Poetry Roundtable

When it comes to a subject as broad as poetry, it’s hard to pick one thing to focus on. So we picked a whole bunch. From statistics of who is writing poetry and why, to a staff-wide poetry collaboration, to an infamous poet with a relentless drive to write and recite his creations regardless of how well, or how poorly, they were regarded by the audiences who heard them - this is a conversation that covers a lot of ground. We had lots of fun making this episode and we hope you have fun listening.

Transcript

Michael Pierry: Hello and welcome to the Hamden Library Podcast. I am your host, Michael Pierry, and in this episode we have another round table discussion. This one is centered around poetry. When it comes to a subject as broad as this, it's hard to pick one thing to focus on, so we picked a whole bunch. From statistics of who is writing poetry and why, to a staff-wide poetry collaboration, to an infamous poet with a relentless drive to write and recite his creations regardless of how well or how poorly they were regarded by the audiences who heard them.

This is a conversation that covers a lot of ground. We had lots of fun making this episode, and I hope you have fun listening. Now, let's get started.

Hi everyone. We're talking about poetry today. I'm Mike, and I have with me today Rebecca. 

Rebecca Coates: Hi.

Michael Pierry: Kacie. 

Kacie Meixell: Today you can call me the Game Master. 

Michael Pierry: That's right. And Hannah.

Kacie Meixell: Hi, it's Hannah. 

Michael Pierry: Alright, Kacie.

Kacie Meixell: Do you guys have any guesses about how many people write poetry at some point in their adult lives? 

Michael Pierry: Probably like half. 

Kacie Meixell: Like 50% of people? 

Michael Pierry: Around there.

Hannah Tyce: Maybe 60, 75 [percent]. 

Kacie Meixell: So this is a tricky thing to study, but according to the National Endowment of the Arts, they said 36% of adults have written poetry and only nine to 12% read it regularly.

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 

Kacie Meixell: So the people that do write poetry, why do you think they write poetry? 

Michael Pierry: Big feelings. 

Hannah Tyce: Yes. Processes. 

Michael Pierry: Gotta get out the big feelings, especially when you're a teenager. 

Rebecca Coates: Mm-hmm.

Kacie Meixell: Big feelings. Emotions, and feelings, yes, is the motivation of about 50% of those who write poetry. 42% though, just write it for fun and 23% write it when they're in love.

Rebecca Coates: Oh, that is a big feeling. That's wonderful. 

Kacie Meixell: Poetry writing is most common in young people. And girls are more likely to write poetry than boys. Studies have found that most people start writing poetry in their tweens and teens in order to deal with emotionally intense, stressful, or creative periods.

But most of them stop around age 25. 

Hannah Tyce: Hmm. 

Rebecca Coates: Oh, I was gonna say that tracks then. That's so sad. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah, I assume there's a lot of life changes around there. You might be moving on from higher education and getting into having a full-time job and or family. So there's a lot of other responsibilities that kind of take away from that time that you might spend writing poetry.

Rebecca Coates: For most people it's a different sort of busy. 

Hannah Tyce: Mm-hmm. 

Kacie Meixell: Sure. I wonder though if it's proven a good strategy for teens and tweens when they're going through puberty and growing up, if it should also be like rebranded as a way to get through your midlife crisis. Mm-hmm. Or like menopause, like poetry for menopause.

Hannah Tyce: [laughter] I mean, we'll see. 

Rebecca Coates: Big feelings, can confirm.

Kacie Meixell: I mean, we should study it really. 

Hannah Tyce: So for the past month, the podcast committee has asked the staff at large to contribute to a collaborative poem with the prompt. What is a library? So here is what we came up with.

What is a library? Warm and refuge for those in need, the world at your fingertips. A comforting sanctuary, a community, my happy place, a place for inspiration, learning and making connections. Where all are welcome, an everything bagel, the community's living room. The people's university, where possibility is endless. Sacred repositories of books and knowledge. A remarkable feat of trust and faith in humanity.

