Home The Nature and Objective of Aesthetics Art and the Artist The Art Work The Art Work in the Making The Creative Mind  Art and the Artist Art and the Layman The Experience of Beauty Beauty in Music Painting Poetry The Nature of Language The Nature of Poetry Poetry As Verbal Music Poetry As Poetic Idea The Poetic Idea	POETRY AS VERBAL MUSIC As verbal music, a poem is a sequence of words so arranged in meter, rhythm, rhyme, and versification as to produce an organic form of sound that becomes significantly effective as such. Words lend themselves to melodic sequences in that inherently they are pure sound, possessing, as sounds, all the material resources of tones: pitch, intensity, duration, quality, or color, and the orchestral effects of assonance and alliteration. When treated artistically they can therefore parallel a pure melody in creating a mood. The poet of verbal music constructs a musical pattern of words that becomes a source of delight, that moves us as a melody does. It is thus verbal music that Pater calls "at least artistically, the highest and most complete form of poetry," just because its effect of perfection, of completeness, does not depend on an idea expressed, but rather "on a certain suffusion or vagueness of mere subject, so that the definite meaning almost expires, or reaches us through ways not distinctly traceable by the understanding." Jasper Johns The poet, as pure artist, is thus the architect of verbal sounds. He is a composer in words, making use of all possible resources that words possess as tonal material. Some words or verbal combinations have greater poetic possibilities than others. Technical terms or technical phrases which are arbitrarily invented for definite purposes are not only non-poetic, but anti-poetic. Similarly with colloquialisms and words with established ludicrous or trivial associations. On the other hand, there are words whose very fringe of associations enhances their poetic value, in that they suggest images, feelings, or meanings which are in themselves beautiful. They possess imaginative significance. In the words of Tennyson: All the charm of all the Music often flowering in a lovely word. Then there are phrases rich in imaginative, contemplative value, as these lines from Shakespeare XXXth sonnet: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past. The beauty of the Psalms lies chiefly in this magic of words and phrases creative of moods of repose and assurance: Then they are glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven. The lines speak to us as does a serene or joyful melody. Why art thou cast down, O my Soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God: For I shall yet praise him Who is the health of my countenance. And my God. . . . . . . . . . . . The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, And night unto night sheweth knowledge: Their voice cannot be heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth. And their words to the end of the world. "Forlorn!" Keats cries, "the very word is like a bell." But its beauty is not its mere tonal quality, but more so the reminiscent mood of forlornness. The sensuous quality of words is different from that of tones, and the lyric poem, although a melody, is yet more and less than a melody. It has the melodic effect of a melody, but it is less than a melody. It has the mood effect of a melody, but more so. There is a definiteness in the verbal melody that is lacking in the tonal melody. This definiteness is due to the greater tangibility of words as compared with tones. Words, being principally a tool of action, even their sensuous quality comes to closer grips with life than that of tones. So that although the lyric poem approaches music in its identity of matter and form, it effect is more solid, substantial, just because its matter is its form, while in a melody the form is its matter. The musical element of a poem, giving it its sensuous beauty, thus bringing it close to music, is due to the rhythmic quality inherent in speech. There is a natural tendency in us for the rhythmic organization of sounds. If we repeat a series of haphazard sounds several times they will inevitably arrange themselves into a rhythmic pattern of some sort, to which a time-signature could be affixed. This is the basis of meter. A meter is to verse what a measure is to music. Meter again arranges itself into larger units, like musical measures into phrases. These larger units form the rhythm of the poem. The rhythm has a tempo which is derived from the predominance of long or short vowels of the syllables. In Browning's lines: Marching along, Fifty score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, Singing this song. the tempo is slow as compared with the following: Out of the dust Soaring alone In composure of flight Skylark of stone. The meter in both is the same. In musical notation their time-signature would be 2/4. Dividing them into measures they look alike: /Mar-ching a-/long/ /Fif-ty score/strong/ /Great-hearted/gentlemen/ /Singing this/song/ /Out of the/dust/ /Soa-ring a-/lone/ /In composure of/flight/ /Sky-lark of/stone/ The number of "notes" is the same in each case, only that in the fifth "measure" of the second there are four eighth notes, while in the same measure of the first there is one quarter note and two eighth notes. But the tempo of the first is slower than that of the second. The tempo influences the mood effect of the melody in both verse and music, the slow movement being more serene, the faster more gay. There is also a "major" and a "minor" key in verse as in music. The meter of the opening stanza of Gray Elegy and Wordsworth My Heart Leaps Up is the same. Musically, the time-signature of both would be 3/4. But the mood effect of the first is that of a grave, lingering melody in a minor key, while the effect of the second is more in keeping with the mood of a major key. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began: So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. Poets have always experimented with the melodic possibilities of words, but particularly so within recent years with the advent of the free-verse movement. The movement is, in fact, an attempt to expand the musical resources of language beyond the confines of classical versification. The advocates of free verse are aiming at pure poetry, or poetry in which form is all and subject-matter nothing. The modernistic poet adjures themes, meanings, ideas, or preachments as a function or even ingredient of poetry. Poetry is not a "criticism of life" as Matthew Arnold called it, which would limit its scope of subject-matter, but the bringing of "a new and heightened consciousness to life," an "added consciousness and increased perception." Such is also the effect of the traditional lyric. But the modernists would limit themselves neither to the "pretty" themes of the lyric nor to its form. Their aim is this heightened consciousness of the whole possible range of experience in whatever manner it can be brought about, even to the disregard of grammatic form. Here's a little mouse) and What does he think about, i wonder as over this floor (quietly with bright eyes) drifts (nobody can tell because Nobody knows, or why jerks Here I, here, gr)oo) ving the room's Silence) this like a littlest poem a (with wee ears and see? tail frisks) (gonE) "mouse"  . . . . . . . . . . . . The metrical basis of free verse is, in the words of Amy Lowell, "unrhymed cadence." It has discarded a strict metrical system for the "organic rhythm" of the speaking voice, made necessary by breathing. Free verse differs from ordinary prose rhythms "by being more curved, and containing more stress." The unrhymed cadence does not consist in a mere chopping of prose lines into certain lengths, but "is constructed upon mathematical and absolute laws of balance and time." The objective is to "heat up an emotion until it burns whitehot," and unrhymed cadence is most effective in doing this. Since it is this heating up of an emotion to white-hot that poetry strives after, the subject or theme is irrelevant, the treatment the all-essential. There is no such thing as a poetical subject. There is only poetical form, for whatever the subject, its poetic significance is the heightened perception, the white-hot emotion that it generates. From the point of view of the modernistic poet, this heating up of emotion has been the substance of all poetry through the ages, its channels only being changed from age to age. Wordsworth was blamed for poetizing about commonplace things. Today the poet is condemned for resorting to kitchen utensils: Now the old copper Basin suddenly Rattled and tumbled from the shelf, Bumping and crying, "I can fall by myself." But whether a primrose or a pot for theme, the poet is the architect of words, and can evolve a verbal form whose effect will be an enhanced experience of living, whether the form be the traditional lyric or the modernistic unrhymed cadence.