Music As Poetry Assignment PDF

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Music as Poetry Part 1 Music is poetry because it allows for the expression of human emotions such as passion, anger, sorrow, love, and hate among others while evoking the same passions among its listeners. Moreover, music has the same characteristics to poetry such as imagery, stanzas, and patterns among others. Bob Dylan is a fine American musician whose music can double up as poetry. Dylan’s song “Hurricane” www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RwZu9W5Szs released in 1975 was a protest song that is highly poetic. In the song, Dylan maintains his great vocals and soulful voice, while passing a message of deep social concern. The main purpose of the song comes across not merely as entertainment, but as a poem expressing disgust with social systems and authorities. Poetry is less of entertainment and more of expression of issues of personal or societal concerns. In Dylan’s time, music was the major way through which people could express their dissatisfaction with the authorities and social systems. The song “Hurricane” comments on society and civil rights after the imprisonment of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. The poetry in the song is evidenced by the expressions of raw thoughts and emotions that Dylan had after Carter’s imprisonment. Dylan laments that he felt ashamed to live in land “where justice is a game” (Dylan, Stanza 10, line 9). The lyrics of the song are full of imagery such as rhymes (tried, testified, lied) and rhetorical questions among others. Listening to the song, I felt the same hate as Dylan had for the system that imprisoned Hurricane. I felt agitated to safeguard civil rights and advance their course through literature.

Part 2 The poem “Welcome to Hiroshima” by Mary Jo Salter (page 934) is a classic poem about a historical event. The poem reminds people how deadly the World War 2 was on the Japanese town of Hiroshima, especially after the infamous bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. The poem tells of how the town recovered from the effects of the war and developed economically. As such, the poem evokes a feeling of pain and sorrow, which is eventually overcome by pride and hope as the poet narrates of the great developments that came after the disaster. In spite of the recovery, the memories of the war will never fade. In the poem Salters compares the images of Hiroshima before the bombing and the current image after recovery and economic growth. She cites examples of progress with the coffee shops, the Toshiba billboard, and fusion cuisine. In addition, she communicates of the sufferings that people suffered during and after the bombing in 1945. Salters uses a poetic approach to compare the rise of Hiroshima to a flower reproductive centre. The center she writes about was the Peace Parks floral hypocenter which had been badly damaged during the bombing, but had risen to become a beautiful place years after the disaster. She describes the place in the master class poetry of a place where “humanity erased its own erasure” (Salters, line 20). In addition, Salters had used some poetic descriptions to make the crude acts of the bombing palatable to the readers. She uses terms the place where a tragic event happened as a memorial museum (22). In her own way, Salters has used poetry to bring a historical event to the present situation without losing the significance or the emotions associated with the event.

Works Cited Dylan, Bob. Hurricane web 27 July 2015 www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RwZu9W5Szs Salter, Mary Welcome to Hiroshima....