I’ve been thinking, looking out at the bright snow that fell all day yesterday, knowing that the temperatures will be in the teens for the next three days, how music is always such an integral part of poetry. After dinner last night, someone mentioned having heard a performance of Ancient Greek music. Only a couple of scraps of notation survive, and it is not at all clear how to interpret those. Greek and Roman music is essentially lost to us as to how it was composed. On the other hand, from visual depictions and accounts by ancient authors, we know quite a bit about the kinds of instruments they had and the uses to which music was put in society.
Music accompanied just about every social activity in ancient Greece, from religious ceremonies to athletic spectacles, to private dinner parties, known as symposia, because everyone drank together, to funerals. And it is safe to say that music probably accompanied most, if not all, presentations of poetry. Epic poetry was recited by professional rhapsodes, who travelled from place to place, giving performances of selected episodes from the epics. Those performers were also known as aoidoi, or singers. Lyric poetry gets its name from the tortoise-shell lyre that was played to accompany it. Tragedy, according to Aristotle, grew out of the choral dithyrambs, which were dedicated to Dionysos. Music and dance formed essential elements of Greek tragedy and comedy.
So it’s only natural that we should continue to associate poetry and music. For myself personally, I’ve always thought that popular song of any genre is a form of poetry. Everybody needs poetry, and everybody gets it. Most people get it from songs. Which leaves me thinking about poetry per se. Why did it separate from music, and where does that leave it? Poetry seems stranded in some sparsely populated zone, where some people light up at the sound of it or read it peacefully by a window, but where often it is met with complete incomprehension, even by those interested in the other arts.
What should poets do about this state of affairs, if anything? Should they simply listen to their own playlists, as everyone does, go to their own concerts? Should they try to dosomething with poetry, to bring it back into contact with music and movement and the stage? I believe that they can and should. Collaboration, as a process, is always fruitful, and the results of such experimentation can be spellbinding.
To a certain extent, though, these questions are rhetorical. Poetry is what it is, and those who need it will find it somewhere. Gregory Corso spoke of being a poet as a higher calling, or at least a level of verbal composition not achievable elsewhere. He made a point of denying that Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison were poets. I think he is right to make a distinction between what we call poetry and what we call song lyrics, and I applaud his pride in being a poet, which I also share, but I would argue that musicians who use lyrics intelligently use them in a way that makes them a form of poetry.
It doesn’t change the fact that poetry is out in the woods somewhere. People don’t line up around the block for it — most of the time. There are certain poets who have that star attraction, and they do pull in crowds. Partially, that is because they have branched out into other areas. Often fiction, or some other form of writing, will reach a larger audience, which can then be drawn in to the poetry. But really, it’s a quality in the poet herself (the poets I am thinking of with this star quality are all women). It’s about hitting the times with something they needed without necessarily knowing it. And then poetry makes it to the pedestal reserved for more popular forms. It’s exciting to see, and a reminder of what poetry can achieve.
But still I am fascinated by the relationship of poetry to music. Somewhere in it, music must live. It’s there for us, as poets and readers, to find. And then, maybe, we can dance.
[Image: Wall fresco of a seated woman with a kithara, 40-30 BC, from the Villa Boscoreale of P. Fannius Synistor; late Roman Republic.]
Comments