Poetry, Lyrics, and Sondheim

Not long ago I was listening to an interview with Stephen Sondheim, the composer of the music and lyrics for so many great American musicals. Not having a great interest in musical theatre, I was only listening peripherally, with half an ear so to speak. Toward the end of the interview, the questioner praised him effusively for “the poetry in your lyrics. How words and the way you use them become much more meaningful.”

Sondheim claimed that the ambiguity inherent in his lyrics were not a deliberate poetic device but a means of expression demanded by the music and story or “book.” He explained that the “clowns” in his song “Send in the Clowns” from his musical A Little Night Music did not, as is commonly misperceived, refer to circus clowns or acrobats. It was especially written for the character who sings it in the musical, a woman who is an actress. He reminded the listeners that with Shakespeare as well as others, when the plot became too complicated or emotionally oppressive, the drama was lightened by the use of comic relief through a “fool” or clown, a buffoon or common character. He stated simply that “send in the fool” did not sound or feel the same; therefore he used the synonym. The actress' use of the term, with her intense feelings of anger and regret, would at once imply that theatrical reference. Those nuances are lost when the song is performed in a concert setting by singers such as Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins or recorded apart from the soundtrack.

He ended the discussion with a statement whose truth I immediately recognized. Just because the lyrics of a song feel like or seem to be poetic doesn't make them poetry. A song lyric is written for and with music. Its impact only holds true when the two are together. He pointed out that for something like the song from Oklahoma the words “Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day” are nothing, are quite banal, until you connect them with the music they are associated with. That holds not only for musical theatre but for most pop music.

On the other hand, he pointed out, the words that make up a poem, that drive it with its own special power, are not dependent on music; instead they have an inherent sense of music within the poems' composition. A poem feels complete without ever having been dressed in melody but in a song words and music must be melded together.

I understood and was instantly enlightened. And although most songwriters understand that they are not poets, I do wish more poets were aware of those internal musical qualities that should be part of every poem, that make the poem so much more than an arrangement of words.

Multidiscipline Improvisation

It was not just another Saturday night at the ArtwordArtbar. This Saturday night was special. No musical act had been lined up and since the venue is inclined toward all the arts (and with the availability of some of the guests at this time) the proprietors decided to hold a multidiscipline improvisation evening.

They had done something of the sort before: dance, some music, video projection on a screen behind the dancer. This session was intended to be expanded. An artist who created and layered sound and music on his laptop computer was available and eager. A new projection program needed to be tried in a more public situation. Several dancers and various musicians were ready to take part. And to this mix I suggested myself.

What I wanted to do was something I had tried before, a good number of years before. I wanted to place some of my poetry before an audience ― with enhancements not of my own making. Back in the eighties I had come together with a saxophonist and a male dancer; we had begun work on a suite combining words – music – movement to explore a primitive understanding of the world. Although the concept was never fully fleshed out for anything like public presentation, the urge to see my work interpreted by other artists has always remained in the back of my mind. Here, I believed, was the chance to do something similar. I would speak my words. My voice would stand alone without my usual stage presence and physical movement. Instead the flow of words would be interpreted instantly and without prior consultation by a dancer or dancers there on the stage.

My idea was welcomed. I would present two poems, one in each set, and then be obligated to take part in a free, unstructured performance of all the artists involved.

I decided that the first poem would be just myself and the dancers, three ladies. I wanted to recite from off stage but they preferred me onstage as they moved around me. I compromised, sitting on the front of the stage with my words and microphone, presenting the poem as they moved and controlled the open space before me while the projectionist worked her magic on the screen behind us. At the break between sets we discussed the presentation. My difficulty had been that I was not able to see their movement and use that to vary the pacing and tone; one of the dancers expressed a slight frustration that sometimes my presentation didn’t match what she expected from the words. All valid and useful comments.

My second presentation was not as concrete in imagery, leaving it more open to interpretation. I also asked the musicians ― bass, percussion, violin, and the aforementioned computer keyboardist ― to come in wherever they felt they could. This time, I stayed off-stage and was able to watch the dancers, vary the pace and intonation; the musicians were doing the same. This ensemble seemed to work together well, not flawlessly but to the satisfaction of the whole group.

