The Similarities Between Poetry and Music

In the car today, I was listening to the music of Vienna Teng. She has a beautiful, haunting voice and her lyrics are incredibly poetic.

In fact, as someone who writes poetry, I have often felt that poetry and music are very similar. Both art forms have the ability to capture a single experience or moment in time in a very visceral way. Poetry and music are as close as humanity comes to a direct expression of the soul.

For example, Jack Kerouac, who was both a poet and fiction writer, adopted a sort of stream-of-consciousness style of writing in order to approximate just that. His writing was his soul in written form.

I feel, as well, that poetry and music share something in common with meditation. In meditation, we attempt to experience the present moment directly, filtering the experience through the lens of thought as little as possible. Poetry and music both strive to express experience as directly as possible. Narrative writing – which is of course incredibly valuable in other ways – removes that removes the reader from the experience of the writer’s reality because lived experience is not linear and does not neatly follow a narrative. Poetry and music, however, are non-narrative for the most part. The goal of a poet and a musician often involves channeling experience in a very immediate and visceral way.

Read more: Life, Spirit, music, poetry

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Val M.

3:54AM PDT on Apr 30, 2013

Thanks

April 30
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JL A.

10:39AM PDT on Apr 25, 2013

lyrically correct

April 25
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Danuta W.

1:07AM PDT on Apr 25, 2013

Thanks for the information.

Shanti S.

11:38AM PST on Feb 14, 2013

Thank you.

February 14
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Duane B.

8:37AM PST on Jan 21, 2013

Thank you for sharing.

January 21
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Marianna B M.

4:39AM PDT on Jul 11, 2012

thanks

July 11
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Marianne B.

11:04PM PDT on Jul 10, 2012

Yes this is so tue. Thanks for the post

July 10
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Paul I.

2:48PM PDT on Jul 10, 2012

This similarity has been recognized in Ireland for centuries. In ancient Ireland they did not differentiate. The 'old' Irish used the same word for both and could be translated as; "Why don't you sing a poem" or "why don't you say a song"! Songs are simply poems with music added. Ask the 'poet' Kris Kristofferson turned musician!

devon l.

2:34PM PDT on Jul 10, 2012

Man/Woman cannot live by bread alone.... music, poetry, dance, and all the Art's are our "Food for the Soul"..... We could use more funding to restore the Art's and Humanities Programs(and Teachers) in all our schools across the Nation.........

Terry V.

9:50AM PDT on Jul 10, 2012