Kacie Meixell: Have you guys come across any poetry in your perusal of the internet or social media?

Rebecca Coates: I dunno, it's kind of a Reddit thing, and it's very visual, but there's this thing called Bredlik where people write poems from the perspective of, say, a cow. And I say it's very visual because it's spelled wrong, but everyone who can speak the original language understands that like L-I-K's lick, B-R-E-D is bread, and they're talking about the stuff made from grains.

Michael Pierry: So it's like LOLcat speak kind of?

Rebecca Coates: I guess. So, um, I also guess we're dating ourselves in terms of memes, but that's absolutely accurate. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. 

Kacie Meixell: I have stumbled across someone who sits with her typewriter in a park and people come up to her and, like, explain something that's happening in their life and she types a poem on the spot, which is...

I don't know how. I don't know how, but then she reads it and she films the whole thing and it's really cool. 

Hannah Tyce: I went through the monograph book, Ben Lerner's The Hatred of Poetry, where he discusses why people and maybe society feel Feelings about poetry, more negative than positive generally.

Like you might say, "oh, poetry's for tweens, or 25 and under crowd" when you're older than 25, but he argues that we are all inherently poets and that the poetry, for example, is like if you're lying in your bed and you see the way that the sunlight is across your ceiling and you have this thought about that, and maybe you're seeing the little specks of dust in the air.

Highlighted by the sunlight, and that could be a poem, but then if you try to write it down, it doesn't come out how you feel it. And maybe people get frustrated with that when they're trying to translate the thoughts into words or they become self-conscious about it because it is such an expression of the inner self and it's just maybe a near impossible task unless you're really honing that skill and people might feel that it's too big of a task. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. So basically it, it's hard to write a good poem. 

Hannah Tyce: Mm-hmm. 

Michael Pierry: Anybody can write a poem, but they might not like the result necessarily. 

Rebecca Coates: So like they feel the poem and then they turn their internal monologue to external monologue and it's like, "This does not have the feeling"? 

Hannah Tyce: Right, like you feel it, but it can be very hard to translate it into words either because you personally lack the vocabulary to do it, or because it's just a separation between feelings and the written word. 

Rebecca Coates: Mm. 

Kacie Meixell: Do you think any of that is related to how we learn to write poetry?

Like there are specific rules that you must follow in order for something to be considered a poem? 

Hannah Tyce: Yes. 

Kacie Meixell: Like children are often like, oh, do an acrostic poem. 

Hannah Tyce: Mm-hmm. 

Kacie Meixell: Or a concrete poem, but they're not necessarily allowed to put words in any order with any tempo. 

Hannah Tyce: Right. I would probably... yeah, I think it does have to do with the way we teach poetry, which I don't think is necessarily wrong.

It's just, I think people, myself included, are intimidated by it or it's a very challenging task to do it, and you don't know if you're allowed to go outside the rhyme scheme, for example. 

Kacie Meixell: It's funny. I just listened to the podcast with Sarah J. Mass, and she was talking about how she tried to get out of her poetry class in college and they forced her to take it, and she was like, "it required so much math".

Hannah Tyce: Mm-hmm. 

Kacie Meixell: Like calculating how many 

Hannah Tyce: mm-hmm. 

Kacie Meixell: Like beats or syllables. She said her then-boyfriend ended up helping her 'cause he was a math major and like meanwhile, she's like a New York Times bestselling author. So it's just really interesting, like this divide between writing and writing poetry. 

Hannah Tyce: Yeah.

And Lerner was saying that a lot of people are not gonna say, "oh, I'm a poet". Like, they don't admit to it. And if you do hear that sometimes he says... well, 'cause he's a poet, and he'll tell people he's a poet and they say, "okay, tell me a poem".

And it's kind of like, "oh, you're a singer. Go ahead sing me something".

Like you don't wanna do it on the spot. 

Kacie Meixell: Yeah. Almost "like prove it. Oh, you're..."

Hannah Tyce: Yeah.

