Ryhming

[Will Kirk]

A while back I talked with a fellow who seemed intent on thinking that to write words that don't ryhme takes as much thought as it does to make a lyric that ryhmes. IMO Lyrics should have thought put into them, but what do you all think of the so called, "Modern Poetry" ie "poems" that go as follows

My wheelchair binds me
I don't want it to hold me
Help Me

^I saw this in an airport

So, any one else want to share their opinion?

[Thorolf]

You can usually use just any piece of text for composing music. Rhyme and rhythm can bind the ideas, but can also structure and inspire them. It all depends, really. I found the airport poem crappy, not because of lack of rhyme, but bad structure and lack of content.

Myself is about 50/50 to which comes first, melody or lyrics.



Regards

[reith]

I suppose some words make me think musically and others not. I wrote a few songs when I started composing, mainly for a small ensemble and singers at school and none of the words rhymed unless by accident. (Am now intermittently trying to reconstruct some settings of haiku (don't know what the plural is) that presented a challenge because they are so short).

[Bassoonery]

wow I'd love to hear your haiku settings. Are you writing in a Japanese influenced style?

[reith]

Cheers. Thanks. No, not Japanese, in fact I didn't even know what a haiku was when I picked the words up (in English), other than an oriental thingie.

Sorry to say they're early and no great shakes. The one I posted in Educational was a particular mood, easy to fit to samples etc.
I'm trying to reconstruct them but the scores are all over the place or lost - some were played at school, some at local fesitvals, etc. I'm hope to rescue a couple from parts and vocal drafts.

The voice they were written for is no longer about so with a hope of live performance I'm re-doing them for contralto and sextet.


ps. but after the intervening years, some of them sound facile and, frankly, boring. To be expected....

[Whataguy!]

Reith, I'd love to hear the music you've set to haiku (that's the plural, by the way) because my colleagues and I do a lot of work like that for Japanese advertising. We hire traditional Japanese musicians, they play whatever, and we write string parts and/or synth beds to enhance what they play.

Incidentally, that airport poem although haiku-like in form doesn't qualify as a haiku because a haiku is about nature and nature only. When a poet writes in that form about humans, the poem is called a senryu.

A large part of Japanese poetry is about form. Haiku and Senryu have to conform to the 5 syllable-7 syllable-5 syllable format.

Heavy rain falling
Raindrops splashing everywhere
Grasshoppers leaping

When first reading a haiku/senryu in English or Japanese, the first reaction is "What the fricative does this mean?" But when you meditate on the poem, you begin to see the implied deeper meaning in it. Enough digression . . .

Reith, let us hear what you've got. Looking forward to it.

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Will Kirk

A while back I talked with a fellow who seemed intent on thinking that to write words that don't ryhme takes as much thought as it does to make a lyric that ryhmes. IMO Lyrics should have thought put into them, but what do you all think of the so called, "Modern Poetry" ie "poems" that go as follows

My wheelchair binds me
I don't want it to hold me
Help Me

^I saw this in an airport

So, any one else want to share their opinion?

Making the ending sounds rhyme adds an added degree of difficulty in writing poetry - assuming that the rhyme sound was not chosen not only because it rhymed, but because it also worked in context.

I think there's a lot more to poetry than end rhymes though. There's rhyme scheme, there's form, there's internal rhymes, there's assonance and consonance, there's meter, etc.

Rhyme is just the simplest, most obvious facet of some types of poetry. The problem is, people think that that's all there is. They think simply rhyming lines makes a poem. Ok, it does make a poem, but probably not a good one.

THe same is true of musicians. People are stuck on scales and chords. They think, if I use this chord progression, with this scale, I'll be making "music". Well, OK, they're making music, but not necessarily good music. There's a lot more to music than just chord progression, just like there's a lot more to poetry than rhyming.

The poem you saw in the airport was a poem.

Is it a good poem? That's up to you an each individual observer to decide. Is it good or not good because it rhymes? I don't think the rhyming is an issue here. In fact, it's the same word. That makes it as easy as not rhyming in a sense, doesn't it? But, we might notice that the end word (rhyming aside) is me - it's something important to the author. If the author's goal was to express their predicament, and to let others expereince the same feelings in some small way, was the poem effective?

I think so.

Steve