Rhythms of Speech

     Some poets focus on scansion to the exclusion of rhythm elsewhere.  Let's switch horses for a moment and consider the regularities of common speech.  Humor me.  I promise I'll come to a point eventually.



     The main difference between listening to verse and prose is that meter involves processing stichs of fixed length.  We soon learn how and when the line is going to end.  Thus, we scan verse backwards.  To wit, amid many similar lines we can discern that Leonard Cohen is not finished here:

I am the one who loves changing from nothing...

      Thus, we wait for the finale: 

...to one.

      If surrounded by the rest of the lyric we hear the meter as [acephalous] anapestic (de-de-DUM) pentameter:

I | am the one | who loves chang|ing from noth|ing to one.

      We don't have this luxury in prose.  Instead, we must assimilate the rhythms as they occur, hearing them as a string of dactyls, the last one incomplete.

I am the | one who loves | changing from | nothing to | one...et cetera.

     Rising rhythms (i.e. iambs, anapests, bacchics) begin with unaccented syllables and end with stressed ones.  Falling ones (i.e. trochees, dactyls, antibacchics) are the opposite.  Roughly, the risers are used to express information and independence;  the fallers, emotionalism and authority.    

     Because Anglo-Saxons used so many articles and monosyllabic words, starting with the verb "to be" in all its forms, English is unquestionably an iambic (de-DUM, "rely") language.

The cat is here.

     Iambs, then, are our default pattern, evident in must reportage.  They produce a business-as-usual march of time.  We may wonder:  "What are the effects of the other cadences?"

     Trochee (DUM-de, "counter") suggests the imperative (i.e. commands and urgency), sometimes creating eeriness or suspense in the process.

Go to hell you jackass!

Help them!

     It follows that if we use trochees (DUM-de, "eager") for less forceful speech we risk losing modulation, like a slam poet screaming into the microphone for three minutes straight.  As they say, "too much emphasis is no emphasis at all."

     The spondee (DUM-DUM, "foxhound") and molossus (e.g. DUM-DUM-DUM, "wine dark sea") are just trochees on steroids but will tend to be more passionate than urgent, more contentious than authoritative.

Screw you!

No, I won't!

...and in the off chance that pigs fly...

     Strong, sympathetic leader characters will issue orders using trochees, not spondees.  The opposite is true of weaker tyrants.

     As the term "unstressed" suggests, pyhrrics (de-de, "as a") and tribachs (de-de-de, "and on the") are soothing, transitional sections.  As the excitement builds towards a climax these give way to  accented syllables.  In terms of tempo, stressed syllables are slower than unaccented ones.  To illustrate these points, compare this filler:

I am on the couch.

     ...to the conclusion drawn in this key sentence:

I think, therefore I am.

     Trinaries that include a stressed and two unstressed syllables tend to suggest movement, which might be literal (e.g. action), strategic (i.e. rising to or falling from a climactic point) or evolutionary (e.g. growth, entropy, metamorphosis).  This general trend is far more evident than the differences between trinaries, especially if we don't know when they began.

     The "waltzing" dactyl (DUM-de-de, "constitute") suggests the structure of a ball room or the fatalism of a Greek play.  Among the binaries, it is most closely associated with the trochee.  Conversely, the "driving" anapest (de-de-DUM, "a la carte") mirrors the iamb and often conveys lighter motifs.  If detectable, the "hopping" amphibrach (de-DUM-de, "repentant") suggests [mis]adventure.

     Trinaries with two accented syllables tend to be more distinct.  The "rocking" cretic (DUM-de-DUM, "Lancelot") hints at frustrating zero sum endeavors:

Sisyphus

Back and forth, | up and down

     As Clint Eastwood so aptly demonstrated, this futility can lead to resignation, enervation or callous indifference:

Hey, a man's | gotta do | what a man's | gotta do.

Do you feel | lucky, punk?

Go ahead.  | Make my day.

     The "badgering" bacchius (de-DUM-DUM, "We real cool") connotes insistence.  At the far extreme is the "detailing" antibacchius (DUM-DUM-de, "storm windows"), often explaining things in a stentorious MODIFIER-NOUN-verb format:

Black death was...etc.

     Even more than other falling rhythms (e.g. trochee and dactyl), antibacchic patterns can sound heavy handed. 

