Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960) is today mostly remembered for his eleven collaborations with Richard Rodgers during the 1940s and 1950s. His career as a professional lyricist, however, reached back to the 1920s; his musical collaborators included some of the major musical theatre composers of the 1920s and 1930s such as Sigmund Romberg (The New Moon, 1928) and Jerome Kern (Show Boat, 1927; Music in the Air, 1932). More than two-thirds of Hammerstein’s lyrics for over 850 songs were written for pre-Rodgers Broadway and film musicals. As such, they represent the majority of Hammerstein’s significant and sizable oeuvre. This chapter analyses the distinctive aspects of several of Hammerstein’s lyrics from his early career, including ‘I’ll Take Romance’, ‘Why Was I Born?’ and ‘The Song Is You’, as well as his adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen, Carmen Jones (1945).

Moving from Illmatic to Young Stoner Life, this chapter listens closely to rap flow – the complex metrical pulse that runs through its verses. Drawing on lyrical examples from rappers like MC Lyte and Missy Elliott, it lays out a series of core technical effects (such as pauses, overflows, and triplets) before turning to the question of how MCs have grappled with the challenge of recording their flows on the page. Discussing the obstacles that face any attempt to apply traditional print poetic scansion to hip-hop, the chapter moves on to the innovative ways that rappers like Rakim and Young Thug have approached their notepads – making use of 16x4 grids, unorthodox punctuation, and abstract shapes. It closes with a discussion of so-called mumble rap and the ethics of close listening, pointing to the controversial use of rap lyrics in the recent YSL court case.

The Iliad and Odyssey are composed using the dactylic hexameter; although the system is simple to understand, it nevertheless allows for great variation.