Kacie Meixell: "You're a creative person?"

Hannah Tyce: Yeah. 

Kacie Meixell: Like doing 

Hannah Tyce: Right. 

Kacie Meixell: "Do some, do it now." 

Hannah Tyce: And another angle he takes from it is that maybe poetry is such, like, leisure. Like if you say that's your job and it's maybe like, do other people feel a bit jealous of that?

You're just sitting around writing poetry all day. That's your job. Like, "get a real job".

I know that publishers will often lose money on books of poetry because people, what was the stat? People, nine to 12% read it regularly. 

Kacie Meixell: Mm-hmm. 

Michael Pierry: Right.

Hannah Tyce: And that's not a very big market. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. 

Hannah Tyce: Unless it's a big name writing a poetry book. 

Michael Pierry: Yep.

Hannah Tyce: But they still publish. It's hard to get published is what I'm saying, because they'll lose money.

Rebecca Coates: I feel like it sounds or it looks effortless when it's done really well, but poetry is hard. Like you were saying about going from the emotion to the words and it not translating, Hannah. Getting it right is a skill and a craft, and I think it's really easy to get discouraged.

I say this as someone who hasn't tried to practice that skill in, like, over a decade. I mean, I've been reading some poetry, but I haven't tried to write any just because of that frustration and that divide. 

Michael Pierry: Or you could go the other way and be like William McGonigal and just have utmost confidence in yourself despite having little to no skill.

Hannah Tyce: What do you mean? 

Michael Pierry: So William McGonagal was this Scottish poet in the 19th century. He was notorious as an exceptionally poor poet.

Rebecca Coates: [laughter] There's a story there. 

Michael Pierry: So some of his poems are widely regarded as some of the worst ever in English literature, but he could not be discouraged from writing poetry and reciting it in front of people.

A lot of the criticism has to do with the fact that his poems are all different lengths of lines. So it doesn't scan, doesn't have that meter, that flow that... Kacie you were talking about, Sarah J Mass being frustrated, not being able to crunch the numbers on that. 

Kacie Meixell: [laughter]

Michael Pierry: He didn't care about that. He also didn't care about poetic metaphors or anything like that. He had the confidence that we all wish we had.

He realized that he needed a patron in order to be successful as a poet, so he went right to Queen Victoria. He wrote to her and someone wrote back and said, "thank you for your submission, but no thank you", basically. But he took that as their saying, "thank you for sending us this poetry, and we really like it".

[laughter]

So he then walked from his hometown in Dundee--this is in Scotland--about 60 miles to perform for Queen Victoria, unasked. He just went, and when he got there, the guards were like, "who are you?" And he said, "I'm the Queen's poet". And the guards were like, "No, Tennyson is the Queen's poet". [laughter]

So he presented the letter. They were like, "no". [Laughter]

So he just had to go home and then he just kept going. He kept doing poetry and, doing stuff didn't stop him at all. He also, another thing he liked to do was go to inns and speak about the evils of strong drink, which...

Kacie Meixell: That's a real fun guy. 

Michael Pierry: On one occasion led to him being pelted with peas.

[laughter and crosstalk]

This happened a lot to him, being pelted with food. And on some occasions he was, he would be carried out on people's shoulders out into the streets. One time he actually was carried out and sustained injuries to his head and left arm when they accidentally--or purposely--dropped him on the street and he was fine.

He reportedly attributed his survival to his "good thick felt hat, his long and thick bohemian locks, and above all the genius of poetry". [laughter]

He wanted to have a biography of himself published, so he hired somebody to basically make a autobiography, like, ghostwritten by this reporter. And he distributed the book without having read it. So he gave it to a proctor of a local school, and the proctor was like, he opened it up and read like the first sentence and closed it and was like, "what is this?" [laughter]

And then McGonigal was like, "wait. What do you mean? And the opening sentence was, "my parents were both poor, but bibulous. The latter fact accounting in no small measure for the former."