Hip bone con|nect'd to the | thigh bone.  The | thigh bone con|nect'd to the | knee bone.  The...etc.

     ...which could also be scanned as bacchics:

The hip bone | connect'd to | the thigh bone. | The thigh bone | connect'd to | the knee bone.  

     As we would see if the above were to occur in a conversation or speech, it is often difficult for our ear to detect in real time where and when the rhythm string began.  My advice is not to worry about this;  in well-composed efforts this will be either apparent or inconsequential.

     Speechwriters understand intuitively, if not consciously, when to employ which cadence.  This skill is glaringly evident in Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and the rhetoric feats of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and others.  Poets?  For metrists, it is a simple matter to choose the one cadence that captures the stanza's mood.  Almost by definition, today's text-based prose poets couldn't be bothered learning about rhythms--if only because they don't anticipate anyone reciting their work aloud.  That leaves the 2% of poets capable of writing actual free verse.  For them, this can be one of the most fascinating, vital and beneficial aspects of prosody.

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Addendum:

Margaret Ann Griffths

     As you could tell if you were to hear someone perform "Studying Savonarola", Margaret A. Griffiths (1947-2009) was the undisputed authority on twinning cadence with pace, mood and theme.  Did you know that for years Maz earned half of her income by winning poetry contests?  If the judges were conscientious enough to read the entries aloud the event became a struggle for second place. 

     Not that you should need it, but this is yet more independent, double-blind proof that the woman many knew as "Grasshopper" was, far and away, the greatest poet of our time.

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The Good, The Bad and the Indifferent

Billy Collins

    In "Music to a Poet's Ear" Billy Collins ("BC") is quoted as saying:  "Lyrics just don't hold up without the music."

    WTF? 

    And poems do? 

    In truth, almost no contemporary poems, starting with his own, hold up to scrutiny now or over time, with or without music.  In fact, over the last forty years the batting average of lyricists has been better than that of poets by a factor of infinity.  To wit, during that time we've had thousands of hit songs but not a single iconic poem--not even within the community that claims to read it (i.e. poets). 

Jim Morrison, 1943-1971

    With nary a hint of irony, the Laureate goes on to say:  "Jim Morrison is not a poet in any sense of the word."

     And Billy Collins is?

     Seriously.

     The Great Unwashed for whom Billy Collins expresses such disregard will be indifferent or feel the same way toward him [and, to be fair, most other living poets].  At the far extreme from the unfamiliar masses are the geeks sharing the same opinion.  Without exception, the more we know about the elements of the craft the lower our opinion of BC's "work" sinks.  Between those two poles are the dilettantes, few of whom could recite a single line he's written.  Here is a practical test:  Find those who confess to not knowing the difference between BC's offerings and poetry.  Ask them if "The Red Wheelbarrow" is free verse or metrical.  Not one will get it right.

     QED.

     The problem is that ConPoets such as Mr. Collins jury rig their definition of poetry to fit what they like to write without regard to technique, prosody, memorability, audience or any other measurable.  This is why we cringe whenever we hear the expression "substance over form."  When pseudointellectuals contend that depth is what distinguishes poetry from prose I wonder what authors they are reading.  Similarly, when they draw false dichotomies between poems and lyrics, I recommend songwriters like Cohen, Dylan, Ferron, Mitchell and others, inviting comparison between their verses and the pallid lines we see in literary 'zines.  This is not just the standard rhetorical ploy of comparing the Best of A to the Worst of B.  As uncommon as great song lyrics are, fine poetry is rarer still.  Always has been.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #11

     As for contemporary poetry standing the test of time, almost no one alive in 2015 can recite a single line of text-only poetry (i.e. without music) written during Jim Morrison's glory years between 1967 and 1971.  Thus, "Light my Fire" alone has already eclipsed everything Mr. Collins and his contemporaries will produce.  Don't expect that to change in the next 44 years.  Or the next 440.  Does this make Jim Morrison a good poet?

     Hardly, but it does make him a bad one--in every sense of the word--and that is a start.  Poetry is one of only two modes of communication.  Does anyone wish to argue that Doors lyrics are prose?

