Are Pop Songs Poetry?
This question must have crossed your mind? What are the similarities?
The creators of both call themselves writers. The focus is emotions, life experiences. The attitude is liberal, (call it edgy if you will) and inspiration plays a huge part. There are genres in both, so you have rap in popular music just as you have limericks in poetry and ballads are found in both.
Poetry is always looking for a line to cross, a rule to break and an assumption to test.
The whole history of English poetry has been a movement from expected forms and structures to breaking the very forms and structures. During Shakespeare’s time and medieval poetry before that, poetry always had regular rhymes and rhythmic stresses. Today, except from poets who write for children, most poets wouldn't go anywhere near regular patterns.
It is a sign of the times – all the line breaks, curt points, disjointed and disturbingimages. So what is the difference?
One aspect of poetry is sheer concentration or semantic density. More is meant from a word in a poem than what you can find out about it in a dictionary. So all the extras you can attribute to the collective meaning of any single word depend entirely on your maturity, sensitivity and empathy.
The other thing is a poet often makes you see something very common in a very different light. Sometimes the associations you are used to will be completely knocked out and you start seeing everything differently.
Here's the thing: I think one's level of interest in poetry is distinctly correlated with the degree of melancholy you feel about your life. A passively thoughtful perspective makes you open to the thoughts of others. If you don’t believe me, get an anthology of poems about love all ready. When you need it, the poems will resonate with a clarity that will singe your memories. Suddenly the poem gets very meaningful when you are in pain.
Poetry is about signalling a meaningful, oftentimes unconventional reaction to an experience. But you won't hum a poem all day long.
Are there pop songs that are deeply poetic? Yeah, I think Tracy Chapman is very poetic. I will get you a song of hers I like and post it.
The creators of both call themselves writers. The focus is emotions, life experiences. The attitude is liberal, (call it edgy if you will) and inspiration plays a huge part. There are genres in both, so you have rap in popular music just as you have limericks in poetry and ballads are found in both.
Poetry is always looking for a line to cross, a rule to break and an assumption to test.
The whole history of English poetry has been a movement from expected forms and structures to breaking the very forms and structures. During Shakespeare’s time and medieval poetry before that, poetry always had regular rhymes and rhythmic stresses. Today, except from poets who write for children, most poets wouldn't go anywhere near regular patterns.
It is a sign of the times – all the line breaks, curt points, disjointed and disturbingimages. So what is the difference?
One aspect of poetry is sheer concentration or semantic density. More is meant from a word in a poem than what you can find out about it in a dictionary. So all the extras you can attribute to the collective meaning of any single word depend entirely on your maturity, sensitivity and empathy.
The other thing is a poet often makes you see something very common in a very different light. Sometimes the associations you are used to will be completely knocked out and you start seeing everything differently.
Here's the thing: I think one's level of interest in poetry is distinctly correlated with the degree of melancholy you feel about your life. A passively thoughtful perspective makes you open to the thoughts of others. If you don’t believe me, get an anthology of poems about love all ready. When you need it, the poems will resonate with a clarity that will singe your memories. Suddenly the poem gets very meaningful when you are in pain.
Poetry is about signalling a meaningful, oftentimes unconventional reaction to an experience. But you won't hum a poem all day long.
Are there pop songs that are deeply poetic? Yeah, I think Tracy Chapman is very poetic. I will get you a song of hers I like and post it.
Comments