Due to me feeling un-creative tonight, and that it is nine o' clock at night, I'm just gonna write a little piece of something we all know and love... Music.
As we approach the end of our poetry unit, we were asked to find a song that, to ourselves, is a poem. There's a funny thing about music that we don't quite experience in poetry, mostly the rhythm of each (bu-dum tiss). Well, what I mean by that, is one has a catchy beat in the background and the other goes through a lame pattern of tame matters that rhymes in sequence of time and secrets. Oops, you didn't just see that.
Anyways, music makes us feel inspired and emotional. When you are reading a poem, you read it in your own voice. When listening to music, you are hearing the intensity of whoever the artist is, telling their poem the way it is meant to be heard. Imagine good ole Billy Shakespeare reciting Shall I compare thee... to whichever fine (or maybe not-so-fine) mistress he wanders across. (Time machine Bucket List. It's official)
A lot of people complain about not "getting" poems. They have so much hidden meaning buried in metaphor and simile and imagery and implication and explication and literal and imaginary and concrete and abstract that it is hard to figure it out on the first go. It took me several reads to actually understand Sylvia Plath's Metaphors, and even then, I had to talk to some classmates to truly understand the different aspects of the poem that related to what it meant. If you haven't read it, click here; it really is a good beginner's poem to read if you want to get started into poetry.
So what makes music so different? Returning to my original statement, its rhythm. I doubt many people can get a song right on the first go, even if they tell you they can. Granted, these days all this lame poppy music is pretty blunt and obvious (oh hey, you just met me and want me to call you maybe. will do), but I am talking about music that isn't trying to appeal to us in that way, the stuff that makes us think. Pop music really just tries to sell us their songs, and it's not easy to do that if someone has to think about why they want to buy it.
When I get a new album, I gotta listen to it 5 or 6 times through, and even then I only get the lyrics. After days and days of singing the songs to myself, then is when I really get it. But hey, I enjoy listening to music, to sit on the bus and blast out the world in the sweet sounds of stereo and synthesizers. Put a nice beat across a poem and I bet I'd listen to it a thousand times as well.
So to wrap this up, I guess what I am trying to say is to give things a chance. Poetry isn't easy to get at first, and you're not gonna record yourself saying it just so you can listen to it a million times and understand it, and no one else is either. Music IS poetry, it's just easier to understand. So instead of throwing your [insert literary medium here] into the air, burning it to pieces, feeding it to your dog, or tossing it at your little brother, try to read a couple lines and hey, maybe you'll run into something you really like!
Since it's a calm-ish night and I am feeling slightly generous, enjoy this peaceful eight song playlist for your listening pleasures.
Modest Mouse - World At Large
Modest Mouse - Custom Concern
Motion City Soundtrack - Boxelder
Motion City Soundtrack - Hold Me Down
Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks
Death Cab for Cutie - Lack of Color
Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism
Ben Folds Five - Brick
Word Count: 662
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