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #148

     To see Jim Morrison's efforts in perspective we all have to stipulate that "bad verse" is not an oxymoron.  In fact, it is almost as common as oxygen.  What is more, 99% of it is every bit as godawful as Jim Morrison's and BC's.

     To avoid this assessment, we could apply the original, objective, demand side (tinds) definition of poetry but with that comes the sobering realization that nothing written in the last half century qualifies. 

     As Leonard Cohen says, "poetry is a judgement, not a claim."  No audience?  No judgement.  No poetry. 

     Tree.  Falling.  Forest.     

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Novel Tree

From "Poetryoke":   "What is more, songs with substantial lyrics outlive 'silly love songs'.  Four decades later, 'Imagine' gets far more air play than the cringefests that made the Beatles famous:  'She Loves You', 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand', 'I Saw Her Standing There', etc."

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     No doubt you are familiar with Del Shannon's 1961 hit song, "The Runaway", which was used as the theme song to the 1986-87 NBC TV series, "Crime Story".  Thus, 25 years--a whole generation--later this song was being preserved in our common culture.  Similarly, hundreds of songs from the 1960s and later have been covered by today's artists.  Renditions of songs by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Neil Young are easily recognized by young people today--few of them sung by the original artist.  This longevity drops off as we go back to the 1950s and virtually disappears as we regard the 1940s.  Remarkably, this was about as evident in 1986 as it is today.  That is, in 2014 we might look back more than half a century to the 1960s;  in 1986 we might look back 25 years to 1961;  but, in 1961, we wouldn't look back more than a decade for songs to cover or use in movies or commercials.  Outside the protest genre, at least, our lyrical roots do not go much deeper than the 1960s. 

     The evidence is overwhelming:  the greatest English language lyrics were written in the last 50-60 years.  Why the switch from "songs" to "lyrics"?  Because the most reliable lifespan indicator is not music or performance but words.  

     Note how few songwriters you can name from before 1950.  This isn't a case of generational narcissism.  Even a cursory glance at lyrics by Ferron, Simon and Garfunkel, John Stewart, the Joans (Mitchell and Baez), Stan Rogers, and others should be enough to bring us to this inevitable conclusion:   

   Contemporary Songwriters:   ✓
      Classical Songwriters:   x

     I trust I don't need to convince you that there are no Shakespeares alive today.

         Contemporary Poets:   x
            Classical Poets:   ✓

   Contemporary Playwrights:   x
      Classical Playwrights:   ✓

Alison Pick

     The sense one has is that today's best versers have gone where the money is:  into song lyrics.  True, the vast majority of lyrics suck, as they always have, but we are only concerned with the verses that will survive the test of time.

     What about prose, though?  How do the great novelists of our time (e.g.¹ Carole Shields, Timothy Findley, Alison Pick, etc.) compare to those of the past (e.g.¹ Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, George Orwell, etc.)?  Not as storytellers, mind you, but as writers?

     No, it's not a trick question.  In fact, it's not even a tough one.

     Contemporary Novelists:   ✓
        Classical Novelists:   x

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Footnotes:

¹ - Your list is as good as mine.

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Writing Song Lyrics

"Whatever is too stupid to say can be sung."

    - Joseph Addison (1672-1719)

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Introductory Lyric Writing:

     Humankind's first musical instrument was undoubtedly the drum.  When Paul Simon went to South America to record "The Rhythm of the Saints" (released in 1990) he was astounded to see Brazilian kids being able to drum for hours, still maintaining a regularity that computerized equipment could barely surpass.   Today, with forms like rap, we seem to have come full circle:  words and drums, nothing else.  As they say in the music industry:  "The beat's the boss." 

Tip #1:  Have your beats fall on important words:  the nouns and verbs that tell the gist of your story.

     As a budding songwriter you want your tunes to be "singable".¹  You want people belting them out in the shower or humming them absent-mindedly as they play their computer games.  You want music directors, agents and producers to think of your pieces as earworms.  You want people to stop hitting their radio buttons when they come across your work.  Next to melody and beat, the most important aspect of your composition is the lyrics--not their meaning, mind you;  just the sounds of the words themselves.  In short, you want your music to be catchy and your words to be memorable. 

Leonard Cohen

And who will write love songs for you
when I am lord at last
and your body is a little highway shrine
that all my priests have passed?

