From: 'Creating Poetry' - John Drury
Ch XI - Other Arts, Other Influences, p184

Poems can imitate musical forms.
Michael Harper uses jazz as both inspiration and subject matter in poems such as 'Dear John, Dear Coltrane' and 'A Love Supreme' ( title of Coltrane's four movement masterpiece).
— Drury

The music:
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme [Full Album] (1965)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll3CMgiUPuU

The poem:

Dear John, Dear Coltrane
BY MICHAEL S. HARPER

a love supreme, a love supreme
a love supreme, a love supreme

Sex fingers toes
in the marketplace
near your father's church
in Hamlet, North Carolina—
witness to this love
in this calm fallow
of these minds,
there is no substitute for pain:
genitals gone or going,
seed burned out,
you tuck the roots in the earth,
turn back, and move
by river through the swamps,
singing: a love supreme, a love supreme;
what does it all mean?
Loss, so great each black
woman expects your failure
in mute change, the seed gone.
You plod up into the electric city—
your song now crystal and
the blues. You pick up the horn
with some will and blow
into the freezing night:
a love supreme, a love supreme—

Dawn comes and you cook
up the thick sin 'tween
impotence and death, fuel
the tenor sax cannibal
heart, genitals, and sweat
that makes you clean—
a love supreme, a love supreme—

Why you so black?
cause I am
why you so funky?
cause I am
why you so black?
cause I am
why you so sweet?
cause I am
why you so black?
cause I am
a love supreme, a love supreme:

So sick
you couldn't play Naima,
so flat we ached
for song you'd concealed
with your own blood,
your diseased liver gave
out its purity,
the inflated heart
pumps out, the tenor kiss,
tenor love:
a love supreme, a love supreme—
a love supreme, a love supreme—

(Amity, please turn all this into something like a grand opera.) — PoeticUniverse

Just curious. Turning it around. Does opera inspire your poetry ?
What do you listen to when you write ?

About operatic influences.
According to Drury in 'Creating Poetry', p184:

Walt Whitman modelled his long, flowing lines partly on the recitatives and arias of Italian grand opera, (and partly on the Old Testament). — Drury

-----

Italian opera and opera singers were an important influence on Whitman's creative development during those crucial years in the early 1850s when Leaves of Grass was germinating. Probably no other single influence is more important than this one.

When we consider how many poems Whitman calls songs or chants, and how many references he makes to the voice and to singing, we come to realize that music and singing were central to the creation of his poetry. "But for the opera," he declared, "I could never have written Leaves of Grass " (qtd. in Trowbridge 166). — The Walt Whitman Archive

https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_42.html#:~:text=The%20poem%20in%20which%20Whitman%20mentions%20opera%20most,of%20musical%20influences%20on%20his%20life%20and%20poetry.

More musings. Metaphysical or otherwise.
Poetry in music; music in poetry.
Opera. Not to everyone's taste.
But, here, an example of the inter-related artistic process: inspiration and creativity:

“Whitman noticed how the theater was filled with both the elite and the roughs,” Mr. Reynolds said. “He began to view opera as a way to bridge social gaps and bring people together on the level of beauty.”...

But no singer seems to have influenced Whitman more than Alboni, the contralto. She “opened the possibility of both ‘heart’ and ‘art’ music,” Mr. Reynolds said.

Alboni appears in Whitman’s reminiscences; “Leaves of Grass”; and his memoir “Specimen Days.” In the opera-rich poem “Proud Music of the Storm,” he mentions her by name:

The teeming lady comes,
The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,
Sister of loftiest gods, Alboni’s self I hear.

Opera may have provided a way for Whitman to process the horrors of the Civil War. His slim book “Memoranda During the War,” which inspired “Crossing,” is fragmented into vignettes with operatic flourishes: observations, even grisly details, followed by sweeping, impassioned statements about broader subjects like youth, America and conflict...

In both his poetry and prose, Whitman wrote with a rhythm that took war “out of the realm of either the merely shocking or the distressingly gory,” Mr. Reynolds added. “He had always used poetry, ever since 1855, as a means of cleansing or uplifting the darker aspect of human existence.”...

