Anyone like poetry?

[LiveMusic]

I am certainly into songwriting, have written hundreds. I often read of great songwriters admiring poetry. Anyone have poets/books that you particularly admire?

On a darker note, I just now recalled that when I was young, college age, I was quite enamored with some of Edgar Allan Poe's work. Need to revisit that, if for no other reason than nostalgia! I love dark themes in songwriting, maybe there is a connection. But this is just a mention, I love upbeat stuff too!

[Mr. Jelly]

I've been getting back into writing and poetry. Though poetry is a stretch as far as what I produce. I have found that I am into nonsense poetry and writing. There are not that many poets to draw from in this area. It feels like mental dancing to me.

[ghostnote]

I’ve always been a reader of books, but I’ve never given poetry a proper try. Of course I’ve read some here and there over the years, but the stuff I’ve read always seems to be written by someone trying way too hard to be an “artiste”. I don’t want to be hit over the head with someone’s shock treatment - let me think about it a little. I know there’s great poetry out there - obviously - because I’ve seen interviews with several prose writers that I admire who love reading poetry. Like many others here, I’m a songwriter, so I understand nuance and brevity while making your point. I just need to find the right author, I guess, but I’m way too busy now to get into it. Someday.

[TheGITM]

Originally Posted by LiveMusic

I am certainly into songwriting, have written hundreds. I often read of great songwriters admiring poetry. Anyone have poets/books that you particularly admire?

On a darker note, I just now recalled that when I was young, college age, I was quite enamored with some of Edgar Allan Poe's work. Need to revisit that, if for no other reason than nostalgia! I love dark themes in songwriting, maybe there is a connection. But this is just a mention, I love upbeat stuff too!

One of my favorite Poe short stories is 'The Spectacles'... it's one to make you chuckle a little...

[zuzu]

I am currently enjoying the poetry of a songwriting friend of mine. He is quite the poet as well as lyricist and may, in fact, be best off to concentrate on his poetry. I think it is quite good.

[jaymarsch]

I love poetry and will sometimes read poems and a line or two will inspire me to write a song.
Best,
Jayne

[warfrat73]

I find Gary Snyder, and Axe Handles in particular, to be indispensable (just look at my signature), though I recognize he's not for everybody.

Haven't been reading too much lately, but read a lot in college and early in grad school, some fairly canonical options that I really like (forgive me if some are too obvious):

Theodore Roethke
Galway Kinnell
Frank O' Hara
William Wordsworth
Wallace Stevens
Aimee Cesaire
Maya Angelou
Kamau Brathwaite
Amari Baraka
Pablo Neruda
Derek Walcott
N. Scott Momaday
Rita Dove
Langston Hughes
Paul Celan

Like I said, I haven't read a ton lately, but for contemporary writers, I can recommend my friend Derrick Harriell.

But there are lots of different kinds of poetry, depends on what you're looking for.

[eyesore]

I always felt very respectful towards poetry ,but I just can't get into it. Forced to read it in school has always made me feel like I was in detention.... Wish I had the head for it.

[FrankHudson]

My Parlando Project is largely taking a range of literary poetry and combining it with original music in various styles. A few things I've noticed in my experience doing this (YMMV):

• The process of composing, performing, and recording various poets work brings me to a much richer experience of the poetry. Silent poetry on the page (while worthwhile) seems like a shallower experience.
  
• So, read a poem aloud. Heck, read it aloud more than once, particularly if it's short. How does it sound in your mouth? What expression should you speak the words with?
  
• Music hath charms. There are quite a few song lyrics that don't make easily obtained sense -- but combined with music we might not let that bother us.
  
• Even without musical accompaniment, you might allow yourself to just enjoy the words without straining to "understand" everything in the poem. There's not test later. No one needs to grade you.
  
• Another phenomenon: when combined with music we are led to hear a set of words a number of times, and eventually a meaning not apparent to us will appear. A fair number of times the poem I think I'm starting work on becomes a different poem after spending the hours on composition and its performance.
  
