformity and independent thinking. Both...

Instead of following the mainstream of the major popular lyricists, Paul Simon seems to have skipped Freshman Composition (Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Oscar Hammerstein) and majored in 20th Century Poetry, principally T. S. Eliot, A. E. Housman and E. A. Robinson. In The Dangling Conversation he aims for no less than a Prufrock effect:             And the dangling conversation     &...

The first pop performers to straddle the generation gap were Simon and Garfunkel…. Paul Simon (he writes the songs; Art Garfunkel arranges them) became a "rock poet," dealing with such non-cliché subjects as the soullessness of commercial society and man's inability to communicate. This appealed to kids who hadn't read much modern poetry but knew what it was supposed to be about, or were over impressed with their own nascent Weltschmerz, or both. As for parents, the...

Once in a very great while, a "greatest hits" package actually does represent a performer's artistic peaks as a performer, and that is the case [with Greatest Hits, Etc.]…. [In his maturity, Paul Simon] has honed his writing to come up with highly interesting although often unresolved vignettes and character portraits of losers, Candides, and ambivalent heroes…. Most of the [songs] in this collection—including his current single, Slip Slidin' Away, about the ...

While Bob Dylan stands as the central figure, the one who woke this sleeping giant of a generation determined not to go silent, none of the other poet laureates of the era addressed himself to all of us middle-class cowboys as directly as Paul Simon…. From "Homeward Bound" to "Dangling Conversations" to "Mrs. Robinson," Simon's songs mirrored the alienation, malaise, and despair of the era, but did so melodiously, with a good beat, so you could dance t...

Paul Simon has developed into possibly the most perfect craftsman of songs on this planet. Even the later Simon and Garfunkel material included its share of dross, but though hardly prolific with his output, his subsequent solo career has been (artistically) virtually faultless…. A Greatest Hits compilation [like Simon's "Greatest Hits, Etc."] is pretty much guaranteed good value, and whatever combination of his solo work you come up with would make an outstandingly strong collec...