Tim:

"Of course the two forms of the poems are going to be received differently but that doesn't tell us anything different than if one form of the poem was shouted while the other was whispered, or one was printed in multiple colours and one wasn't."

Category mistake.  What you describe above is a single thing manifested in two different ways.  

In the example you, of course it's possible to say both that the two things, the poem shouted and the poem mumbled, are the same thing, The Poem.

Equally true to say that The-Poem-Shouted isn't the same thing as The-Poem-Mumbled, and the difference between the two is important.

That, as far as I can make out, wasn't actually Jamie's point.  A-set-of-words-with-music may or may not be be the same thing as A-set-of-words-without-music, and the distinction may or may not be important, but if that's the point of Jamie's that you are trying to engage with, you picked the wrong example to use.

At one point in the course of this thread, when I was trying to remind myself that there was a world elsewhere, I found a YouTube video (I know I said this before, but as no one was apparently listening, I'll say it again) of the original performance of "Seven Spanish Angels".  After watching it, I went over and looked at the words on the screen, to see what they looked like again, reread in the light of what I'd just been watching.

Now, as far as I can make out as to what you're getting at, you seem to be telling me that there's no difference between watching a blind black blues pianist and a white folk guitarist play, and sing, for the first time, a song [sic] that they composed together, that, and the bare experience of reading a set of words on the page.

That I'm simply experiencing the same thing ...  That the two things, in this case, don't interact ... That the medium doesn't matter ... That it's just "playing with words" (and whose playing would that be referring to -- mine, or Ray Charles and Willie Nelson's?)  ...

All I can say is, Who am I supposed to believe -- you or my lying eyes?

Robin

On 25 October 2016 at 17:13 Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Jamie, thanks for responding but you have not answered my points. I don't mean the personal experience thing. Peter hasn't answered my questions either. No matter.

Just like to say that I really don't see how what you say in your final sentence below could possibly back-up your determination to, as David said, see a distinction. Of course the two forms of the poems are going to be received differently but that doesn't tell us anything different than if one form of the poem was shouted while the other was whispered, or one was printed in multiple colours and one wasn't.

Cheers

Tim

  

On 24 Oct 2016, at 16:47, Jamie McKendrick wrote:

Hi Tim,

  I appreciate that this represents your experience and if you see no useful distinction then there's no point in dwelling on it. The history stuff is mainly illustrative but it signals some developments within the art, and I found Michael Peverett's examples, in his last post, some of the most revealing. I think both he and Peter know much more about music than I do, so my argument has been impaired by that.

  I've largely avoided my own experience in this, but if were to sum it up:

1) I've written some songs for music which were failed songs in my view, though they sounded good enough because of the singer. I wouldn't want to reprint them. It made me realise something more or other is required than the 'craft' (let's call it that) which is involved in making poems. (And for now I don't have it.)

2) I've written a couple of poems that have pronounced song-like elements which might, I guess, be put to music. I wouldn't mind seeing what survived. But they're too short for songs, so forget that!

3) I've had some poems set to music which have become very much other. Almost all the tempo, the pausing, the rhythm, the emphases which were purposefully put into the poem were changed in the process. While I'm happy that the composers have done this work, and like what they've done, no one in my view could possibly receive the two forms the poem now exists in similarly.