Within these pages, writers have put their love for music into words. A book filled with poetic melodies about how music makes them feel, how it relates to them; how they use it, and tell us about the type of music and legends they love. Each poet will take the time to breathe life into compositions filled with emotional harmony. Each poem, meant to take the reader on a musical journey; where one can sprout rhythmic wings and fly into symphonic dreams for just a moment. Donna J. Sanders, Author

Poetic Song Verse: Blues-Based Popular Music and Poetry invokes and critiques the relationship between blues-based popular music and poetry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The volume is anchored in music from the 1960s, when a concentration of artists transformed modes of popular music from entertainment to art-that-entertains. Musician Mike Mattison and literary historian Ernest Suarez synthesize a wide range of writing about blues and rock—biographies, histories, articles in popular magazines, personal reminiscences, and a selective smattering of academic studies—to examine the development of a relatively new literary genre dubbed by the authors as “poetic song verse.” They argue that poetic song verse was nurtured in the fifties and early sixties by the blues and in Beat coffee houses, and matured in the mid-to-late sixties in the art of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Gil Scott-Heron, Van Morrison, and others who used voice, instrumentation, arrangement, and production to foreground semantically textured, often allusive, and evocative lyrics that resembled and engaged poetry. Among the questions asked in Poetic Song Verse are: What, exactly, is this new genre? What were its origins? And how has it developed? How do we study and assess it? To answer these questions, Mattison and Suarez engage in an extended discussion of the roots of the relationship between blues-based music and poetry and address how it developed into a distinct literary genre. Unlocking the combination of richly textured lyrics wedded to recorded music reveals a dynamism at the core of poetic song verse that can often go unrealized in what often has been considered merely popular entertainment. This volume balances historical details and analysis of particular songs with accessibility to create a lively, intelligent, and cohesive narrative that provides scholars, teachers, students, music influencers, and devoted fans with an overarching perspective on the poetic power and blues roots of this new literary genre.

In these essays, acclaimed poet and critic Anthony Hecht explores the ways in which poetry can be read and the many pleasures it affords. Ranging from Shakespeare's sonnets to Eliot, Frost, and Simic, Melodies Unheard offers profound insight into poetic form, meter, rhyme, and meaning--into the mysteries of poetry itself. Anthony Hecht's vast knowledge of literature and his gift for mesmerizing argument are both amply present in Melodies Unheard. Whether defending the sestina against accusations of boredom and dolefulness or examining the structure of Shakespeare's sonnets or unraveling some of the complexity of Moby-Dick, these essays are models of civility, candor, and grace. I know of no other poet, certainly none of Anthony Hecht's stature, who sheds as much light on the intricacies and hidden designs of poems and who does it with such style.--Mark Strand Anthony Hecht declares himself 'a poet first and only secondarily a critic, ' but Melodies Unheard proves again that he is a master in both trades. His discourse on such subjects as rhyme, the sestina, and 'the music of forms' is both scholarly and delightful; his articles on individual poets are finely done; and best of al

In this book, she has written about her faith in God, people, places, events, and things; including words to motivate others through expressions of hope and courage that reflect battles, people have fought. "Margaret Stephen's first book of poetry, "Strumming Poetic Melodies," is a winner. This collection of her poetry reveals her passion for life. Stephen's book of poetry is about faith, people, places, and events. The poems are beautifully written and inspiring. I thoroughly enjoyed her poems and prologues under the chapters, "A Lifetime Capsule and Love Epithets." I'm looking forward to her next book." ~ Farrell J. Chiles, Author "A soulful vision of life by a woman who has been a participant in its varied facets through her vision based on being raised in the love of family and her faith in God." ~ Debra Rothman, Curriculum, and Instructional Specialist "You are a very good poet. Keep on writing. God has really blessed you." ~ Michael Jackson, District Attorney, Alabama, 4th Judicial Circuit Hopefully, this book will inspire young people to find their gifts; remind women of their beauty and value, and inspire men to maintain their strength and embrace their emotional vitality. Sanguinely, you too as a reader will be able to identify with a poem that will encourage you to find some laughter, learn something new, communicate better, or learn to love yourself; and treat others better on this journey called life! The end of this book leaves you with "Margaret's Quotes of Wisdom," numerous notes to keep in your purse or your pocket, more valuable than gold! Poetry can inspire us to dream, reminisce, and observe; as well as serve as medicine to heal our emotions and boost our memory. Go ahead - grab a cup of coffee or libations, allow your mind to sharpen, and relax... allowing words and thoughts to awaken your God-given talents to embrace the dawning of a new day!

Wallace Stevens’s musicality is so profound that scholars have only begun to grasp his ties to the art of music or the music of his own poetry. In this study, two long-time specialists present a polyphonic composition in which they pursue various interlocking perspectives. Their case studies demonstrate how music as a temporal art form may affect a poetic of ephemerality, sensuous experience, and affective intensification. Such a poetic, they argue, invites flexible interpretations that respond to poetry as an art of textual performance. How did Stevens enact the relation between music and memory? How can we hear his verse as a form of melody-making? What was specific to his ways of recording birdsong? Have we been missing the latent music of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Claude Debussy in particular poems? What were the musical poetics he shared with Igor Stravinsky? And how is our experience of the late poetry transformed when we listen to a musical setting by Ned Rorem? The Poetic Music of Wallace Stevens will appeal to experts in the poet’s work, students of Modernism in the arts, and a wider audience fascinated by the dynamics of exchange between music and poetry.

Poet and short story writer Blanche Sears hails from the North Eastern Coastal town of South Shields. She graduated in English Language and Literature from Manchester University and obtained a Teaching Diploma from King's College London. After marriage to Tom, a Neurophysiologist, they spent time in Australia where two of their three children were born. On returning to England she resumed her teaching career then enjoyed with Tom his working visits to Norway, Germany, Japan and the USA. Family aside, her lifelong interests have been centred on Literature, Music and History, as reflected in her poetry.

Grades 2-6 The step-by-step, reproducible worksheets in this resource will guide your students to turn poems into songs. As your students work to compose pleasant and singable melodies, duets, and arrangements, they will also learn to count intervals, create chords, and explore expressive techniques.