For composers: what makes a good poem for art song?

The longer the poem, the more the composer and the music must "chase" the words in order to complete the poem (unless the art song draws from an excerpt of the poem). The shorter the poem, the more the composer is able to play with it, expanding her/his palette (e.g. repetition).

Poets sometimes choose longer poems to submit so that composers have more to work with. While this choice makes some sense, it also runs into two issues: longer poems can be harder to arrange and composers may not want to excerpt the poem if it means “cutting up” a work of art. There's nothing wrong with having a longer poem so long as the poet feels okay with either having it excerpted or having the music chase the words (the latter is usually not ideal).


Do you agree? Tell us what you think.