Robert Wrigley, an English professor and poet at the University of Idaho, said you don’t always need to explain love, but sometimes you need to talk about it.
The same is true for music and for poetry, Wrigley said. With both, though, you don’t have to ask what it means, Wrigley said.
“Talking about poetry is like yodeling about a piano: much better to sit down and play,” Wrigley said. “[It is] much better to say poems when you’re talking about poetry.”
Wrigley treated the audience to poetry recitations while explaining the intersections between jazz lyrics, poetry and human complexity.
“The meaning of the poem is not as important as how the poem means,” Wrigley said.
Take for example, Wrigley said, Round Midnight, a 1944 jazz standard originally written by Thelonious Monk, but recorded by others some 16,000 times.
“But look at the song on the screen,” Wrigley said. “It looks like a poem, doesn’t it? It’s got that poem look to it.”
If it were a poem, Wrigley said, it would sound very different — and very wrong. The magic in most songs is in the melody and magnificence of those playing it. With most song lyrics, Wrigley said, if they are taken away from the melody they lose their magic.
The singers and musicians who play these songs are able to bring the lyrics to life, Wrigley said. Thus, they are different than poems. There are some problems with words however, Wrigley said.
“There are people in the world who don’t like jazz. And you feel kind of sorry for them,” Wrigley said. “There are people in the world who don’t like poetry. Why is that?”
Wrigley agreed with an audience member when she said typically, people are scared of poetry, and they are scared because they do not understand it.
“You don’t have to ask what a song means,” Wrigley said. “[I’m giving] you permission to tell your English teacher, if you are asked to say what a poem means, the meaning of the poem is not as important as how the poem means.”
Wrigley said the problem of the poet is that they use the same medium as politicians and advertisers.
Music, on the other hand, is not attached directly to meaning.
“Music is ethereal,” Wrigley said. “But somehow, and this is the magic, music can make us cry. Music can make us incredibly joyful … something about the magic in music … music is the epitome of all the arts.”
Wrigley said when poets approach the language they have to try to build something beautiful that sounds pleasant and musical to the ear.
“There’s meaning somehow, in it. Poets have to find that… and all the while, they have to make sense,” Wrigley said. “If they don’t make sense, it’s probably not a good poem.”
The vast majority of songs and poems ever written, Wrigley said, are about love. People try to make sense of complex human emotions with music and with poetry, Wrigley said.
“Songs talk about that,” Wrigley said. “It’s a state of mind; it’s a state of spirit.”
There is as much magic, though of a different sort, in poetry as there is in great love songs, Wrigley said.
Alycia Rock can be reached at [email protected]