Then, to end the evening after another break for refreshing mind and body, the improvisational “free-for-all.” The focus of this extensive … I suppose you could call it a “jam” … was the dancers on stage: as individuals, in twos, as a trio. To their actions each of the other artist/participants added their own layer, using their own medium. As a poet, I am not able to compose and speak out on the spot but I did not withdraw from the fusion. I used the opportunity to add voiced sounds ― sometimes words, phrases, short sentences, but more often hums or unstructured voice. I would take a clear vowel and slowly run it through different shapes of the mouth or flit it back and forth. Throw in a few do-wop phrasings (often at greatly reduced rhythms) and I knew I was contributing to the whole, even wordlessly.

Ah, the magic! Layers of creative expression, unrehearsed and spontaneous.
I look forward to the next time I can be part of such an experience.

The Sound of Emptiness Revisited

Back in June of ’09 I remarked on poetry that seemed to be all flash and no substance. I want to revisit the concept because a book-length manuscript came across my desk that embodied it. Out of the sixty or more poems only two or three moved me. Those seemed to build their images around a recognizable theme; the others seemed extremely unconnected.

In fact they reminded me of the “Where’s Waldo” puzzles, you know the themed scenes populated by a multitude of human figures. The trick is to find which one has all the recognizable tributes of the “Waldo” character. Imagine how frustrating play would be if there was no Waldo included! That’s how I felt about those poems. The fact that they were devoid of any customary rhythm or rhyme scheme only emphasized their meaninglessness.

There’s nothing wrong with setting down words or sounds without a precise, discernable meaning. “Sound” poets do it all the time. But they will admit that it works better on stage than on the page. The flow of words/sounds creates a mood enhanced and emphasized by poetic devices: rhyme (both end and internal), other repetition, defined even if changing rhythms. The fundamentals that please the ear and mind.

It reminded me of a poem I wrote some years back; it was never published and was never meant to be. It’s a piece I liked to perform live on stage because the way the sounds driven by rhythm and repetitions connected with the audience. If it established a sentiment, a mood, all to the good; if it didn’t it was still a sequence of pleasing sounds. I’ll publish it here so you can see what I mean.

5ntwenty

when craven vultures songbirds be
new babes laugh hanging in each tree
through ruby filtered light you see
one trail is free

radiance crowns the powdered rack
fishermen mourn their linen sack
and oil now burns the broken back
the clabbered hack

promises mend a shirt of snow
and buttered railways slide below
the trees fall off the wheels to know
these weights won’t go

all frozen lobsters on a kite
sing for a nose to free the night
we vanquish chip-shops in delight
and leave to write

so shine the copper lilies round
run with the growling shaded hound
the magic ice flows underground
while we resound

The poem as it exists has no obvious meaning. Its “poetry” hangs on the well defined frame of rhythm and rhyme scheme. For me the joy was in the movement of the mouth, the embouchure, as vowel slipped toward vowel and consonant shaped to the next consonant.

If that joy is not there, what are we left with? Ink spots on a page? Or from the stage a cacophony?

I have written other poems that had no obvious meaning but because the way images interacted, complimented each other, and were held by a common structure, they carried a discernable meaning that could be touched. Several of these have been published and well received.

So, does meaning have to be obvious? No. But a way must be shown that can lead to a satisfactory conclusion by the reader/listener. Otherwise you are pumping darkness into a place where there is no light.

Sounds of Poetry (Encore)

As an extension of the previous entry, I want to deal with the delivery of poetry and the way it is presented to a live audience.
I've had the chance to hear poetry read in foreign languages, where the combinations of sounds that form words which deliver specific meanings are not familiar to me. Still, such reading/presentation often had a certain level of meaning due to the manner it was presented.
If foreign language poetry uses rhythm, rhyme, and all the common non-word-based tools that English language poetry does, it can convey the same emotional meaning. This is often, depending on the presenter's level of skill and/or involvement, enhanced by body language and movement that involves the eye.
Even if the surface meaning can not be discerned, other levels of meaning still exist. A good poem does not depend simply on what words convey. By emphasizing the visual aspects of presenting poetry, a supporting level of meaning can carry its desired impact.
I remember attending a reading by the Russian poet Yevtushenko. Although I did not understand the words he used, the mood of the poems were established; the translator's English rendition came as no surprise but only accentuated what had already been conveyed by hearing the original.

