Poetic Elements
by John Peterson
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Poetry by its nature is process sustained inside a set of words, language line, magical symbols, metaphors, rhythms.
Justin Kaplan in his biography of Walt Whitman says, "Words, when he acquired language, became life itself, links to the
external world and to his unconscious."..."A perfect writer (Whitman says) would make words sing, dance, kiss, do the
male and female act, bear children, weep, bleed, rage, stab, steal, fire cannon, steer ships, sack cities, charge with
cavalry or infantry, or do any thing that man or woman or the natural powers can do." 1
Poetic writing attempts to allow process to continue inside of the poem's set of ultimately narrow parameters. As poetry
develops it presents/creates a felt experience, already of a unitary nature, and places it out into the world as rhythm,
chants and song, and musical language. Whitman called his poetry "Songs". The weighting of music to word shifts from
age to age and culture to culture: from musical languages like Vietnamese, where musical elements convey and
determine meaning, both as an emotional environment and as an emotional emphasis for the word, to lyrics presented
with music as with the Minstrel Knights of 12th century Germany, or the troubadours of France, where the love-song's
meaning rides on the musical line. Primitive chants around an early fire give way to the repetition of a single sound or
phrase imbibed with meaning and power in the meditative chants of Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism.
At times words are associated strongly with a particular musical element such as the powerful rhythmic component of
contemporary rap music, or the distinctive, melodic character of Gregorian Chants, where the music accentuates and is
given preference over the words. At other times music is used as background to words as in modern film and
performance, where, at its best, as in "Laura's Theme" in Dr. Zhivago it infuses the film, and the dialogue, with strong
poetic elements. At its worst music recedes and the words likewise lose form, think of any of the contemporary action film
heros from Schwarzenegger, to Stallion and try to remember any of the music or dialogue.
Finally the balanced weighting of music and words is achieved in the single word, the purist language line, with music as
an internal element, we call this poetry. Gary Synder says, "The real (poetic) line is in the music and the density...a
musical density..." 2
Jazz, in its quintessential connection to a cultural feeling, reveals in itself a poetic nature one step before the word. With
poets like Langston Hughes jazz enervated the poetic line while the poet drew the meaning of the jazz experience into the
poetic form. Jazz percolated into Beat consciousness and gave access to a language of formidable feeling. Jazz, the
statement of black pain and dreams was one of the corridors that awakened white unconscious humanity. The Beats
heard this and soon the music of jazz became an essential part of the Beat universe. Michael McClure speaks of finally
hearing jazz in the music of Thelonnius Monk. "A very exotic, highly structured, mysterious, emotional occasion.
Elegance. Elegance of the intellect and the body moving in tune with the elements. Because you have to, you have to
move"..."I listened to the music for a year before touching it. Before it even got through my skin." 3
Octavio Paz says, "languages are animated by something like a universal rhythm which is no different from that of
music..." 4 Lew Welch writes, "You have a sense of language where language is held as music, where that music is the
sound of a taut soul singing. You have this kind of sense of language for some mysterious reason. It is a mystery." 5
Alfred Einstein in an Essay on Music titled Words and Music, though he comes from the beginning point of music, says,
"abstract speech is unthinkable without rhythm and melodic flow." The "...intrinsic junction of word and tone show an
ever-varying balance of these elements, that in fact there is a continuous search for a different equilibrium, depending
on the emotional or rational weight of a word." 6 He quotes Friedrich Gendalf writing about Goethe, speech itself "has a
duel nature: it is both logical and magical." 7 Einstein says, "the elemental power of things sensuous is an innate quality
of music," 8 and so also of poetry. J.W.N. Sullivan writes on Beethoven, that music is "...the mediator between intellect
and sensuous life." 9 Music gives the poet access to the yin field, to draw out the nature of the experience in words. The
language of poetry is drawn out of the sounds and textures of the sensuous, natural, musical, wild, mysterious world, a
revelation of its process. From Welch, "Poetry is the sound of a man in words." 10
Language conveyed without internal music lacks this fundamental poetic element and constitutes one of the great
debilitating errors of our age since it seems that the language of our mass culture is often devoid of music. Again
Einstein, writing about the madrigal, "Music was elevated of the word, and for the word to be without music was almost as
unthinkable as to be naked in the company of others. A conflict between words and tone, such as developed in later
times, was impossible." 11 He may well have been thinking of our mass culture where music is everywhere, as
commercial jiggles, background to TV shows, pop culture, movies, etc., but in so many cases is little more than sonic
diversion. Snyder, in talking about prose says, "prose does not have the musical phrase or the rhythm behind it. Nor
does it have the content density or the complexity." 12 Mass language has music to an even lesser degree. Yet the
matrix of our world is poetic. In fact, we constantly recognize this by the use of the term "poetic" or "poetry" as an
adjective, as in, the "horse galloped poetically" or, "she was poetry in motion." When that elusive element is missing we
are separated from the essential life of our world and we know it instinctively.
The language of poetry can be seen as a way to realign with the poetic matrix of our world. The norm of great poetry
has always been that it worked with the natural world. Kaplan in reference to Whitman says, "only the completely
healthy, integrated and functioning man, exercising all faculties and embracing all experience, was able to collaborate, as
a peer, with nature." 13
1 Kaplan, Justin, Walt Whitman A Life, Bantam Books: New York, 1982.
2 Snyder, Gary, The Real Work, New Directions Books: New York, 1980.
3 Meltzer, David ed., The San Francisco Poets, Ballantine Books: New York, 1971.
4 Paz, Octavio, Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: San Diego, 1987.
5 Meltzer, 1971.
6 Einstein, Alfred, Essay on Music, W.W. Norton Co.: New York, 1956.
7 Einstein, 1956.
8 Einstein, 1956.
9 Sullivan, J.W.N., Beethoven, Mentor Books: New York, 1927.
10 Meltzer, 1971.
11 Einstein, 1956.
12 Snyder, 1980.
13 Kaplan, 1982.