McGonigal thought bibulous meant his parents were reading the Bible, like, devoted to Christianity. It actually meant that they were drunkards.

[laughter and cross talk]

So he was upset and threatened to sue the guy for saying that stuff in the book about him. And the guy wrote him a letter of apology or something, and that was that. At one point he found lucrative work, performing his poetry at a local circus. He would read his poems while the crowd was permitted to pelt him with eggs, flour, herrings, potatoes, and stale bread.

Rebecca Coates: There's that food again. 

Michael Pierry: He got 15 shillings a night, and mostly seemed fine with it, despite occasionally losing his temper and ending his performances early due to the crowd's treatment. 

Hannah Tyce: Well.

Michael Pierry: And then we come to his title 'cause he was known as, he was known as "Sir William Topaz, McGonigal Knight of the White Elephant, Burma".

He would put that in his advertising and it was just from a letter that somebody made up that was supposed to be from the King of Burma. 

Kacie Meixell: Hmm. 

Michael Pierry: That said that he was knighted and he was like, "okay, that's what I am now."

So I just wanna read a little bit of one of his poems so you get a sense of who we're talking about here.

This is called "The Tay Bridge Disaster". I'm not gonna read the whole thing 'cause it's kind of long. I'm just gonna read the beginning and the end. This is known as one of the worst poems in the English language, and it's about pretty much what it sounds like. It's about a bridge a rail bridge that collapsed as a train was passing over it and people died and it was a big tragedy. So this is his poem about that.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!/Alas! I am very sorry to say/ That ninety lives have been taken away/ On the last Sabbath day of 1879, /which will be remember'd for a very long time.

That's the first stanza, so he goes on. But at the end, you just wanna make sure that you understand the, engineering problem that caused this to happen.

I must now conclude my lay/ By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay/ That your central girders would not have given way./ At least many sensible men do say,/ Had they been supported on each side with buttresses./ At least many sensible men confesses/ For the stronger we our houses do build/ The less chance we have of being killed.

Hannah Tyce: [laughter] Sorry. 

Michael Pierry: So you understand the reaction that you're having is pretty much the same reaction that people had at the time when he would recite these, and so that's why he was as famous as he was.

You really gotta hand it to somebody for just not caring. Like, he didn't care. He thought he was great and he was gonna show the world. 

Hannah Tyce: I do respect it. Yeah. I respect the audacity to put yourself out there like that. It was very audacious. 

Michael Pierry: Respect the chutzpah. 

Kacie Meixell: I do feel like there should be some sort of online generator for you to come up with your own title in his, in the same vein of his title.

Like different gemstones, different animals. [laughter] Like, which would I be? Queen Kacie of Amethyst. Oh, I don't know. Pick an animal. 

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm. 

Kacie Meixell: Tiger Lily. I dunno.

Rebecca Coates: [laughter] This was the Nigerian prince scam of its day, and he got got. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. 

Rebecca Coates: [laughter] Yeah, but the thing about Queen Victoria. It's like, she was almost assassinated I don't know how many times. So the bad poet must have been a relief. 

Michael Pierry: You know, we laugh, but like who are we to judge really? 

Kacie Meixell: It should make us feel better to just attempt 

Hannah Tyce: Yeah. 

Kacie Meixell: To write a poem. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. It's that

Kacie Meixell: it's enduring, right? Like it's terrible.

Hannah Tyce: It's infamous, 

Kacie Meixell: but it's enduring. 

Hannah Tyce: But I'm, we're reading it.

Michael Pierry: You never know how you're gonna be remembered, 

Hannah Tyce: and I 

Rebecca Coates: Just be yourself and record the stuff somehow. 

Hannah Tyce: I admire how often he tried and maybe I should consider that for my life, unironically. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. Over 200 poems. 

Hannah Tyce: That's lot. 

Kacie Meixell: Well, uh, maybe if you enjoyed Michael's reading of the Bridge Disaster poem. 

Michael Pierry: "The Tay Bridge Disaster".

