Song writers ? No. Publishers - Yes.

Combine them and you get something mewsical, like Cats.

All this comparison is a bit premature ... if any of these writers, regardless of the genre, form, etc. are still being read and/or listened to as Shakespeare still is today, then, I’d say we have room to say they are of all time. Then again. We’ll never know. If it means something to you, that is the true measure today. I know there are things I listen to again and again and have for decades. Similarly, I also re-read certain authors works in the same manner. It makes no difference if others do.

When you say there isn't much there I'm not sure what you are trying to say. What is much? Granted anybody can write a song. The popularity of a song does not mean it is any good. It just means it's popular and there can be many different reasons for that. The idea that some or many give something or somebody credit or whatever means just that. Many obviously don't. When I look at the result of an artists labor my personal litmus test is if I can do as well or better in expressing myself in the same way. If I think I can I feel I have a right to voice my opinion. If not I can only state whether I like it or not. But that's me ....

When done by one with skill, running a rack of nine ball should make the average person watching think “this is so simple, I can do it”

I feel like the same is true for songwriting. To make a powerful statement, a vivid picture, tell a story etc, with just a few sentences that seem so simple you think you could’ve written them yourself. That’s when you know someone is a master

Shakespeare died in 1616. The Nobel Prize for Literature was established in 1901.

It's not awarded posthumously ;).

This! :)

Have you read It's One For The Money?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Its-One-Mon.../dp/1472111907
- a brilliant history of how songwriting was monetized by publishers over the last 100 years or so: for their benefit, of course, not for the songwriters themselves.

Having said that, the concept of "intellectual property" is a tricky one. Creators should be rewarded for their work - but how much, and in what way?
When something like copyright can be bought and sold, something smells funny somewhere...

Well, this was a pretty good choice. I of course know this song, but I don't think I've ever sat down and read the lyrics. And having done so, I'm still not sure I understand it, and will need to read it again and think about it.

But it has some very nice qualities, and some great lines.

To clarify, my point wasn't that songwriters should write like Shakespeare. It was that the opinion that some songwriters are at his level is hard for me to swallow.

I took a little more time to reread your post. You make a lot of good points. I agree that brevity should not be a considered a barrier to greatness. There are some great short poems.

I know Dorothy Parker a little bit, and just spent some time reading some of her stuff. I liked it. It seemed miles beyond, "Don't Fear the Reaper" to me, but that's a bit of a tangent. Or is it, as I'm still trying to work out my point. Is it that the average poet is miles above the average songwriter, or that the best poets are better than the best songwriters. Or something else. It's still turning over in my mind, but I've already opened the can of worms.

I had a listen to The Waterboys' "The Stolen Child", which was kind of an odd song/spoken word tune. To me these lyrics/words are really, really good. Just the images, the beautiful language sounds Yeats could put together make me think he is a master. And in a very song like structure.

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand.
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We footed all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.

For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the worldÂ’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

Yet I often see these comparisons of Dylan to the great writers of history, and I think that's what doesn't sit quite right with me. And that is, I think, what I'm trying to express. I didn't make the comparison, but when I see it I don't quite buy it.

But I can see I have my work cut out for me here. Might have been easier over at the Goodreads forum. :D

I must say that was a tough read of high diction (like a Joseph Conrad reply, and not a Johnny Cash reply). But if I get you correctly, you are saying that because it's prose put to music, it's harder.

If that is correct, my reply would be that song lyrics generally fall short of prose, and the addition of a musical requirement doesn't make up the gap.

That's a fair point. But the line between poetry and songs isn't so much, if anything at all.

But again, I started this thread because of my hesitance to recognize songwriters as literary greats.

Exactly. When was a skateboard prize every awarded to a space shuttler or a space shuttle award give to someone on a skateboard.

Yet here we have Dylan and Yeats winning the same honor.

That was a reply to the comments that these are totally separate things, and can't be compared. I am not a member of The Swedish Academy, but they obviously felt that Dylan's song fit the requirements.

The line about Shakespeare was a joke, hence the wink, as it only stared in 1901.

I don't really follow your use of the word, "prodigiousness". This is more a discussion of quality than quantity. And what his catalog sold for seems irrelevant, so I think I'm missing your point.