# Poetry, the link between language and music?



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Recently I had a sort of epiphany with appreciating poetry that was born out of my spanish studies. In listening to Spanish programs that I do not understand much of, I decided I would try to focus on it like its music. I found it could actually be kind of interesting and I found that when coupled with other forms of studying, it has been helpful in learning the language. Then it occurred to me that poetry might require a focus more like music. I realized that I had been thinking about poetry far too linguistically all these years. When listening to some especially nebulous in meaning poems, the element of how the vowels sound and the rhythms function when heard aloud, in tandem with what meaning is present, produces a yet more meaningful whole. 

I feel like I have so much more to learn though...truly hearing a poem with all its musical elements present requires a certain kind of attention and the right oration. I have a feeling that any competent poets writes with a real ear for how these 'musical elements' inherent in the language(and further communicated to the reader by punctuation and layout), contribute to whatever foundation meaning they chose build on. Perhaps this is obvious to many more experienced than I, but to actually HEAR the truth of this when listening to a poem whose meaning I could not comprehend in the fully literal sense of the word, has been mind-blowing to me.

What are your thoughts? It would be wonderful if we could have a discussion that was reinforced with poetic examples. 

One of the breakthrough poems in this with me has been Wallace Steven's "Of Mere Being." That poem for me epitomizes both by its content and its 'musical elements,' just what is so hard to put a finger on about poetry and the plethora of other concepts that aren't quite possible to actually analyze.


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

clavichorder said:


> Recently I had a sort of epiphany with appreciating poetry that was born out of my spanish studies. In listening to Spanish programs that I do not understand much of, I decided I would try to focus on it like its music. I found it could actually be kind of interesting and I found that when coupled with other forms of studying, it has been helpful in learning the language. Then it occurred to me that poetry might require a focus more like music. I realized that I had been thinking about poetry far too linguistically all these years. When listening to some especially nebulous in meaning poems, the element of how the vowels sound and the rhythms function when heard aloud, in tandem with what meaning is present, produces a yet more meaningful whole.
> 
> I feel like I have so much more to learn though...truly hearing a poem with all its musical elements present requires a certain kind of attention and the right oration. I have a feeling that any competent poets writes with a real ear for how these 'musical elements' inherent in the language(and further communicated to the reader by punctuation and layout), contribute to whatever foundation meaning they chose build on. Perhaps this is obvious to many more experienced than I, but to actually HEAR the truth of this when listening to a poem whose meaning I could not comprehend in the fully literal sense of the word, has been mind-blowing to me.
> 
> ...


Hi Clavichorder,

If you are familiar with Ralph Vaughan-Williams "Songs of Travel", his music depicts aurally what Robert Louis Stevenson writes:






If memory serves me well: "The sister of music is poetry, but its mother is sorrow".


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