music in poetry

Hey you lot calm down calm down. Music and poetry, if you are gonna write a song its gotta rhyme, but if you are gonna write a poem, well it don't have to nower days, But I bet you all could pick a poem and read it to some back ground music to set the mood and feeling. Poetry is the music of life, and life is poetry.

Sorry to disagree Muzzy but songs don't have to rhyme at all, give 'Brownsville Girl' by Bob Dylan a listen; a true poet/songwriter/musician/genius!

AAAAH, you got me there

does anyone prefer hearing poetry to reading it, or have a view on this? sorry to bang on about Valentine again, but i rather suspect that i might like it so much because i heard it on the radio first...

meant to add: is it a skill to be able to read poetry properly?

and another thing! is that the brownsville girl with her brownsville curls and teeth like pearls?

Shining like the moon above!

brownsville girl you're my honey love!

interesting Q that one ... reading poetry aloud is definitely a skill ... i have sat too many times in audiences whilst a very good poet massacred his/her work with an appalling reading which didnt do it justice ... and have been wowed by a good reader of work which could be considered "less good" on the page ... as with any performance there is a contract with the audience i think ... for me hearing poetry is a totally different experience from reading it ... (sorry to state the bleedin obvious here) and there is a particular example i can think of where adrian mitchell ... whose work i did not exactly like on the page ... came to leicester for a reading and had me snivelling and weeping as i listened to him ... that was very surprising ho hum i haven't answered the Q at all ... but i do have to add here that when i am writing i always read my stuff aloud and this helps me see where the "trips" are ... if that makes any sense ... i'll get me coat ...

there is writing that is good on the page, and there is writing that is best spoken aloud. i don't think that there is any formula to creating either, you have to do both before making yr mind up. what i have noticed, however, is that a lot of free verse looks like poetry on the page, but reading it out loud is a bit of a laborous task. this raises questions about whether poetry should mirror the musical phrase, but im not nearly clever enough to answer that one myself.

Ok Robert, so the chorus rhymes, but the rest of it is somewhat lacking and don't go telling me it isn't sung, for me it's a goddamn song!

I once heard Kate O'Mara reading something I knew as though it was a speech, and I thought she killed it, but afterwards everyone was saying how brilliantly it was read. I like it best when poets read their own stuff. It probably depends on whether you've got a stupid voice

i think i may have misunderstood robert's question ... "is reading poetry properly a skill ..." robert ... if you mean is reading poetry (as opposed to reading a novel) a skill ... i am not sure ... your use of the word "properly" suggests there is a right and wrong way to do it ... almost as if there is some secret to doing it ... it also implies some risk of failure to do it "properly" what do other people think? ... why do we read it at all? ... should we be aiming to understand what the poet "means"? .. or what? tricky one this, robert ... *ponders*

Yes, I often look at my photograph album. The photographs, (my rectangular liitle Madeleines), trigger Proustian memories. I am particularly fond of those photographs taken at my Fifteenth Book Launch at Dillstones. There were many old friends of mine there, mostly highly talented, creative people, like myself. Among the musicians backing me for my Funk/Rap/Slam numbers were James Fenton and the Fentones, Simon Armitrading and 'Shakin' Wallace Stevens. Ana Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam and Ygevney Yevtushenko amused everyone when they formed an impromptu Pop/Dance group, 'Steppes.' And look? here's me with Elvis Priestly. ps I've also shown these snaps to other people who are drowning in talent.

pah, i have performed phat word jams with none other than "hilarious" hart crane, and "groovy" ginsberg. ive seen you, audenary, and you are a second rate writer whose best friend is the besmirched toiletry paper of steven spendthrift. and you use contractions!

*nods off to the drone of whining 'Bagpipe Music.'*

Music doesn't inspire me to write but I find that most of my favourite musicians are fantastic lyricists so it kind of works the other way for me - I'm the annoying type who sits there going 'yes, you might not like the music but have you heard the lyrics!' Music isn't always essential to appreciate lyrics as the other thread demonstrates. However, music does add to the meaning of lyrics (certainly I tried to select some Sarah McLachlan lyrics for the other thread but none of them seemed to do her justice - her voice is amazing and adds a lot of meaning to the songs that doesn't translate on paper) I think all the arts are related - certainly most writers (and musicians) I know have also dabbled in art, drama and that sort of thing. That lends a natural cross-over, where people can sing their poems and choose to call them songs or performance poetry, read their lyrics and call them poems - whatever suits them best.

