Poetry and songwriting are the opposite of verbosity

On May 11, 2019 I had blogged about Does verbosity come from having lots of time to kill? The opposite of verbosity is making every single word count - so you can tell a story in about five minutes. Poets and songwriters can do this brilliantly. Recently I have been listening to the Bruce Springsteen studio album Western Stars. A YouTube video of the upbeat song Tucson Train is shown above. Bruce’s lyrics tell most of the story just in the first and third verses:

“I got so down and out in Frisco

Tired of the pills and the rain

I picked up, headed for the sunshine

I left a good thing behind

Seemed all of our love was in vain

Now my baby’s coming in on the Tucson train….

We fought hard over nothing

We fought till nothing remained

I’ve carried that nothing for a long time

Now I carry my operator’s license

And spend my days just running this crane

And my baby’s coming in on the Tucson train”

Another sadder song, Chasin’ Wild Horses has mournful pedal steel guitar along with the strings and  horns. You can listen to it here on YouTube. Lyrics in the second through fourth verses tell most of that cowboy story:

“Left my home, left my friends

I didn’t say goodbye

I contract out to the BLM

Up on the Montana line

Chasin’ wild horses, chasin’ wild horses

We’re out before sunup, in after sundown

There’s two men in the chopper

Two under saddle on the ground

In the evenings we’d hop in the pickup

Head into town for a drink

Make sure I work till I’m so damn tired

Way too tired to think

You lose track of time

It’s all just storms blowing through

You come rollin’ ‘cross my mind

Your hair flashin’ in the blue

Like wild horses, just like wild horses

Just like wild horses”

What could you edit out of the story you are telling?