Robert Pinsky and david lang: Poetry/ Music Project
Published: October 10th, 2014
This project was inspired by the similarities between poetry and music. Both art forms are emotional expressions of the human spirit with much in common. Poetry can be written with a lyrical feel to the cadence and rhythm such as in former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s work. Music can transport us and carry our emotions through the various movements such as with the songs created by Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Lang.
Below, we asked the same basic questions to both artists - Robert Pinsky and David Lang - to get their takes on the influences of both creative genres to each other. Read the similarities as well as what makes them unique. And most importantly, treasure the human spirit’s ability to create out of nothing something beautiful for its own sake.
Howl: How can diction and syntax affect the cadence and flow of the poetry to give it the particular “feel” or tone you wish to convey on an emotional level?
Pinsky: Writing a poem involves something like singing or dancing: the vowels and consonants, the pitches and rhythms, come from your body, in a kind of intuitive, yet practiced partnership with your feelings.
Howl: Considering that poetry is meant to be read aloud and heard, how do you, the poet who has never met the other readers or had them hear you recite your work, influence the way they read the poem the way you want it heard?
Pinsky: The art of the poet is to arrange the vowels, consonants, sentence-sounds, rhythms so that they will be expressive in any reader’s voice. The videos at www.favoritepoem.org demonstrate this, I think: Pov Chin doesn’t read “Minstrel Man” exactly as Langston Hughes might read that poem. The same is true of Steve Conte-Agueros and Yeats, or Seph Rodney and Plath. But those three readers do honor the sounds built into those poems by those poets.
Howl: Songs can essentially be poetry set to music, so how do you see people's appreciation (or lack thereof) of poetry affecting the music being made and listened to in the 21st century and do you think music can help promote poetry?
Pinsky: Sometimes a poem is also a good song. Sometimes a song is a good poem. Poetry and music, both, seem to me fundamental, large and essential in ways that put them above “promotion.” These are basic, enduring human arts— not brands of soap!
My conviction is that humans will always make and respond to art. The forms that take vary, mutate, evolve and devolve in ways that are beyond my ken.
Howl: How can musical notes or particular instruments, without lyrics, tell a story to the listeners and how do you, the musician, "tell" it?
Lang: We use language to say things that are specific. Who did what to whom? When and how? Language is very good for facts. But if a story is worth hearing it is because it makes you feel something; it is about how an emotion is created, and how that emotion changes. Music is not so good with facts but it is great for emotions. That is the part of storytelling that music is good at.
Howl: Considering music is both a shared and personal experience, how do you, as a musician, best influence the effect you want the song to have on the listener or is it an entirely subjective experience?
Lang: I think the best way to get a message across to someone else is to be really honest about telling that message to yourself. Everyone's experiences are different so you can't know what people want to hear or how they will hear it, but if you can make something that is truly meaningful to you, chances are it will be meaningful to someone else too.
Howl: Songs can essentially be poetry set to music, so how do you see people's appreciation of (or ever-shifting generational tastes in) music affecting the poetry being written and read in the 21st century and do you think poetry can help promote music?
Lang: Really great poetry doesn't need music. The great poets are already getting a huge amount of meaning by controlling their rhythm, their flow, their ability to use words to project something deeper than words - the great poems don't need music to help add these things. It might be more interesting to think of the things that good music can add to bad poetry - you can check out the song cycle Die Schone Mullerin ('The Pretty Maid of the Mill') by the great 19th century composer Franz Schubert. It is a story about an assistant miller who falls in love with the head miller's daughter, and when she won't go out with him he kills himself. Yuck. It is really bad poetry that needs really great music to make it deep, and that is exactly what Schubert gives it