Thou hast thy music, too

The Guardian has asked its readers to recommend songs inspired by poetry. As it turns out, there's lots of it, and (at least according to writer Paul Macinnes) it's good.

Take the Fugs and their reworking of Allen Ginsberg's totemic "Howl." On the one hand a piece of garage-rock r'n'b, on the other a platter of disorienting descant in which lines from the poem are picked up at random and repeated as a series of conflicting refrains. To make things even more unsettling, it's sung so jauntily you wonder if you're listening to avant-garde barbershop.... Stereolab mumble Baudelaire to a backdrop of droning jangle. Björk's Sun in My Mouth is an adaptation of EE Cummings's I Will Wade Out. It takes a poem about oneness with nature and sets it to glitchy techno. Yet it seems appropriate – malfunctioning music alongside lyrics conveying sensory overload ("I will take the sun in my mouth/and leap into the ripe air"). Benjamin Britten's composition for Shelley's On a Poet's Lips I Slept is more powerful still; apparently discordant throughout, but testifying to the immortal power of imagination of which Shelley speaks.

For the complete playlist, click here.