When looking for a song to put as poetry last week, I had a really difficult time. I found myself scrolling through my iTunes library looking for any songs whose lyrics went beyond just telling a story, and it took me a really long time to come across what I did. Those parameters I set up are worth discussing.
What is poetry exactly, and why does music count? Most people would assume that music is poetry thanks to its separated verses and rhyme scheme. But the article we read at the beginning of the unit talked a whole lot about content but not a lot about structure, implying that words don't have to be a certain form or laid out a certain way to be a poem. The article said that poetry doesn't always tell a story, which is why I skipped over songs that didn't go beyond that, but I really didn't have to. Under that rule even prose qualified.
Poetry is the most condensed form of literature. It doesn't matter what it's condensed from, whether it's a story or a moral or just words that sounds nice together; it only matters that it's condensed at all. I think poetry is any bit of written or spoken word that means more than what the word's literal definitions say on their own. But that hidden meaning is up for the reader to decipher and decide. One of the best things about poetry is that it's in the eyes of the beholder; if I could argue that "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" has all kinds of hidden meanings (within certain bounds of reality, no aliens around here) then it's poetry. If I argued that an English translation of "Gangnam Style" had more meaning than its ridiculous video suggested, then it's poetry too.
And I think that's fantastic.
I agree with you that one of the really cool things about poetry is that it can be defined differently from person to person. However I totally think there's a way that "twinkle twinkle little star" is about aliens.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you even need to find any hidden meanings behind poems and songs. Gangnam Style, for example, doesn't necessarily have to contain some secret truth about life. A large part of what makes poetry great is that it's about conveying experience and emotion rather than some deep lesson about life. Gangnam Style is about Psy loving the community he is from, and expressing his admiration for the duality of his city. He's clear about that, and I think that's all there is to it.
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