    - "Priests" by Leonard Cohen, describing having one's songs played on car radios

     In this post you will find advice on how to write effective lyrics.  Don't sweat the nomenclature;  you just need to understand a few basic concepts.

     The two things that will make your words unforgettable are repetitions of sounds and rhythms.  You're already familiar with rhymes at the ends of lines.  In song, these don't have to be anywhere near exact, like "mask" and cask".  Virtually anything with the same vowel sounds will do.

Bob Dylan

Yes, how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?

      - "Blowin' in the wind" by Bob Dylan

     In addition to rhymes, it is a good idea to repeat other sounds within the lines, especially in words/syllables that will be underscored by beats.  These "reps" are called:

1.  alliteration if they come at the beginning of stressed syllables;  if elsewhere,

2.  assonance if they involve vowels;  or,

3.  consonance if they involve consonant sounds.

     Your chorus is, essentially, one huge mega-rep used to burrow into unsuspecting brains.  

     Clearly, singing takes more time than speaking.  This, itself, helps underline your words, just as over-enunciating them slowly would (e.g. "READ...MY...LIPS...").  A sonnet takes about 65 seconds to recite but Shakespeare's Sonnet XVIII, performed by Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, can take more than twice that long (2:56 minutes, in this case):



Melisma:

    While we're talking about Pink Floyd, consider these two lines from "Comfortably Numb":

Pink Floyd's David Gilmour

I
have become comfortably numb

    How can one word--one syllable, even!--be an entire line?  By having the performer sustain it for more than one beat.  This adds drama, poignancy and, above all, time to the performance.  Note that this elongation almost always involves vowel sounds, and usually long ones:  "pay", "paw", "pea", "pie", "Poe", "Pooh", or "pew" as opposed to "pen", "pin", or "pun", with "pan" lying somewhere in between.  Remember this when you are writing the last--the rhyming--word of your line.  Singers love to milk these!

Accentual versus Accentual-Syllabic:

    Most lines or songs are syllabic:  one note per syllable.  Take, for example, that second line from "Comfortably Numb":

have become comfortably numb 
DUM  de DUM DUM de dede DUM

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #82

    The music and singing both have a set number of beats--four, in this case--per line without regard to the number of other syllables between them.  Beyond that, there doesn't seem to be much of a pattern going on.

     Nevertheless, this "accentual" approach is how most English poetry was fashioned a thousand years ago;  to this day, it is still very common in English lyrics.

     More recent practice has shown that, if we put the same number of other syllables between each beat, we increase the song's singability.  These form units called "feet" which are either 2 or 3 syllables long, each featuring a beat.  That gives us five different possibilities, depending on where the beat lands within the 2- or 3-syllable foot:

1. First of two:  Trochaic (DUM-de): 

"Tommy | can you | hear me?"

   - Sound Repetitions:  "hear me"
   - Source:  "Tommy" by "The Who"

2. Second of two:  Iambic (de-DUM): 

"And we | will run | the rid|ges of | our green | land, Ten|nessee."

   - Reps:  "run" - "ridges", "green land Tennessee"
   - Source:  "Run the Ridges" as sung by the Kingston Trio

3. First of three:  Dactylic  (DUM-de-de):

"Raindrops on | roses and | whiskers on | kittens"

   - Reps:  "Raindrops" - "roses",  "whiskers" - kittens
   - Source:  "My Favorite Things"² by Rodgers and Hammerstein

4. Second of three:  Amphibrachic  (de-DUM-de):

   "It's four in | the morning | the end of | December"

   - Reps:  "four" - "morning", "morning" - "end" - "December"
   - Source:  "Famous Blue Raincoat" by Leonard Cohen

5. Third of three:  Anapestic  (de-de-DUM):

"We crossed ov|er the bord|er the hour | before dawn."

   - Reps:  crossed, over, border, hour, before
   - Source:  "Roads to Moscow" by Al Stewart

     It would help if you were to learn the basics of scansion (roughly:  rhythmic writing) but, for now, let's simplify:

Tip #2:  Keep either one other syllable between each beat or two other syllables between each beat.

     Note that what is considered a stressed syllable in poetry is not the same as in song, where, again, "the beat's the boss."  For example, if you were speaking, this sentence would be pronounced thus:

"And we will run the rid|ges of our green | land, Ten|nessee."