Kacie Meixell: Yeah. Thank you. Okay.

You should consider coming to our Other People's Poetry program, celebrating both World Poetry Day and National Poetry Month. We will be hosting Other People's Poetry, which is like an open mic night, on Monday, April 13th at the Hamden Miller Library at 6:00 PM. 

Patrons can share any poem that they love. We only ask that it is a poem written by someone other than the reader. Poems should be three minutes or less and appropriate for a family friendly audience. You can register on the library website. 

Michael Pierry: Should I go there and recite William McGonigal poetry?

Hannah Tyce: Three minutes? Yes. 

Kacie Meixell: Do you think people would pelt you with herring and eggs?

Hannah Tyce: Should we make a disclaimer that no food allowed? 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. Hopefully no one has carried any of such items into the library with them.

Hannah Tyce: No projectiles. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. 

Hannah Tyce: Well, I keep on my notes app, um, when I call "fragments" and if I come across something that makes me feel any feeling, I tend to write it down, whether that is from like a sentence in a book, quip of prose, something I mishear.

Sometimes I reread these and I do not remember why I wrote them down, not because I don't remember where it comes from, but I just don't feel that feeling in the moment anymore. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. 

Hannah Tyce: But other times it's good to look back on. 

Michael Pierry: That is awesome. I, really like that idea. I've done stuff like that. It's hard to keep that organized.

Hannah Tyce: Mm-hmm. 

Michael Pierry: I feel like that's also a kind of test into whether you have succeeded in your writing, whether it's poetry or not, is if you can go back later and it you get the same feeling that you had when you wrote it. 

Hannah Tyce: Mm-hmm. 

Michael Pierry: Then you're onto something. If not, then you need to work on it more, but. It's always worth writing stuff down in the moment so you don't lose it.

Musicians do that too, if they have a tune in their head or something, they're just gonna whip out their phone now and record a little--just hum into it or something, you know? Whatever you gotta do to get the idea down before it's gone. Because ideas are like that. They're ephemeral, just like we were talking about before.

So, 

Kacie Meixell: and sometimes those initial ideas are terrible, but they're blocking all the good ideas. So you have to like 

Hannah Tyce: mm-hmm. 

Kacie Meixell: Create the bad thing first. 

Hannah Tyce: Mm-hmm. 

Kacie Meixell: And then what comes next is better. 

Michael Pierry: Alright. What do we have to segue into next? 

Hannah Tyce: Well. Eliza had said that she prefers listening to poetry out loud, like live poetry readings, more so than reading it herself.

And I think that kind of relates to music and community. And I read that it was way more common to memorize poems like we might memorize song lyrics. But now the difference being, you can listen to music On Demand now, but before, I don't know, even any kind of musical player was invented, the only time you heard music was if someone nearby was playing or singing or if you were singing yourself.

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm. 

Hannah Tyce: And now music is a lot of what fills my airspace. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. Music is becoming sort of the wallpaper of our lives. 

Hannah Tyce: Mm. Mm-hmm. 

Michael Pierry: It's like it's taken on a much different, role than it used to have, I think. But, That's probably a whole other topic for a whole other day. I think we should play a game. 

Hannah Tyce: About music or poetry?

Kacie Meixell: Yeah. Listen to that. Look at this: Lyrics Versus Poetry. 

Hannah Tyce: All right, Game Master. 

Kacie Meixell: So here I have several categories, and in each category there is a section of song lyrics and a poem that both sort of relate to the category. I'm gonna hand... you guys can pick which category you wanna start with, but I don't think I should read them out loud 'cause I'm afraid I'm gonna accidentally sing lyrics.

They are, 

Rebecca Coates: Oh, goodness. 

Kacie Meixell: It's in my head already. So, Hannah, you can start and I'll tell you all the categories and you can decide which one, and then you guys will have to debate. So we have: the dark, "Bye!", rise, seasons, wine, and kiss 

Hannah Tyce: Seasons. 

