The titular question of this blog post is one that I’d subconsciously filed away under “yes” quite some time ago, a question I’m now realizing I’d never considered with much rigor. The answer still remains a yes after further looking into the subject—albeit with some minor caveats. I will go over those caveats, but before examining whether or not rap is poetry, it seems worthwhile to explore how...
It’s no secret that Bob Dylan’s lyricism was a crucial point of inspiration for Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s seminal ‘86–‘87 comic, Watchmen, in which the superhero narrative comes under a gritty and subversive lens intended for mature readers. The comic depicts an alternate 20th century history where a number of masked vigilantes (costumed, but lacking supernatural powers) arise throughout the U...
This week’s post is a continuation of last week where we examined the current sea shanty trend and began to situate it in relation to popular poetry as defined in Dana Gioia’s 2004 book Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture? Gioia identifies four ways that popular poetry differs from literary poetry: it is predominately oral, driven by innovation from marginalized demographics...
Unless you’ve been lost at sea, you’re likely familiar with the tidal wave of popularity that sea shanties have garnered since the beginning of the year. Shanty performances sailed to the top of the charts in the UK, netting three billion views on TikTok alongside a 7000% increase in Spotify listens by the end of January 2021.[1] Widescale coverage of the videos by mainstream news outlets may...