Music and Poetry as the Art of Emotion

Music and Poetry as the Art of Emotion

Poetry is a diverse form of communication and there are vast arrays of elements that make up this very unique and specialized form of writing. Poetry is the art of apprehending and interpreting ideas by the faculty of imagination; the art of idealizing in thought and in expression. "For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language." (Coleridge) Like poetry, music is an avenue for the author to release new struggles that can be set free through no other means than verse.

Music is said to be the speech of angels. It has the beauty of loneliness, the pain of strength and freedom, and the disappointment and never-satisfied love. Music is verbal poetry. It encompasses a great many emotions, feelings, and desires and often represents rage, love, happiness, sorrow and despair. "Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art." (Parker) Music is a form of art. It allows a human being to take all the dry, technically boring but difficult techniques and uses them to create and simplify emotion. Plato once said, "Education in music is most sovereign because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find there way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it." Music is one thing science cannot duplicate: humanism, feeling, and emotion.

Jim Morrison, an American Rock legend, was often thought of only as a drunk musician and was also portrayed to many as an addict and another "doped up" rock star. These negative opinions project a large shadow on the many positive aspects of this great poet. Many famous authors influenced Jim's music heavily and pushed his music into poetry. Standing behind these prejudiced flaws of Jim Morrison and other poets, you see very intellectual poetry. For example he integrated philosophers thoughts into his own unique thought and expanded their views into his own.

In his poem, "Car Cemetery", Jim Morrison is saying that all that is dead becomes

new again in its own environment. The night is the environment and the keeper of the graveyard is really the protector of the memories of the dead. Those that follow, who are the children, mock that which they don't understand.