Saturday, December 21
Walljm.com

Thoughts on Music and Poetry recently posted to Twitter

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  • good harmony anticipates the melody, at times encouraging it, at times resisting it, but always anticipating it.
  • like harmony, the purpose of rhyme, meter, pattern and other poetic elements in verse is to anticipate the meaning.
  • harmony should never follow the melody blindly. in this way, it is like a marriage relationship. the melody should love the harmony, and the harmony should submit to the melody.
  • what separates poetry from prose is the explicit form. we use rhyme, alliteration, repetition and patterns to focus and add potency and meaning to the words. often this lets us be more concise, relying on the form to fill in the blanks.

 

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3 Comments

  1. Harrison Beckmann on

    I love the third one, comparing it to marriage. Couldn’t have said it better m’self… ;)

    Regarding the fourth bullet, unfortunately, too often, the form does not fill in the blanks, but restricts what the words themselves say. To tie the two themes of poetry and music together here, poetry is like music: many can do it adequately or fairly, but few can really do it justice.

    And in defense of prose, my chosen medium, prose has form, while admittedly not as explicit. A prose writer develops patterns often more intricate and usually longer than those of poetry. Perhaps than, a good thought to go along these lines would be: “form, in poetry or in prose, can restrict, or it can encourage. Or, it can be useless. The best let it encourage.”

  2. walljm on

    Regarding the fourth bullet, unfortunately, too often, the form does not fill in the blanks, but restricts what the words themselves say. To tie the two themes of poetry and music together here, poetry is like music: many can do it adequately or fairly, but few can really do it justice.

    I agree totally

    And in defense of prose, my chosen medium, prose has form, while admittedly not as explicit. A prose writer develops patterns often more intricate and usually longer than those of poetry.

    My observation was in no way a criticism of prose, a medium that, while i do not write in it very much, i consume vast quantities of. I only wanted to emphasize the specific differences. Poetry lends itself to certain kinds of messages, while prose lends itself to others. Its hard to write novels in poetry. You’re absolutely right in saying prose has form, and that the forms are longer and often more intricate. The distinction I drew was that the form in Poetry is explicit, where in Prose it is much more subtle and implicit in the text.

  3. Harrison Beckmann on

    Oops… didn’t mean to imply you were bashing prose in any way. Of course, then it’s kind of funny that someone who tends towards introversion like you would use a style that is highly exterior in its form and often in its meaning, but I, the extrovert, would use a style that is internal in its form and meaning.