I don’t have sufficient knowledge to respond to the main thrusts of your question, fey, but in my view a good lyricist will exploit the possibilities of vocal expression which are not there for the poet. When I listen to A Day in the Life, or Aretha Franklyn singing Say a Little Prayer, I am moved to a greater extent than I would be by the same words written on a page. When I am moved by a poem, I don’t think (but I’m not sure) that it has anything to do with it containing a musical quality. I love Soil by Roger McGough and Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy for the ideas they contain – I can’t explain the “how” of why it is that those ideas are expressed in a way that I find attractive. I’m afraid I just don’t get Seamus Heaney, but that says more about me than it does about him.

Robert, This is your fault for not automatically saying you don't like Shane MacGowan's stuff. I'm now going to put in a bit from his biography (A Drink with Shane MacGowan. sidgewick and Jackson) which I've just got and found a page about this. "A great piece of poetry is as strong as a great piece of music...'An Irish Airman Foreees His Death' by Yeats is a great piece of poetry...Because it's like a song...Because the words go jingle jangle...they lilt...The sound makes a tune in your head." But he also says you have to know what the poem means, for it to be a great poem. I guess where a tune gives emotion through notes writing must give it through meaning. But there's another, kind of childish relish in sounds. The kind of basic communication of senses rather than sense. And the rhythm is like the muscles, and meaning is the bones. so the poem can take you somewhere. One of the reasons I like Ivoryfishbone's stuff's because its rhythm and repitition strengthen the meaning's impact. I don't think I could like a poem that was just meaning. I've not read Soil, but I will. what is your user name on the site?

Fey, I think the topic's too complex for there to be any right or wrong answers, which is why points can really only be made in respect of songs and poems that we each enjoy, and no 2 people's tastes will be identical etc. I'm sure that as a songwriter Shane MacGowan (of whom I am rather fond, but in a way that sometimes worries me) will appreciate aspects of poetry that I cannot. But for me a poem's "idea" has to attract me first. Beyond that I'm stuck with what I said earlier, that I can be attracted to the expression of the ideas, but I can't define the attraction and it may not be musical. Incidentally...Paul McCartney. Songs loved by all, poems trounced by all. Why?

Robert, you really are a bit of a pompous twerp aren't you, and NOT all people love McCartney, I for one think he's a self-indulgent, egotistical non-entity!

Oops I clicked "post" half-way through my ramble, by accident. Maybe it's a sign, so I'll be brief. I can enjoy Ivoryfishbone's stuff too, particularly the cleverness of Eating Orange. (NB The author is nice, vaguely dangerous, and presently blushing.) I'm assuming fey, that you are the Fey Mouse that posted Killing Field? Surely a poem that primarily is meaningful! I've posted stuff under my own name, but nothing as yet that I would recommend you to read. I'd rather be fey mouse than righteous or holy - why didn't I remember that one for the lyric thread?

*blushing in dangerously vague way*

anyway whaddya mean robert ... you CAN enjoy it??????

Yes. Sorry John

You see what I mean, he is a twerp!

Yes. Sorry everyone.

i do not think he is a twerp ... i happen to know he has more than a passing interest in marigolds ... not that i would be one to gossip ...

Twerp thread. Can't wait.

So he's into rubber gloves then? So he's not just a twerp he's got a rubberglove fetish! Do yourself a favour boneyfishivory, stay away from him, he might be dangerous!

maybe he is dangerously nice????

I'll do deal with you Robert, you stop talking pretentious crap and I'll stop calling you a twerp

don't listen to him robert .. he is dead anyway ....

That's it! Chapman go round and see this Robert guy, right now!

Dear Emily I'm sorry I appear to have deleted this.I like doing pictures of how music seems when I listen to it, but I'm a bigot about sound. I'd not realised Morissey's lyrics were so good because he always seemed such a plonker (takes one to know one) dear Robert Thankyou for sending about the poem site. That looks really good. Please take it as a compliment and not evidence that I'm a moron, but I like your one about growing up as much as Soil. I've woken up the dog laughing at Lonely Hearts, and I bet she woke up Mum. I'll hear about it tomorrow. I can't write musical stuff, it's just what I like reading Killing Field's just a rant dear Ivoryfishbone whoever the rubber glove fits must be the real John Lennon?