10-12-2025, 12:54 AM
My thought is that you can set a poem to music, maybe successfully? But when a songwriter composes music and words, as you said - the music can resolve a failure of unity or completeness that the words may seem to have, when seen on their own. The music can make such unities in the text unnecessary or superfluous, or even an inconvenient encumbrance? The most devastating example of this I have noticed is - 'My Beautiful friend' by the Charlatans.
I mean a poem requires a density of meaning (and also of formal integrity) that can sustain it - but music can sustain the meaning of something less dense (or formally integrated) as text, than the poem needs to be?
I mean a poem requires a density of meaning (and also of formal integrity) that can sustain it - but music can sustain the meaning of something less dense (or formally integrated) as text, than the poem needs to be?