     ...as opposed to the song where, because of the beat, every second syllable is accented:  "of" is promoted to a stress while "land" is demoted to an unaccented word.

"And we | will run | the rid|ges of | our green | land, Ten|nessee."

Sonic Tempo:

     Earlier we mentioned how some vowel sounds are slow (e.g. "pay", "pew") while others are fast (e.g. "pin", "pen").  The same is true of consonant sounds:  "sh" and "j" take much longer than "p" or "t".  For example, compared to "pit", the word "josh" takes forever and a day to say.  To avoid unbalancing your line, then, try to distribute both types of sounds/words evenly within your lines.³

Tip #3:

Do not crowd a bunch of slow sounds into one spot and faster ones elsewhere.


Tip #4:  Better to have one syllable too few than one too many.

     Cramming too many syllables into too few beats can lead to people mishearing your lyrics, as in this famous case of eleven jammed around three:

tell them a hookah-smoking caterpillar



Tip #5:  As in life, if you're going to mess up, do so earlier, not later.

     Here is an example of a great lyricist going wrong:



     Note that sqeezing three syllables before and between beats works okay near the beginning of the line:

And¹ when² you³ rise and listen¹ to² the³ song again

     ...but it fails miserably here, at the end of a line:

there are wings on the raven¹ on² the³ wind

     Much better would have been:

there are wings on the raven wind

In Conclusion:

     I understand that country folk may not be your genre of choice but, on the subject of singability, study the earlier efforts of the master:  John Prine.



     Note that we said your lyrics should be "memorable" or, ideally, "unforgettable".  We didn't mention "discernible" or "intelligible".  Remember the scene from "27 Dresses" where Jane and Kevin butcher the lyrics to Elton John's "Benny and the Jets"?  This reinforces the point that lyrics are about sound, not meaning.



     Songs are about what the audience hears, not what the singer says.

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Footnotes:

¹ - For what it's worth, there is a natural tendency among successful songwriters to write less singable, more complex tunes later on in their careers.

² - Technically, this lyric can be scanned as dactylic, amphibrachic or anapestic.

³ - Some of us geeks believe the same is true in metrical poetry, saying that "all verse is quantitative."  Should all lines of English language poetry take the same time to recite?  That debate rages on.

---

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    Please take a moment to comment or ask questions below or, failing that, mark the post as "funny", "interesting", "silly" or "dull".  Also, feel free to expand this conversation by linking to it on Twitter or Facebook.  Please let us know if you've included us on your blogroll so that we can reciprocate.

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Entertaining Boredom

Earl the Squirrel's 25th Law

"Leave it all and like a man,
come back to nothing special,
such as waiting rooms and ticket lines,
silver bullet suicides,
messianic ocean tides,
racial roller-coaster rides
and other forms of boredom advertised as poetry."

   - Leonard Cohen, "Field Commander Cohen"

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Boredom

    What is more boring than watching paint dry?
   

Alexander Fleming

Watching mold grow.  Nevertheless, that is precisely how Alexander Fleming developed penicillin.

    Who among us hasn't attended a dull performance, let our minds wander, and come up with a fruitful idea?  Okay, our brilliancies don't necessarily change the world the way wonder drugs did but their source is often no more exciting than [Archimedes] watching bath water rise.  A hundred attendees at a mordant council meeting can, depending on their occupations or interests, ponder a hundred problems ranging from mathematics or clothing design to plumbing or beating a Tampa-2 defense.  As the performer prattles on and we float in our mental miasma, random juxtapositions conjure strange analogies and metaphors, provoking lateral thought.  I'm told the Four Point Principle was created while the innovator was trying to avoid listening to an ear-gouging rendition of "Four Strong Winds" (not this one, certainly).  Speaking for myself, I came up with my most successful thesis while watching--or not watching, really--a television show so vacuous I refuse to divulge its name.

    Without unbearable reality television, the neighbors' holiday slides, our niece's school play, senseless lyrics on the radio, information overload and serendipity human progress might come to a standstill.

     You cannot live forever but if you want it to seem so watch a lot of C-Span.  Ignore those rumors about it permanently lowering your metabolism. 

