Sometimes we are amazed at how close poetry is to music.
Both arts tells us what to listen for in time.
Music can be explained as simply as this: here is a musical note—and now—listen to this one which follows. What is this? This thing called music? It has its own interest. It is nothing in itself and the composer can even dally behind the listener, so easily does the whole thing move forward entirely on its own.
A.E. Stallings is simply being a musician when she says:
The woes were words, and the only thing left was quiet.
Music vibrates our ears; the effect is involuntary, and poets—the good ones—play music by making the poetry as involuntary as possible.
Which means being as deliberate and definite as possible.
The poet should leave no doubt as to what the tune is; and should not be like an out-of-tune instrument—which is the most unpleasant thing it is possible to hear.
The poet should not waffle.
“The woes were words.”
The absolute equivalence makes a lovely sound. Woes, words. Got it. And now we are ready for: “and the only thing left was quiet.”
So there are no more words, Stallings says.
But wait. Quiet is a word. A dovetailing harmony. A play on words. The operation is musical as much as it enters our mind without effort. If we are aware of effort, or contrivance, it irks us like a pun, and is a lower order of poetry for that.
This line by Ada Limón (pictured above) has a loveliness that plays the instrument of the poetic faculty effortlessly, and is all the better a line because of this.
Her word “ours”‘strikes our senses like a beautiful chord (and sung perhaps by a choir?)
just clouds—disorderly, and marvelous and ours
To make this music, our poet must be precise, as “disorderly” as those clouds may be.
In the hush that follows, judgement, like a lizard, flicks its tongue.
We must pick a winner. But the song is barely sung.
