Another quick lyrics question

[rayheinrich]

So, here's another likely-wrong idea I'm trying to talk myself out of:

The basic semantic unit of poetry is the word, whereas the basic semantic unit of lyrics is the colloquial phrase.

Dumb as it gets, or is there something to it?

The semantic unit of poetry (overwhelmingly, not exclusively) is the line and/or -- depending
on a specific poem's content/structure -- the stanza. Sure, lines can be composed of a single word and
stanzas a single line (most of my poems are rife with such), but the principle remains the same.

And the same goes for lyrics because they are poetry -- a specific category of poetry, but poetry
nonetheless.

And "phrase" , depending on how you define it, could be either a line, a stanza, or -- arguably --
another semantic unit used in poetry.

Of course, 'line', 'phrase', 'stanza', etc. are crude divisions** made for convenience's sake. 
Since semantic units are a measure of information/meaning, their boundaries vary and
many times overlap.

Ray


*A "song" -- the definition of "song" that Shel Silverstein's "A Boy Named Sue" fits -- is a poem set to music.
A consistently rhythmic poem is a song. My favorite type of poem that fits this definition is a chant.
(And as sure as I love Reggae, I love to write these.)

**Consider enjambment or a typical E.E. Cummings poem.

P.S. And where the hell did "colloquial" come from? It doesn't, to my mind, coincide with the
logic of the of the discussion.