NEW YORK--Paul McCartney [ tickets ] appeared on Tuesday (4/24) at New York’s 92nd Street Y, and he didn’t sing a note. This night was devoted instead to Sir Paul’s efforts as a poet. He read from his new book, "Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics 1965-1999" (W.W. Norton). The reading was followed with an onstage interview by Charlie Rose, which was taped for Rose's PBS television show.

It isn’t every day that people line up around the block for a poetry reading. The people that did manage to get in were in a frenzy usually reserved for rock concerts. McCartney had them in the palm of his hand from word one. Every turn of phrase or lift of an eyebrow brought screams of delight. In contrast with most poetry readings, he spent more time trying to calm the audience down than he did pumping them up. As throughout his life, McCartney's unstoppable charm and the group hysteria that shadows him threatened to obfuscate his brilliance.

From the lectern, he read “In Liverpool,” a simple poem about his childhood, with echoes of “Penny Lane,” populated with street preachers, village idiots and one-eyed dogs. “Dinner Tickets” cuts back and forth curiously between a child caught with a dirty drawing in his pocket, and images of him running off into a forest to chop wood; in the end, the child cannot run from the shame and finds relief only in a tearful confession. “Jerk of All Jerks” is a potent diatribe inspired by the man who murdered John Lennon: “I’m the guy with the pistol / Who kills your best friend / You can’t really blame me / ‘Cos I’m round the bend”.

Some of McCartney’s introductory anecdotes tended to upstage the poems themselves and to undermine their impact by revealing the best bits in advance. Other poems were so dependent on the back-story that they seemed incomplete on the page. But ultimately, his talent for the telling detail did not fail him. His eye for images and his ear for subtle internal rhymes never ceased to startle.

The audience learned a bit about him from his between-poem banter and his interview with Rose. McCartney wrote his first poem as a teenager, and it was rejected by his school magazine. His recent foray into poetry was prompted by the death of his old friend Ivan Vaughan, who had introduced him to John Lennon. He had thought about writing a song, but a poem seemed more fitting somehow. After that, the poems began to flow.

The "Blackbird Singing" collection began as a secret scheme lovingly dreamed up by Paul’s wife, Linda, along with family friend, noted English poet Adrian Mitchell. As a surprise birthday present, they were going to compile some of Paul’s recent poetry into a book. The secret got out and Paul became involved. It was Mitchell who persuaded McCartney to include some of his song lyrics alongside his poems.

At the Y event, McCartney read some of his song lyrics, including “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “Here Today.” He made the case that there is no difference between poems and lyrics, citing the sung epics of Homer, traveling troubadours and the Beat poets. While it is true that there is poetry in the best lyrics, and that there is music in the best poetry, this reading demonstrated mostly the differences between poems and lyrics. A poem has its own independent propulsion, but a lyric is part of a whole, pulled ineluctably along a musical current. A good lyric must also make room for singing, which is why many superb lyrics presented without their music come off as light verse at best.

Mitchell’s editorial selections make perfect sense considering his own poetry, which is often playful, lyrical and sometimes naughty. There are the obvious choices, like the imagistic “Eleanor Rigby” and “She’s Leaving Home,” but thankfully, these appear side by side with jewels-in-the-rough like “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” McCartney seized on this lyric to close his reading. He had the entire audience chanting, first at a whisper then a shout, “Why don’t we do it the road? No one will be watching us!”

In recent years, McCartney has famously branched out from pop music to become a symphonic composer and even a prolific painter. But on Tuesday night, it was clear that he is not, in fact, becoming a poet; he’s been one all along.