I’ll bet there are plenty of us who were subjected to teachers who included Dylan, Morrison, or Smith (Patti) lyrics along with the poetry of Robert Browning and William Carlos Williams in the syllabus. My question: how come no Iggy Pop?
In my case, there was no Iggy Pop when I was in High School. My 11th grade teacher had done his MA Thesis on Poetry in Rock Music (pretty radical for the time).
If I knew where he went to do it, I’d go try and find it on the Library shelves there – I know it is there somewhere.
I subjected my teachers to a literary analysis of the lyrics of both Green Day and Alice in Chains!
My uncle tells me that one of the first papers he wrote in college (University of Michigan, mid-60s) was a lyrical analysis of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” by Mick and the boys.
I used Bruce Sprinstein’s The River for my ESL class in Budapest, Hungary. It was a lesson in American culture as well as discusion points for English.
For tenth grade English class I did a lyrical analysis of:
“The Hand That Rocks The Cradle” by the Smiths
“Wailing Wall” by the Cure
“Memories Fade” by Tears for Fears
“Atmosphere” by Joy Division
and “Mambo Sun” by T. Rex.
My teacher particularly liked the last one, though in retrospect, I probably got more out of the lyrics than Marc Bolan put into them.