    Currently, then, the poetry reading serves as a cornucopia of boredom--a vital if common resource.  Nota bene:  a performance doesn't have to be remotely competent or interesting in order to inspire great thoughts or accomplishments.  Indeed, a terrible product can be more inspirational and influential than a classic;  the viewer sees a mess and says:  "Hell, even I could do better than that!"  And they're often right!

    The challenge is to either synthesize the byproduct (creativity) without being forced to undergo the treatment (boredom) or to find a more palatable treatment.  For example, if worried about rickets would you rather take cod liver oil or a vacation in sunny Rio de Janeiro?

Enter Entertainment
   

Max (Kat Dennings) and Caroline (Beth Behrs)

For fans, sitcoms such as "Two Broke Girls" or "Mike and Molly" can provide welcome "veggie time":  half an hour of freedom from our worries and obsessions.  While tedium slows time to a crawl entertainment causes it to blur past.  None of us glanced at our watches the first time we watched "Star Wars" or "Casablanca".  In every sense, then, entertainment is the antipodal opposite of the typical poetry reading.

At the end of this "time well wasted", though, what do we have to show for it?


Art/Poetry

    If we have monotony to stir creativity and entertainment to satisfy an audience where is the need for art?  Or, more specifically, poetry?

    Art/Poetry combines the worst aspects of boredom and entertainment:  the need to escape from the former and the time-collapse of the latter.  In essence, it multiplies two significant minuses to produce a profound positive.

    If you are a frequent reader of "Commercial Poetry" you know that poetry is verbatim:  a quoteworthy product that survives not on book shelves but in our memory and speech.  It inspires various endeavors, including its own replication.  Poetry's medium is entertainment and its currency is, at once, time and timelessness.  It is what remains.  As such, while boredom may provoke thought once, well-written and well-performed verse can do so forever, and without causing the adverse reaction that "poetry" readings do.

     It's not just the real deal.  It's the Rio deal.

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The Same Words

This is prose:

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This is poetry:

---

     How can this be?  They're the very same words!

God is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is afoot, magic is alive
Alive is afoot, magic never died

God never sickened
Many poor men lied
Many sick men lied
Magic never weakened

Magic never hid
Magic always ruled
God is afoot
God never died

God was ruler
Though his funeral lengthened
Though his mourners thickened
Magic never fled

Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
Though his words were twisted
The naked magic thrived

Though his death was published
Round and round the world
The heart did not believe

Many hurt men wondered
Many struck men bled
Magic never faltered
Magic always led

Many stones were rolled
But God would not lie down
Many wild men lied
Many fat men listened

Though they offered stones
Magic still was fed
Though they locked their coffers
God was always served

Magic is afoot, God rules
Alive is afoot, alive is in command
Many weak men hungered
Many strong men thrived

Though they boasted solitude
God was at their side
Nor the dreamer in his cell
Nor the captain on the hill

Magic is alive
Though his death was pardoned
Round and round the world
The heart did not believe

Though laws were carved in marble
They could not shelter men
Though altars built in parliaments
They could not order men

Police arrested magic
And magic went with them
For magic loves the hungry

But magic would not tarry
It moves from arm to arm
It would not stay with them
Magic is afoot

It cannot come to harm
It rests in an empty palm
It spawns in an empty mind
But magic is no instrument
Magic is the end

Many men drove magic
But Magic stayed behind
Many strong men lied
They only passed through magic

And out the other side
Many weak men lied
They came to God in secret
And though they left him nourished

They would not say who healed
Though mountains danced before them
They said that God was dead
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live

This I mean to whisper to my mind
This I mean to laugh with in my mind
This I mean my mind to serve 'til
Service is but magic

Moving through the world
And mind itself is magic
Coursing through the flesh
And flesh itself is magic

Dancing on a clock
And time itself
The magic length of God

Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.

     Note that this isn't a matter of a pre-existing poem being set to music and/or chanted/sung, as with Pink Floyd star David Gilmour's rendition of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.

Buffy Sainte-Marie

     Nor is it embedded poetry.  It is an excerpt from Leonard Cohen's 1966 novel, "Beautiful Losers", every word of which was intended, accepted and honored as prose.  Only when folksinger Buffy Ste. Marie read and, subsequently, sang this snippet did it become verse (a subset of poetry).

