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Richard Goldstein always has something interesting to say. In 1969 he published a collection of rock lyrics, which he thought possessed some poetic qualities. In doing so, he distinguished the rock lyric from the poem - cautioning that the awkwardness which is unforgiveable in verse, may be charming in rock, and, crucially, that the distinction that rhythm in rock is not a matter of meter, but propulsion. The writing is particularly interesting, because it is criticism of it's time, and as such, the reputations of the people, and bands, he writes about, have not yet petrified in their fame. Of the Door's The End, he writes 'it renders holy what is simply unrestrained'. Of Aretha Franklin's version of Otis Redding's Respect, "she adds a sultry vagueness, and in the process, retransforms this lyric from a jocular spiel about marital rights to a curvaceous sermon on sexual reciprocity." He also credits Chuck Berry as being America's first Rock Poet and that "Johnny cash is Dylan without metaphor". It is criticism that poets can learn from, gutsy but without overkill; hungry and curious enough to consider the most poetically unlikely lyrics:

"who put the ram
in the ram a lam a ding dong
who put the bop
in the bop sh-bop sh-bop"