• Free verse sometimes can be combined with music just fine, despite most song lyrics using metrical/rhymed verse.
  
• One thing a lot of literary poetry eschews that most lyrics written to be sung revel in: repetition. I sometimes enjoy that difference, That concision, the starkly saying something once. Other times, I "songifiy" the poems in my Project by creating refrains that the poem didn't have on the page.
  
  
  Poets I learned to appreciate more fully via my Project:
  
  
• William Butler Yeats. Lovely verse. Actually tried once to be a songwriter of an unorthodox type.
  
• Robert Frost. His early poetry has become some of my richest songs I think.
  
• Edward Thomas. Befriended Frost when Frost was in Britian before WWI. Under-known in the US.
  
• Sara Teasdale. Wrote complicated love songs, often with dark undercurrents. The OP should check her out. I ran into her first hearing Tom Rapp's version of her poem "I Shall Not Care" that out-Poes Poe.
  
• Edna St. Vincent Millay. As a persona, I compared her to Joni Mitchell 50 years before Joni Mitchell.
  
• Fenton Johnson. Black Chicago poet who wrote most of his poetry before the Harlem Renaissance. Largely forgotten, worthy of greater attention. Wrote one of the first poems about a blues songster: "The Banjo Player."
  
• Joseph Campbell. Not the "Power of Myth" guy. He's an Irish poet. Wrote song lyrics as well as poetry. Best as I can tell, he's responsible for making the British Isles folk standard "Reynardine" about a shape-shifting warefox.
  
• Langston Hughes. One of the original Jazz poets. Was doing that when Jazz was considered largely disreputable. Was still doing it when 50s beatniks tried their hand at it.
  
• Carl Sandburg. Well, I always loved him, but that love just expanded with my Project. Underrecognized for bringing forward American folk music as a cultural object, played folk songs on his guitar at his poetry readings. I have a theory: no Woody Guthrie as we know him without Sandburg. Pete Seeger paid attention.
  
• Emily Dickinson. I once had this impression of this slight, lovelorn, poet with the quaint little graveyard gothic touches when I read what was included in my midcentury school anthologies long ago. Woah! She's a lot more than that. At times austerely intellectual/philosophical, other times satirical and funny and a lot of territory in between. I've compared some of her poetry to 60s psychedelia (really!) But she used hymn meter a great deal, so it's so tempting to use her work as an alternative hymnal.

[Cypress Knee]

My favorite poets in no particular order:

Alfred Lord Tennyson
Robert Frost
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Carl Sandburg
Edgar Allan Poe
Robert Burns
William Blake
Whomever wrote "The Song of Solomon"

[LiveMusic]

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

My Parlando Project is largely taking a range of literary poetry and combining it with original music in various styles. A few things I've noticed in my experience doing this (YMMV):

• The process of composing, performing, and recording various poets work brings me to a much richer experience of the poetry. Silent poetry on the page (while worthwhile) seems like a shallower experience.
  
• So, read a poem aloud. Heck, read it aloud more than once, particularly if it's short. How does it sound in your mouth? What expression should you speak the words with?
  
• Music hath charms. There are quite a few song lyrics that don't make easily obtained sense -- but combined with music we might not let that bother us.
  
• Even without musical accompaniment, you might allow yourself to just enjoy the words without straining to "understand" everything in the poem. There's not test later. No one needs to grade you.
  
• Another phenomenon: when combined with music we are led to hear a set of words a number of times, and eventually a meaning not apparent to us will appear. A fair number of times the poem I think I'm starting work on becomes a different poem after spending the hours on composition and its performance.
  
• Free verse sometimes can be combined with music just fine, despite most song lyrics using metrical/rhymed verse.
  