And a few months before the poet died, nearly 40 years after he first heard Alboni sing, he described to Traubel a scene from “Lucia di Lammermoor”: leaning “way out of his chair — his gray hair shaken, his eye bright with fire, his voice deep and full of music.”
— NY Times: Music - Walt Whitman

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/arts/music/walt-whitman-leaves-of-grass-opera-crossing-aucoin.html

There was, of course, the tradition of metaphysical poets, such as John Donne, but it was a very specific worldview and probably not one which could be seen as truly objective. — Jack Cummins

Metaphysical poetry is based on the conceit of juxtaposing the sublime and the mundane. Isn't that the challenge of metaphysics itself? Trying to express what is beyond the mundane, through the terminology of the mundane....

In a way, the metaphysical poets were trying to juxtapose 'the sublime and the mundane', but it was in a rather different way from contemporary modes of thinking. Just imagine if they wrote on this forum, even converting their ideas to prose. I think that they would be seen as ridiculous and would come under fierce attack. I think philosophy has got to the point where the mundane is preferred to the magnificent.

I think philosophy has got to the point where the mundane is preferred to the magnificent. — Jack Cummins

Hmm. I do you think it is a linear progression over time though? Or are we all not simply creatures of the world into which we have been born? I have a small book on the American Transcendentalist thinkers. The introduction describes in detail how this transcendentalist mode of thought linked with the historical events of the American Revolution and Civil war, how there was a general atmosphere of cataclysmic upheaval and the overturning of the all accepted social meanings, and it was this that led to the transcendentalist point of view being so genuinely embraced.

Perhaps we are waiting for the next great event to spawn the next great evolution of philosophical thought?

I am wondering how it varies from culture to culture as well as in different times. I was rather surprised by how mundane some of the discussion on the site is. I find this thread discussion more interesting than most. What I do wonder about is whether certain emphasis on certain philosophy topics is because many of the people engaging are from American culture. I think that there does appear to more openness to the unusual in some circles in England, and this may be true in some parts of America too. But, I definitely believe that there are plenty of creative bohemians, who probably write, even if they are often regarded as outsiders. Maybe they find more acceptance in the creative arts communities.

I think poetry is primarily a form of art, rather than metaphysics. Using an economy of words, the poet enjoys painting vivid nuanced portraits of life one can experience, enjoy, identify with, and, if so inclined, try to contemplate the meaning of -- if any. Like musical compositions, I think poems portray and communicate the many different ways in which life can be lived and how those ways of living make one feel. Obviously, certain poets can do this better than others and with an economy of just the right words.

Words

Spirit chisels,
Sharp
Pointed
Full of power.

Cutting laser-like
Right into,
And passing through
The massive stubborn heart
Of muted being.

Gently,
Lovingly
Caressingly,
Sculpting all the while.

Creating
Myriad, meaningful, manifold forms
Of rational eloquence
From the otherwise dumb,
Dense core
Of silent being.

I thought philosophy was kind of the boon that the self-recognition of creative thought conferred on itself? Like the worst day being a philosopher is better than the best day actually working? Even if you do have to drink hemlock sometimes....

edit:
This is interesting. I recently read a book by Collingwood that made me want to read all of Whitehead's works on process philosophy, so I bought Science and the Modern World, and another book that hasn't arrived yet. I've been wanting to read it but the Essays I'm reading now is a huge book, so I'm focussing on finishing it. This little chat inspired me to sneak a peak at the Whitehead though. The first line of the foreward:

It has been said of nineteenth-century English Romantic poetry that it enshrines the best English-Language philosophy....When, by the early nineteenth century, the powerful industrial confluence of science and technology had rendered cosmic disenchantment the inevitable fate....

Sounds exactly like the kind of creation of the poetic sensibility by the dominant spirit of the culture that we were discussing.

Just curious. Turning it around. Does opera inspire your poetry ?
What do you listen to when you write ? — Amity

No, not regular opera, but more like the 'Phantom of the Opera', which music doesn't seem to ever wear out, or just any emotional music.

My poetic style is kind of a blend of Shelley and Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, as in particular the Rubaiyat quatrain of ten syllables, with some variations:

The verses beat the same, in measured chime.
Lines one-two set the stage, one-two-four rhyme.
Verse three’s the pivot around which thought turns;
Line four delivers the sting, just in time.

Such as:

“I’m the darkest,” boasts the Shadow to the Night.
“No,” gloats Midnight, “compared to me you’re bright.”
“You floodlights!” crows Starless Space, “Stop your fight.
The darkest plight is the lack of Love’s delight!”

