Back when I taught high school, a student — let’s call him Dude — wandered into my contemporary poetry class with a beef to settle. Dude wasn’t actually in my poetry class, but he heard I had maligned the artistic integrity of his favorite poet. His ethical and aesthetic code required that he skip his stats class in protest.

The poet in question? Jim Morrison, legendary frontman of the Doors. Morrison was certainly a literary sort, naming his band after Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception," which was itself taken from a William Blake phrase. Of course, neither Huxley nor Blake ever writhed around half-naked on stage, calling himself the Lizard King — which may be why there are so few posters of a shirtless Aldous Huxley in dorm rooms across the country.

But take away Morrison’s brand of charisma, mystery and danger, and what’s left of rock‘n’roll? Well, lyrics, for starters:

The old get old and the young get stronger
May take a week and it may take longer
They got the guns but we got the numbers
Gonna win, yeah we’re taking over.
(“Five to One,” 1968)

As poetry, that’s decent. I like its jauntiness, the brash ambition necessary for so many young artists to start careers. I like it much better with Ray Manzarek’s fuzzy bass lines and harpsichord, and Morrison’s voice sounding lost in an echo chamber.

Lyrics are one thing. Now try these lines from Morrison’s poem “The Opening of the Trunk” (1967-1971):

I’m Me!
Can you dig it.
My meat is real.
My hands—how they move
balanced like lithe demons
My hair—so twined and writhing
The skin of my face—pinch the cheeks
My flaming sword tongue
spraying verbal fire-flys
I’m real.

Some of this is OK — the internal rhyme of “lithe” with “twined and writhing” — but the rest is an egomaniacal mess. My meat is real? A tongue — wait, a “flaming sword tongue” — that sprays... what was it? Oh yes, “fire-flys.” Flaming sword tongue? Is this “Dungeons and Dragons?”

It’s not just Morrison. My personal musical hero, Bob Dylan, is just as guilty. I don’t know of a lyricist better than Dylan, whose lines have shown up in everything from the scholarship of Oxford don Christopher Ricks to the written opinions of Chief Justice John Roberts. From the second verse of 1965’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues:”

Look out kid
Don't matter what you did
Walk on your tiptoes
Don’t try “No-Doz”
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows

Now look what happens when Dylan tries to write poems — or an experimental novel — or whatever 1971’s "Tarantula" is supposed to be:

aretha/ crystal jukebox queen of hymn & him diffused in drunk transfusion wound would heed sweet soundwave crippled & cry salute to oh great particular el dorado reel & ye battered personal god but she cannot she the leader of whom when ye follow, she cannot she has no back she cannot . . .

And that’s how it starts. It’s just not the same without the screeching harmonica, the nasal sneer Philip Larkin called “that cawing, derisive voice.”

Whatever the reason, pop musicians seem obsessed with poetry. In the last 15 years, we’ve seen books of poems arrive from Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Paul McCartney, Tupac Shakur, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and, of course, Jewel. The results have been mixed.

Luckily for musicians, lyrics aren’t burdened with having to make sense. They have music to support them. Take my favorite lines from Elton John:

La
Lalalalala
Lalalalala
Lalalalala
(“Crocodile Rock,” 1972)

That’s not much on the page, but the music will have you crocodile rocking well past your own threshold for annoyance. This, of course, is the secret. A good melody can support and redeem even the most nonsensical babbling (see Dave Matthews Band).