Kacie Meixell: Okay, so go ahead, read both, and then you guys can decide which one is which. 

Hannah Tyce: All right.

First one: spring only sighed. Summer had to be satisfied. Fall is a feeling that I just can't lose. I'd like to stay, maybe watch a winter day. Turn the green water to white and blue. 

And the second one: year be springing or year be falling, the bark will drip and the birds be calling. There's much that's fine to see and hear in the spring of a year. In the fall of a year. 

Michael Pierry: Okay. I think the first one is lyrics and the second one is poetry. 

Rebecca Coates: I agree. 

Hannah Tyce: I would, yep. 

Kacie Meixell: Ding, ding, ding.

Hannah Tyce: Woo.

Kacie Meixell: The first one is from "Flying Shoes" by Townes Van Zandt, and the second is "The Spring and the Fall" by Edna St. Vincent Millay. 

Hannah Tyce: Okay. 

Kacie Meixell: Alright, Michael. 

Michael Pierry: Um, let's go with dark. 

Kacie Meixell: The Dark. So ominous.

Michael Pierry: Here's the first one: Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night 

And the second one: All this time, I can't believe I couldn't see. Kept in the dark, but you were there in front of me. I've been sleeping a thousand years, it seems. Got to open my eyes to everything. 

Rebecca Coates: I feel like I've heard the second one as a song before. 

Hannah Tyce: Me too. 

Rebecca Coates: I'm going to say number two is a song, and number one is a poem.

Hannah Tyce: I agree. 

Kacie Meixell: Also correct. Now, the second one is "Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence.

Rebecca Coates: Oh my gosh. That was everywhere in high school. 

Kacie Meixell: And the first is from "The Old Astronomer" by Sarah Williams.

Okay, Rebecca. Here are your options. 

Rebecca Coates: Okay. Okay. Let's see. "Bye!"

Kacie Meixell: "Bye"

Rebecca Coates: Okay. First: farewell sweetheart, and again, farewell. Today we part and who can tell if we shall ever again meet.

The second one: and I will swallow my pride. You're the one that I love and I'm saying goodbye. 

Hannah Tyce: I think the first one's a Poem. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. 

Hannah Tyce: Second lyrics.

Michael Pierry: Yep. 

Kacie Meixell: Correct. The first is from "Farewell" by Alice Dunbar-Nelson. 

Hannah Tyce: Okay. 

Kacie Meixell: And the second is "Say Something" by A Great Big World. 

Michael Pierry: I don't think any of these are gonna fool us. I think we're too good. 

Rebecca Coates: I dunno. I don't know. We have kiss, wine, and rise left. 

Hannah Tyce: I'll do kiss. All right. 

First one: I want to kiss you, make you feel all right. I'm just so tired to share my nights. I want to cry and I want to love, but all my tears have been used up.

And the second one: I remember when first we made love, how for hours we stood and kissed entwined like serpents. Even now I can smell the scent of your skin. You have gone, but your memory persists. Do you remember me? The kiss that lingers? 

Rebecca Coates: The first one definitely feels more like it would be a song, but I don't recognize either of them. 

Michael Pierry: I'm gonna say the first one is lyrics, second one's poetry. 

Kacie Meixell: Did you almost sing the first one, Hannah? 

Hannah Tyce: After a second, after I got going, I was like "wait a minute".

Kacie Meixell: Yeah, the first one is "Another Love" by Tom O'Dell. 

Hannah Tyce: Right? 

Rebecca Coates: Ah. 

Kacie Meixell: And the second one is "The Kiss That Lingers" by R.E. Craig. 

Hannah Tyce: Okay. 

Kacie Meixell: That was definitely the one I was gonna accidentally sing. 

Rebecca Coates: Okay, we have left wine and rise. 

Michael Pierry: I'll take the wine.

The way she tells me I'm hers and she is mine. Open hand or closed fist would be fine. The blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine.

Second one: wine comes in at the mouth and love comes in at the eye. That's all we shall know for truth before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth. I look at you and I sigh. 