I'm still hoping that some of my more lyrical poems can get sung, but may have to settle for now for some the Rubaiyat's quatrains sung, since two singers have done so that I found and incorporated into videos (they changed some of the words to make it easier to sing):

Dorthy Ashby:










Michael Montecrosssa (Bob Dylan style)(my favorite Rubaiyat rendition):




And finally, one of mine that I sang, ha, ha, needs improvement:

I find that whether working or doing creative activities some days just flow so much better than others, with or without hemlock. It can be like being on different metaphysical or energy frequencies I find.

Good to hear you sing one of your poems.

Done yet? Maybe your lute people could do it. — PoeticUniverse

I've been following the trail of John Drury. One of his poems is accompanied by a lutanist.
Unfortunately, the vid doesn't play for me.
https://www.ablemuse.com/v11/poetry/john-drury/ghazal-lutanist

The poem first appeared in Able Muse (Summer 2011) and was reprinted in John’s most recent book, Sea Level Rising (Able Muse Press, 2015). The book’s website includes a video in which the poet’s reading of the poem is accompanied by lutanist Rodney Stucky playing pieces by Dowland. Here’s the link.


Ghazal of the Lutanist

Ever Dowland, ever doleful, the lutanist says come again
to melancholy, whether he’s silent or plays “Come Again.”

Invitations that mention “deadly pain” and wail “out, alas”
won’t seduce anyone but a masochist who prays Come! Again!

Torches at court leave shadows for uneasy liaisons,
dark rooms where ladies-in-waiting, in silent lays, come again.

Courtiers whisper on back stairs, place notes in ruffled sleeves,
but the lutanist can’t catch the phrase. Come again?

The page rubs his eyes before stretching gut strings along the lute
and poking around for the tuning peg’s eye. Dark days come again.

When panes of leaded glass fill like goblets with tinted light,
John is fingering scales on his lute as sun rays come again.

John Drury — Ghazal of the Lutanist - John Drury

Thanks for all of these. Will listen later.

I think poems portray and communicate the many different ways in which life can be lived and how those ways of living make one feel. Obviously, certain poets can do this better than others and with an economy of just the right words. — charles ferraro

There's so much more to poetry than I ever thought.
I tend to think that poetry like philosophy is for all and any age.
Not all words in a poem are right but does that matter?
If the aim is to encourage creativity in any possible way to pose questions or paint a picture...
About life.

I wonder if there is a similar concern of Gus Lamarch re what might be considered 'authentic poetry'. — Amity

My concept of "authentic metaphysics" is nothing more than a "substrate of the metaphysical realm, completely substantiated only by poetic ideas".

Sufi analysis shows that, through certain writing methods, the poetic "essence" - aka, the idea which was projected through the text - can indeed exist. From this disclosure, I end up defending the position that, in addition to a "general" metaphysical field, poetry also includes its own - authentic - field of ideas.

If other concepts contain their own "authentic metaphysics", only a thorough research can provide an answer, which will often be questionable.

It seems to me that poetry does not always have to be about what humanity experiences as being pleasant and/or beautiful. It can also describe and/or render that which is disturbing and ugly to humanity.

Oh! Before I Forget ... !!!!!

"I Think therefore I Am!"
He Shouted Victoriously, Planting the Ego-Banner Firmly
In the Field of Consciousness,
Staking Out Its Claim
To Indubitably Certain Existence.

But a Wiser, Ancient, God-like Voice Replied:

"Behold, now, Arrogant One
The Horrific, Metaphysical Ego Cancellation!
Behold, How a Thoughtless Being is Possible!

"How Nothingness can Feel
As it Gradually,
Incrementally,
Dreadfully,
Chips Away at Your Cherished,
Seemingly Inviolable Memory of Self.

"Behold, now, Arrogant One,
As, Bit-by-Bit,
The Void Inexorably Encroaches Upon
And Consumes
Your Person
Your Self
Your Who
Your Ego
Your I

"Where, Oh Arrogant One,
Will You Be
After You Have Thoroughly
Misplaced Your Self?

"Will 'You' Be at All?
Will it be Your Who?
Whose Who Will be There Then,
As You Dumbly Stare Out into Empty Space?

"Amidst Your Aimless, Pointless Wanderings,
Will You Still be You Inside?
Who, or What, Will be There Then
To help you Remember Your
No-Longer-Recollected-Simply-Deleted-I?

