When poetry separates from song, then the words have to carry all the rhythm themselves; they have to do all the work. They can't rely on the singing voice.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
One of the things that distinguishes poetry from ordinary speech is that in a very few number of words, poetry captures some kind of deep feeling, and rhythm is the way to get there. Rhythm is the way the poetry carries itself.
Poems have a different music from ordinary language, and every poem has a different kind of music of necessity, and that's, in a way, the hardest thing about writing poetry is waiting for that music, and sometimes you never know if it's going to come.
A song doesn't happen as a whole verse; it happens linearly, line by line, almost word by word, phrase by phrase. And if each phrase, each line, has a proper emotional feel and connects to the line before it and the line after it, the song will be doing what it should be doing.
The music just tends to be a vehicle for that poetry.
The sense of flowing, which is so crucial to song, is also crucial to poetry.
One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.
Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.
There's no musical landscape to poetry. It has somewhat of a higher standard than songs, I think.
But when you get to a song, not only do you have to do a vocal melody, you have to write words and not be redundant and make some semblance of a story.
Poems are a form of music, and language just happens to be our instrument - language and breath.
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