• One thing a lot of literary poetry eschews that most lyrics written to be sung revel in: repetition. I sometimes enjoy that difference, That concision, the starkly saying something once. Other times, I "songifiy" the poems in my Project by creating refrains that the poem didn't have on the page.
  
  
  Poets I learned to appreciate more fully via my Project:
  
  
• William Butler Yeats. Lovely verse. Actually tried once to be a songwriter of an unorthodox type.
  
• Robert Frost. His early poetry has become some of my richest songs I think.
  
• Edward Thomas. Befriended Frost when Frost was in Britian before WWI. Under-known in the US.
  
• Sara Teasdale. Wrote complicated love songs, often with dark undercurrents. The OP should check her out. I ran into her first hearing Tom Rapp's version of her poem "I Shall Not Care" that out-Poes Poe.
  
• Edna St. Vincent Millay. As a persona, I compared her to Joni Mitchell 50 years before Joni Mitchell.
  
• Fenton Johnson. Black Chicago poet who wrote most of his poetry before the Harlem Renaissance. Largely forgotten, worthy of greater attention. Wrote one of the first poems about a blues songster: "The Banjo Player."
  
• Joseph Campbell. Not the "Power of Myth" guy. He's an Irish poet. Wrote song lyrics as well as poetry. Best as I can tell, he's responsible for making the British Isles folk standard "Reynardine" about a shape-shifting warefox.
  
• Langston Hughes. One of the original Jazz poets. Was doing that when Jazz was considered largely disreputable. Was still doing it when 50s beatniks tried their hand at it.
  
• Carl Sandburg. Well, I always loved him, but that love just expanded with my Project. Underrecognized for bringing forward American folk music as a cultural object, played folk songs on his guitar at his poetry readings. I have a theory: no Woody Guthrie as we know him without Sandburg. Pete Seeger paid attention.
  
• Emily Dickinson. I once had this impression of this slight, lovelorn, poet with the quaint little graveyard gothic touches when I read what was included in my midcentury school anthologies long ago. Woah! She's a lot more than that. At times austerely intellectual/philosophical, other times satirical and funny and a lot of territory in between. I've compared some of her poetry to 60s psychedelia (really!) But she used hymn meter a great deal, so it's so tempting to use her work as an alternative hymnal.

Well, that is the mother lode. Frank, you are quite a writer. Do you have a 'bio' page? I googled your 'The Parlando Project' and it's amazing but I didn't find a bio. Just curious about your background due to your writing talent. You should make a link in your sig for your project.

[Jeff D]

I'm a poetry fan as well. I can somehow write lots of poetry while being totally unable to write lyrics to save my life.

Even though Tolkien isn't exactly a poet, I love his poetry. I sit and think is one of particular beauty.

I also have to throw is Robert Burns who I haven't seen yet. The Lea Rig, is probably my favorite of his, though it's also a song.

[FordGT]

I have always loved Robert Service. He captures the outdoors and intense cold of Alaska such that I feel as if I am there. I know he doesnt rank with the " Greats" but I always enjoy his poems

[LiveMusic]

Originally Posted by FordGT

I have always loved Robert Service. He captures the outdoors and intense cold of Alaska such that I feel as if I am there. I know he doesnt rank with the " Greats" but I always enjoy his poems

Well, thank you very much! My introduction to Robert service just now...

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...asphemous-bill

That poet's good!

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by LiveMusic

Well, that is the mother lode. Frank, you are quite a writer. Do you have a 'bio' page? I googled your 'The Parlando Project' and it's amazing but I didn't find a bio. Just curious about your background due to your writing talent. You should make a link in your sig for your project.

Thanks for those kind words. There's an older About page on the Project's site: The Parlando Project blog site and archive and I've even written some about the history of my outlook toward music and poetry, and how the Project came about scattered in the years of posts. Part of my goal for the project is "other people's stories" -- in other words, I'm trying to encourage experiences of the various poets whose words I use.

But you remind me that About page is old and sparse. I probably should do something better.