"And if You, Oh Arrogant One,
Being Closest to and One with Your Self,
Can Forget Your Self,
Can Feel Your Self
Evaporate and Slip Away into Darkness,
Then, I Wonder,
How Much Could Your Self Have Been Worth in The First Place?

"And if, as They Claim, You are Created
In the Image and Likeness of Your God,
Then, Oh Arrogant One
Does This Mean that You
Are the Son
Of an Absent-Minded Deity,
A Deity Renowned above all Others for Forgetting Itself?

"That You Pray to The Magnificent Lord Alzheimer?"

It seems to me that poetry does not always have to be about what humanity experiences as being pleasant and/or beautiful. It can also describe and/or render that which is disturbing and ugly to humanity. — charles ferraro

Indeed, "Poetry" is written about what "Is", without attributes or characteristics, because its fundamental "essence" - Ideal - is metaphysically "perfect", as in "limitless".

Unfortunately, I have no great background knowledge or understanding of Frost. — Amity

Robert Frost, Emily Dickenson, e. e. cummings. These three worth the dime obtaining complete collections of their poetry, usually in one volume, for long-term browsing. And worth a quick look at reviews of collections. If memory serves, and maybe it doesn't, with Dickenson and Frost there were some issues with editing. Not a biggie.

Frost wrote and lectured on his poetry and his approach to his craft. Among the things important to him was to catch what he called the sound of sentences, the meaningful sound of talk as if heard through a door, the words themselves obscured. In a letter he offered a "new definition of a sentence: A sentence is a sound in itself on which other sounds called words may be strung." As to rewriting, he described putting a finished poem into his desk drawer, withdrawing it six months later and adding a comma and returning it to the drawer. And then after another six months, removing the comma.

His biographers observe, though, that he was very far indeed from the simple farmer poet his poems suggested. He was born and raised in San Francisco, and lived in England for a while, coming then to New England, living in Lawrence and Boston, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire and Vermont.

Another poem of his I like, for a certain visceral vividness, that's longer, is Home Burial, here.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53086/home-burial

Robert Frost, Emily Dickenson, e. e. cummings. These three worth the dime obtaining complete collections of their poetry, usually in one volume, for long-term browsing. And worth a quick look at reviews of collections. If memory serves, and maybe it doesn't, with Dickenson and Frost there were some issues with editing. Not a biggie. — tim wood

Appreciate further thoughts and advice. Re editing issues. Yes a biggie, if it changes the rhythm, meaning or aesthetic appeal. I remember reading that one editor made Dickinson Dashless.

Frost wrote and lectured on his poetry and his approach to his craft. Among the things important to him was to catch what he called the sound of sentences, the meaningful sound of talk as if heard through a door, the words themselves obscured... — tim wood

I love it when writers share their insights, methods, etc.
Of Frost, I will be reading more; enjoyed the re-writing story.
The importance, of a comma. Or not.

Re: Home Burial
'Visceral vividness' of a certain kind. Yes. Captured there on the stairs - powerful intensity and tension.
Unforgettable scene. Burials; repression and oppression. Raises a lot of questions...

-----

I think I will leave this thread here. It's been amazing to read the thoughts and examples of personal creativity. @PoeticUniverse astounding.

The marriage of poetry, music and song when it sounds just right to someone's ears. Even if not to others'.

So, to end with a well-known poem sung worldwide at a certain time of year:

Cue Rabbie Burns.
( Warning: not the usual singalong version )

Eddi Reader - Auld Lang Syne
From her 'Sings The Songs Of Robert Burns' LP, 2003.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ppqjbd_wHw

Less weel-kent excerpts of poems, songs with descriptions, here:

10 MOST FAMOUS POEMS AND SONGS BY ROBERT BURNS
Burns was one of the leaders of Romanticism and he had a major influence on the movement. Romantic writers emphasized on emotion and individualism; as well as glorification of all the past and of nature. — Robert Burns - Famous poems and songs

https://learnodo-newtonic.com/robert-burns-famous-poems

Slainte :party:

It's been amazing to read the thoughts and examples of personal creativity. — Amity

You've contributed much to this thread. Well done!

Good recitations for poems can be a great as singing them, plus not all poems can be easily sung.

Here are some good recitations:



The following printed versions of two quatrains got left out of the video, plus printing for the omaresque recitation at the end that I don't have the words for (perhaps someone who has better hearing than I have could transcribe them.)

Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh,
“My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry:
But, fill me with the old familiar Juice,
Methinks I might recover by-and-bye!”

And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter’d on The Grass,
And in Thy joyous Errand reach the Spot
Where I made one—turn down an empty Glass!

I also use the computer voices Brian and Amy, which are pretty good. My art is digitally composed in Photoshop by moving parts around to good places. Some of the moving character sequences were done in iclone by its features and digital compositing.

My long project of extending The Rubaiyat with my own quatrains has reached a usable stage, but the videos are hours long… (I could post them.)

Example of a metaphysical poem.

To Run Lovely Rings 'Round Each Other

Within My Mind's Imagination,
The Boundless World Surrounds
Me,
And You are in It

And Within Your Mind's Imagination,
I Imagine,
The Boundless World
Surrounds
You,
And I am in It.

And Within Their Minds' Imaginations,
I Imagine,
The Boundless World
Surrounds
Them,
And We are in It.

Magical Imaginations,
Eternally Born of Nothing.
All Subtly Intertwined and
Secretly Married from Within.

Magical Imaginations,
Blind Cosmic Conjurers,
Omnipresent,
Static,
Space-Time Travelers.

Magical Imaginations,
Perpetually Creating
Familiar Alien Visions
Of Magnificent Vaulted Prison Ceilings,
Filled with Spiraling Galaxies,
And Scintillating, Starry Skies,
And Bottomless Black-Hole Pits,
And Circle-Dancing Orbs.

Magical Imaginations,
Presenters and Portrayers of
The Unceasing Flux
And Shapes of Being.
Trapped forever
Within their Own Unreasoning Creations,
Forever asking, "Why?"

Magical Imaginations,
Despondent Creators,
Whose Fallen Fate It Is
To Be but Stages
Throughout the Ages
For the Blind Play-Acting Productions
Of That Unseen Other Will Within.

Magical Imaginations,
Despondent Creators
Forever being Forced
To Run Lovely Rings 'Round Each Other.

"Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning
hours,
ran to the market place, and cried incessantly:
'I seek God! I seek God!'
As many of those who did not believe in God
were standing around just then,
he provoked much laughter.
Has he got lost? asked one.
Did he lose his way like a child? asked another.
Or is he hiding?

Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?
Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.
'Whither is God?' he cried; 'I will tell you.
We have killed him--you and I.
All of us are his murderers.
But how did we do this?
How could we drink up the sea?
Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?

What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?
Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving?
Away from all suns?
Are we not plunging continually?
Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?
Is there still any up or down?
Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing?
Do we not feel the breath of empty space?
Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?
Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning?
Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers
who are burying God?
Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?
Gods, too, decompose.
God is dead.
God remains dead.
And we have killed him." - Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883 AD

I cannot recall any poem as explicit in its essence through the content of its text as this one by Nietzsche.

"The gods, like everything else in existence, rot, because they emanate from existence itself."

The gods
In their spotting
Are the only ones
Non-rotting
While every
eternity
Bloodery
Or nitty
Nor witty
Rots to the bone
Their flesh stays young
Like their every tone
In the waters of heaven
In the aromas of hell
On Stratford on Avon
In all that they tell
Their creation runs freely
At least, so it should
Like Dan oh so Steely
Down there under the Hood
Consider them dead though
As our friend once proclaimed
Give it a go bro
Nihilistically maimed
Dwelling the Earths
Undetermined and steady
Finding love on the road
Route 66
Lacks a 6 at the end
Or at the beginning
Is it that what they meant
And made us write down
The points that we do
Or faces that frown
And on and on and on
On and on and on
And on and on and on
And on and on and on it goes
On and on and on
Oh and on and on
Yay bro's
On and on on tippy toes
Thankfull am I
They made it all happen
That I walk on and by
Them so I reackon
I tell them to screw
Turn the blind eye in them
The big bangs they blew
An Inflation divine gem

All hail to the gods...
God damn them!

"They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one,
Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.
But you are not dead: you live and abide forever,
For in you we live and move and have our being." - Epimenides

The first written case of a "Liar Paradox" - c. 600 BC -.

It's amazing how contemporary we are to the ancient Greeks.

As it would be an offense to compare them to our times.

I've actually tried to sing your poetic words. Withou actually assigning meaning to them they sound great words!

I've actually tried to sing your poetic words. Withou actually assigning meaning to them they sound great words! — Rstotalloss

Ah, good! Are you a good singer? We could make a musical.