The Power of Poetry & Song

I have never met someone who didn’t like music. Oh, I know tons of people who hate specific genres of music and are very willing to argue about which music is worth listening to, but I’ve never met a soul that was completely unmoved by all music. Music is powerful, and people generally recognize that.

Yet there are plenty of people who would look at you like you’re crazy if you mentioned how powerful poetry is.

I’ve never understood that. Can’t they see that music is poetry? Poetry is rhythm. It’s assonance, consonance, alliteration, and rhyme. It’s expression. It’s pitch. As far as sung music goes, if you took the background notes away, all that would be left is poetry.

And I bet you could name songs that you don’t like because they have bad poetry.

So how could music be so powerful if poetry weren’t? Do people really think that pitch variation and the number of voices is the only aspect that gives music power? I don’t think so.

There’s more to it than that.