Benjamin Boone & Philip Levine

Benjamin Boone & Philip Levine: The Poetry of Jazz Volume Two

by Victor L. Schermer
January 21, 2019

Poetry and music are overlapping forms of expression. Poetry emphasizes the musicality of words. Music has many features of poetry including sound, syntax, and meaning. Still, only a few poets have spoken their poems in a musical context. It is hard to do effectively because speech and music have different functions: speech is about things, intentions, and ideas, about which music can only be suggestive. The spoken word is not the same as a song, words set to a melody. ...