      How is that possible?  What definition of poetry or prose can handle this?  If adding background music made words verse then many a movie finale would qualify.  Chanting a telephone book doesn't make it poetry¹.

Leonard Cohen

     We could get into the technical aspects, pointing out that this is accentual heterometer, like "The Red Wheelbarrow" (except that it is mixed dimeter/trimeter rather than alternating dimeter/monometer).  However, the truth is much simpler than that:  people repeat it verbatim.  Whether they are speaking, chanting, or singing onstage or in the shower² is irrelevant.  They are making a voluntary effort to get the words exactly right.

     That is poetry.

     In fact, that is how all poetry came into being before the development of writing and prosody.  One cave dweller told a story, another wanted to preserve it, in whole or in part, for posterity.  This memorization effort turned a [prose³] tale into a poem.

     Voilà!

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Footnotes:

¹ - Until others follow your lead, chanting the same names, at least.

² - Or both, given the state of performance art, I suppose.

³ - Prose being the stuff we don't memorize and recite.

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The Musicality Morass

Almost every authority has mentioned the "music" or "musicality" of poetry. In the right hands both verse and music have, among other things, rhythm, pace, pauses, tone, and movement in common. This being the case, why are there so few people who have mastered both disciplines? Know any composers who were great poets? Vice versa? Among the living, Leonard Cohen may come closest: he wrote three best selling books of poetry and has won his nation's highest award for both poetry and songwriting but I'd stop well short of comparing his music to the great composers of our time.


The truth is that while both are art forms music and verse are two completely different types of endeavour. Music is like chess in that it is intrinsically logical and self-contained: after we learn the rudiments our innate ability kicks in, allowing us to intuit what comes next. The skill requires more practice than learning, though both are essential to attain the level of refinement needed to compete with other masters. Not surprisingly, we have seen quite a few chess and musical prodigies in our history.


Poetry is language. It is like bridge in that it is arbitrary: we need to learn a wide variety of systems, conventions and vocabulary before we can perform at a competent level. There is etymology but no universal logic to words; otherwise what we call "a pencil" wouldn't be called "un crayon" in France and "karandash" in Russia. Innate ability may help us win a spelling bee but it won't allow us to unravel a new language based on a few grammar and syntax rules, nor will it allow us to "reinvent" poetry without long exposure to it and an understanding of its rudiments. This explains why there are few, if any, bridge or poetry prodigies. Arthur Rimbaud may be the closest thing to our mythical "natural poet" but his youth was devoted to the study of literature.

Obviously, there is no positive correlation between musical and poetic acumen. Is there a negative one? I believe there is.

Let's begin with lyrics. Most of the great lyricists of our time work in unsophisticated musical genres, primarily folk: Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Simon & Garfunkle, et cetera. As we ascend the scale of musical complexity the lyrics get progressively worse, hitting their nadir with the libretto.

What about individuals, though? Does musical ability decrease the likelihood that one will be able to write poetry as well as others in the same intelligence bracket? If so, how?

I have a number of "poet" friends who are either musicians or music critics. All have extremely sophisticated tastes. Not one of these could write competent, interesting rhythmic verse--free or metrical--to save their lives. Most can't detect it when they hear it.

"I've immersed myself in music for decades. You're trying to tell me that I don't recognize rhythm? How can that be?"


Answer: The rhythms of speech and the rhythms of music are entirely different. Melisma is one of thousands of things a lyricist can get away with that a poet cannot: Bruce Springsteen makes multiple beats out of the word "I" in singing "I'm on Fire". Try that in speech and you'll look like a mo-o-o-o-ron.

I can see these people playing music in their heads as they read their prose-with-linebreaks or ham-fisted doggerel aloud. They are the poetic equivalent of tone deaf air guitarists singing in the shower. They have what I call "sonic dysplasia": a gifted music lover's inability to discern or create verbal rhythmic alignments. The frustration is compounded by the fact that the sufferers don't know they are afflicted. Not one understands why poetry audiences and editors avoid them.

Is the condition treatable? Maybe. However, it might be that the ability to hear musical rhythms occludes one's ability to discern poetic ones. Perhaps this is something future human psychologists will investigate. Unfortunately, squirrel psychologists are too busy trying to understand why we act so...well...squirrelly.

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