Cover -- Contents -- Introduction -- Part One. Poetic History and Techniques within Poems and Songs -- The Day Johnny Cash Died -- Reduced to Rhyme: On Contemporary Doggerel -- The Sonnet Within the Song: Country Lyrics and the Shakespearean Sonnet Structure -- Rap Poetry 101 -- It Don't Mean a Thing: The Blues Mask of Modernism -- Gangsta Rap's Heroic Substrata: A Survey of the Evidence -- At the Crossroads: The Intersection of Poetry and the Blues -- Country Music Lyrics: Is There Poetry in Those Twangy Rhymes? -- Similarities and Differences between Song Lyrics and Poetry -- Words and Music: Three Stories -- Part Two. Analysis of Twentieth-Century Songwriters -- The Triumph of Icarus: Sam Cooke and the Creative Spirit -- The Joe Blow Version -- A Nobel for Dylan? -- Lyric Impression, Muscle Memory, Emily, and the Jack of Hearts -- Don Khan and Truck-Driving Wives: Dylan's Fluctuating Lyrics -- Thoughts on "Me and Bobby McGee" and the Oral and Literary Traditions -- The Soup That Could Change the World -- Laughing in Tune: R.E.M. and the Post-Confessional Lyric -- Sweetness Follows: Michael Stipe, John Keats, and the Consolations of Time -- Sweeping Up the Jokers: Leonard Cohen's "The Stranger Song" -- Facing the Music: The Poetics of Bruce Springsteen -- Coming into Your Town: Okkervil River's "Black" -- Still Holding at the Seams: Magnolia Electric Co.'s Josephine and the Contemporary Poetic Sequence -- Not to Oppose Evil: Johnny Cash's Bad Luck Wind -- Glossary -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- H -- I -- L -- M -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.