Hannah Tyce: First is lyrics. 

Rebecca Coates: This one's a little tougher, but I'll guess the same. First is lyrics.

Michael Pierry: I think so too. 

Kacie Meixell: The first is "Cherry Wine" by Hozier, and the second is a drinking song by William Butler Yeats. 

Hannah Tyce: Hi Irish. Okay. 

Michael Pierry: Last category. 

Rebecca Coates: The last category is rise. 

Kacie Meixell: I don't think I'm gonna fool you with any of these, guys. 

Rebecca Coates: Okay, let's have the longer one First, you were sewn to the ground, so you cut the wires of lead. You swim against the tide, yet you drowned in the sky. You whispered to make a sound and you crawled to reach the ground. You held your head up high, yet you duck beneath the clouds and you are on your way.

The second one, you may write me down in history with your bitter twisted lies. You may tro me in the very dirt, but still like dust, I'll rise.

Oh, this one is too easy. I know the second one's a poem. The first one is lyrics.

Hannah Tyce: I had an inkling that the first was lyrics. 

Michael Pierry: Really? I thought the first one was poetry. 

Hannah Tyce: Good job. 

Kacie Meixell: No, the second one's Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise", and this the longer one is "On Your Way" by The Album Leaf. 

Michael Pierry: Oh. 

Kacie Meixell: I did not trick you guys at all, 

Hannah Tyce: but I wonder if I were reading how much I could tell too, because when it's spoken I can hear kind of a difference in, I don't wanna say like quality.

There's definitely elements of a song that don't translate well when it's not a song. Like if a poem repeats a refrain three times, I'm not gonna read that poem. 

Michael Pierry: Yeah, I was gonna say, the thing with lyrics is that the music is doing a lot or some of the emotional heavy lifting, right? 

Hannah Tyce: Yeah. So in a lot of cases.

Michael Pierry: Not all, but a lot of cases the music already exists and the lyrics are fitted to it. 

Hannah Tyce: Mm-hmm. 

Michael Pierry: And in some of those cases you can hear that, like the emotion's already kind of there in the music and the melody, so they're just kind of ornamenting on top of that, or making it a little more specific, you know?

Hannah Tyce: Mm-hmm. 

Michael Pierry: And so, whereas with a poem, you have to do all of that. You have to provide whatever music there is is in the rhythm and the sound of the words. So you have to take all that into consideration, which is why I think poetry's a little more carefully written, or at least it can be.

It can seem a little more care was taken with the choice of words and things like that because you have to do a lot more with it. 

Hannah Tyce: And Hozier, the one who wrote the "Cherry Wine" that we just read, he has said that he is not a poet. He says he is very careful with his lyrics, but he does not wanna be called a poet because he does not feel that does justice to poets.

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm. 

Hannah Tyce: But we like music, humans like music, and if I were to try to memorize a poem, I would probably inadvertently start. Putting it to a rhythm maybe is how you would describe it, just to make it easier to memorize. 

Michael Pierry: Sure. A lot of, the earliest literature comes from oral tradition. 

Hannah Tyce: Mm-hmm. 

Michael Pierry: And a lot of it is poetic in one way or another.

You know, not everybody did rhyming, like the Anglo-Saxon poetry is alliterative, for example, but it's an aid to memorization. The rhythm of the words and the sound of them, and it helps you to remember what you're saying and what you're gonna say. 

Rebecca Coates: And then there's also like the Camina Burana, which is where these, I don't know, historians or someone found this whole collection of just, like, students' writing poetry as they were learning Latin or whatever.

And then Carl Orff set it to music. So it's just like. 

Michael Pierry: Again, it's like you never know how, what things you write, you don't know where they're going to end up. So that's interesting.

Alright, well thank you everyone. 

Hannah Tyce: Thank you, Mike. 

Rebecca Coates: Thanks. 

Michael Pierry: That's all the time we have on this episode. Thanks for listening.

See you next time.