"What the #*&% is a song-poem?"

An edited version of the Wikipedia description:
"The business of recording song poems is promoted through small display ads in popular magazines with a headline reading Send in Your Poems — Songwriters Make Thousands of Dollars. Those who submit their poetry receive notice by mail that their work is worthy of recording, along with a proposal to do so in exchange for a fee. Copies of the song are sent to the customer. The recordings are not taken seriously by professionals. But the intensity and naivete of the unusual lyrics combined with the musicians' attempts to interpret them, fuels the artistic merit found in these songs. The Song-Poem business plays off the desire of unsophisticated people for fame and fortune."

If you saw this ad in a magazine would you respond to the pitch? Probably not.

But ordinary people from around the world, naive about the ways of show business, do respond. Why? Because they can't pass up their opportunity to "make millions and be famous." They submit their poems containing their intimate thoughts, or their sometimes twisted philosophical rants, to companies like Star-Crest Records, who (as advertised) turn them into songs — for a fee of course.

The documentary that started it all, featuring composer, Arthur Kaufman — 54 spellbinding minutes, FREE, on You Tube . . .

"Like a warped fun-house mirror! . . . A fascinating, at times unsettling documentary that exposes the strange underworld of the song-poem industry." — Independent Lens

According to Jamie Meltzer, filmmaker of Off the Charts: "The beauty of song-poems is that they are a result of the intersection, or collision, of ordinary people's expressions and the desires of musicians/ businesses to make a quick buck, making the music as fast as they can, usually in one take. When those two forces combine, they create strangely compelling songs that are unlike anything you've ever heard."

More about the song-poem industry and the cult following it has spawned.

Definition of song poems — from Wikipedia

American Song-Poem Music Archives — Extensive resource all about song poems

Red Rock Records — Composer Arthur Kaufman's song-poem company website

American Song-Poem Anthology: Odds, Sods Make Beautiful Music, by Joe Hagan, The New York Observer