So vocal presentation, volume, the rise and fall of intonation, all become essential when hearing or speaking poetry in a language unfamiliar to the audience or a part of that audience. For myself, I enjoy poetry presented in such a way in a language with which I am not familiar. Because it uses the structures of language, it becomes, for me, even more enjoyable than sound poetry that depends on sound without the strictures of language.

Then again, why deny any audience the way to explore other depths of meaning in English language poetry? On stage, at the mike, use the voice and body. They captivate the hearer and make your work more memorable!

Sounds of Poetry

Let's be clear from the start. This entry is not about 'sound poetry,' the use of sound as opposed to words as a means of poetic expression. Here we are dealing with the sounds that are language, that form the words we use, and especially of those sounds as they take part in our poetry.

Two incidents brought this to mind recently. First I had taken my cat to the veterinarian for his annual checkup and necessary booster shots. When we got home he was quite put out and avoided me. Some time later I lay down on the bed and invited him to join me. He did, and after some time ended up lying against my chest, purring. In return, I hummed deep in my throat and chest in response. We quietly lay, side by side, exchanging vibrations. It reminded me of how a mother will use a wordless hum to soothe a fussy baby.

Now for the second influence. I was reading a passage of poetry aloud to myself when I noticed that the author had used an unusual number of 'm' and 'n' sounds in one of the four line stanzas, and the soothing effect (much like the cat or a baby) that had on me. I had read the poem before, but never aloud. I was so intrigued that I read the poem again several times, this time emphasizing and lengthening those sounds. Granted, I sounded as if I suffered from an acute stammer, but it certainly heightened the effect.

I thought about how poets when they read their work aloud in public seem to ignore the importance of sound in favour of putting across the meaning of the words. Seldom is there any lingering over a single sound or emphasis on a series of sounds. And sound is so important to poetry. We use its repetitions to enhance our words: rhyme, both at the ends of lines and internally, and with its many elaborations; alliteration, the repetition of initial consonants; assonance, where the vowel sounds repeat but not the consonants; consonance, where the final consonants agree in sound but the vowels do not. And, of course, the many variations of these.

So if a poet goes to all that trouble to use it in the written word, why not note it in the spoken? It doesn't take much. It is not necessary to stop so long that the silence underscores it, or to voice it in such a way as to bring undue attention. The simple answer is to read slower. If we read slower than normal speech (and speech in modern times has tended to quicken noticeably), the hearing ear can catch patterns of sound that could easily pass ignored. Those patterns of sound are as much of the poem as the words and meaning.

So, poets at the mike. Slow down the tumble of words; sing out the sounds.

Sound Poetry

There is a form of poetry that happens in performance and is separate from "spoken word," a poetry that basically stresses sound as sound and not as words delivering meaning, etc. Even though I don't write (formulate?) material to be presented in such a manner, I do emphasize the role of sound in poetry and its presentation. The use of repetitive sounds - rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance - have always been a staple in poetry. In "sound poetry" the main emphasis is on vocal sound and how it works, much like music in a way.
I had the good fortune recently to share a stage with bill bissett, Canada's foremost practitioner of the style and probably one of the best in the world. Often his work consists of familiar vocal sounds and the changes that can be worked through and from them.

Sometimes, especially when used with ambient background music or an accompanying voice, the performance begins to feel like a jazz concert with structured improvisations. At other times, especially when he uses rattles or other small percussion instruments, it has the feeling of a tribal chant. And sometimes he makes you wonder if he isn't using a structured language, but one about which you have no knowledge, have never heard or experienced before.

To see the work printed on a page and deal with it like that is more than a challenge. Only with his voice still in your head do the sounds represented by words, scraps of words, approximations of sounds, etc. begin to make any kind of sense.

With bissett, with all sound poetry, the meaning is that mixture of dream and emotion and instinct that resonates with the listener. There is nothing grander than when, in this manner, the poet and audience become one.