Review of How Does a Poem Mean (1975) by John Ciardi and Miller Williams - Essay Example

Music Paper Learning about music is often considered by the layperson to be little more than learning how to read the notes on a printed page and correlate these to specific buttons, keys or positions upon a particular instrument. Some may also consider that learning about music will include vague discussions of tempo, famous composers or basic trends. For most, this is as far as they are willing to consider and often feel that music, good music, is somehow closed off to them within the meaningless world of academia. In today’s facts and science-driven world, the approach to music, which is often more attuned to imaginative understanding more than logical knowledge, may indeed be too difficult for many to contemplate. However, there is a means by which individuals might be more smoothly introduced to the world of music by first helping them to understand the more logical and mapped out elements of poetry and then comparing this to music. Such a progression can be discovered through Ciardi and Williams’ instructive introduction to poetry followed by Sessions’ explanation of how to ‘read’ music, concluding with Copland’s instruction of how to take what has been read and develop true music appreciation. In John Ciardi and Miller Williams’ article “How Does a Poem Mean” (1975), the authors attempt to indicate the importance of language in conveying what is experienced as they try to educate the poetry reader on the difference between mere rhymes and art. They do this by making a comparison between the language of classification and description to the language developed to more fully illustrate the experience of that being discussed. The language of poetry is the attempt of the poet to convey an experience of something to the reader rather than just the simple dictionary facts. The authors make their point by illustrating that simply being pretty does not make something art as the images on greeting cards in the store are pretty but do not necessarily provide the emotional experience of true art. Using Milton and Wigglesworth, they also illustrate how the desire to say something important or the ability to rhyme does not provide, on their own, a sense of artistic achievement. Instead of looking at what the poem means, the authors suggest we should be looking at how the poem means, how the various technical tricks of the trade work together to form a concert of meaning that becomes inextricable from the poem and yet not the poem at one and the same time. “What the poem is, is inseparable from its own performance of itself. The dance is in the dancer and the dancer is in the dance. Or put in another way: where is the ‘dance’ when no one is dancing it? and what man is ‘dancer’ except when he is dancing?” (Ciardi & Williams, 1975: 4). The art of the piece is in the visible clues of the author’s ability to challenge him or herself in the way that one challenges oneself in games such as chess. One way that poets challenge themselves can be found in discovering new means of using an old and limited rhyme scheme, which the authors demonstrate through Robert Frost’s well-known poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Roger Sessions, in “Questions about Music” (1970), discusses a similar breakdown of communication between the art of the musician and the ability of the audience to appreciate those elements of the music that make it great – the subtle and essential interplay of elements that enables the music to transcend the mere level of pleasant sound and enter the realm of aural emotional experience. Discussing his own experiences, he illustrates how today’s audiences have seemed to lose a great deal of their ability to appreciate great music in spite of the fact that they have greater access to it than people many years earlier as well as greater access to the educational elements that help one appreciate the music to a greater degree, like the reader of poetry being able to appreciate the game of poetry better once they’ve learned some of the tricks that are employed. In making his case, the author suggests that one of the unique aspects of music composed today is that it is now composed for the mass audience with little or no actual respect for the artist and his vision thanks to the commoditization of the field. However, he indicates that music can still be discovered in the same way that it has been discovered for centuries, simply by listening and allowing oneself to experience. In this way, he has many of the same ideas shared by Ciardi and Williams regarding how to appreciate poetry. Like the poet, Sessions informs his reader that the composer of music writes in response to some deeper internal game he plays with himself in which the goal is to discover the notes and sounds that are pleasing to him. What is pleasing to him is, of course, based on his previous experiences and his attempt to capture the ‘sound’ of that experience. Also like the poet, Sessions indicates that the music composer cannot become an artist simply because he has something to say or knows how to put notes in the correct order, but must tap into something deeper within himself if he is to make the jump into art rather than simple sound. “It is … ‘the basic intent and responsibility,’ not ‘the degree of communicability’, that constitute ‘the value of art to the public’” (Shahn, 1957 cited in Sessions, 1970: 11). Sessions further relates music to poetry by suggesting that the reader of poetry who is able to fully appreciate the poetry being read is able to appreciate it because they are able to share in the experience of it. In the same way, he suggests, listeners to music are able to appreciate music to the degree that they are able to experience the process of creating it, that is, the performance of it at that moment in time. Unlike poetry, however, Sessions de-emphasizes the need for audiences to be aware of the individual technical tricks of the music in favor of their ability to simply allow themselves to experience it as it flows over them. By listening attentively, allowing the music to ‘speak’ to the ear and the emotions, Sessions indicates the listener is able to gain an understanding of the patterns and meanings of the music like the reader is able to gain an understanding of the poem. In making this distinction, he suggests that true music appreciation is much more intuitive and direct than poetry in its attempt to communicate with the audience’s emotional being. Aaron Copland provides a similar view in the first chapter of his book Music and Imagination (1953). Sessions’ conclusions seem to be captured and summarized within Copland’s first sentence, written more than 15 years earlier: “The more I live the life of music the more I am convinced that it is the freely imaginative mind that is at the core of all vital music making and music listening” (Copland, 1953: 7). In his justification for this initial sentence, Copland writes effusively about the ways in which music is the art form most attuned to the imaginative mind but yet not fully open to the mind unwilling to make an effort. Seeming to build on the understanding of music that Sessions has provided, Copland focuses on providing his readers with a greater understanding of some of the characteristics that enable one to develop a sensitive ear for music. This is the same type of approach that is provided by Ciardi and Williams toward poetry. In making his case, Copland suggests that one of the reasons why so few people in contemporary audiences have the kind of imaginative mind necessary to fully appreciate music is because the human tendency is to mistrust the talent of listening, but that this talent can be nurtured and developed just as the reader can nurture and develop a greater understanding of poetry. In many ways, Copland follows the same basic format followed by Ciardi and Williams in his presentation by first assuring his reader that he is attempting to reach the novice or inexperienced listener and then moving on to validate that there are technical tricks of the trade of which professionals are commonly and intuitively aware. He also avoids attempting to go so deep into this discussion that he frightens away the beginner and instead illustrates where the beginner might start to develop a more thorough understanding of the music. Like poetry, there is something within music, Copland suggests, that keeps it a step removed from our inner awareness unless we become willing to seek it out. However, once we’ve found it, we often find we have been moved by it, changed in some way that takes us somewhat by surprise. This argument is understood to a much greater degree after having following the illustrative example provided by Ciardi and Williams in their analysis of poetry. Like the argument concerning poetry, Copland illustrates how music is neither a simple analysis of its parts nor a purely emotional response to the sounds produced but is instead a game played between the composer in the act of meeting the challenges of composing and the listener in the act of meeting the challenges of listening. And, like poetry, the meaning of the music is bound up within the music itself, its performance and its reception within the mind and feeling and experiences of the listener at that moment in time. By providing a logical mind with the visual elements of poetry analysis as provided by Ciardi and Williams and then linking this with the concepts of understanding music, the progression provided above builds a ladder for the scientifically-trained mind to cross into the realm of the imagination with little or no real struggle. It is possible for the logical mind to trace through the basic technical tricks of the poetry analysis to understand how the poet is playing a mind-game with him- or herself as well as how this game has managed to ensnare the reader in the process of discovering it and thus lead to a realization regarding the art. Having made this discovery, then, it is possible for the logical mind to grasp the concept that music, more than poetry, speaks to this imaginative mind just discovered and then to move on to apply the concepts presented by Copland. Through this process, the logical mind discovers an imaginative side, moves to the imaginative side and develops a desire and a plan to build on this imaginative mind without realizing the individual effort it is already expending – reinforcing the fascinating ideas just revealed. Works Cited Ciardi, John & Miller Williams. “How Does a Poem Mean?” How Does a Poem Mean? 2nd Ed. Atlanta: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975: 2-13. Copland, Aaron. Music and Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. Sessions, Roger. Questions About Music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. Read More