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Music's Spell: Poems About Music and Musicians
Music may be the universal language that needs no words-the "language where all language ends," as Rilke put it-but that has not stopped poets from ancient times to the present from trying to represent it in verse.
Here are Rumi and Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop and Billy Collins; the wild pipes of William Blake, the weeping guitars of Federico Garc�a Lorca, and the jazz rhythms of Langston Hughes; Wallace Stevens on Mozart and Thom Gunn on Elvis-the range of poets and of their approaches to the subject is as wide and varied as music itself.
The poems are divided into sections on pop and rock, jazz and blues, specific composers and works, various musical instruments, the human voice, the connection between music and love, and music at the close of life. The result is a symphony of poetic voices of all tenors and tones, the perfect gift for all musicians and music lovers.
Here are Rumi and Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop and Billy Collins; the wild pipes of William Blake, the weeping guitars of Federico Garc�a Lorca, and the jazz rhythms of Langston Hughes; Wallace Stevens on Mozart and Thom Gunn on Elvis-the range of poets and of their approaches to the subject is as wide and varied as music itself.
The poems are divided into sections on pop and rock, jazz and blues, specific composers and works, various musical instruments, the human voice, the connection between music and love, and music at the close of life. The result is a symphony of poetic voices of all tenors and tones, the perfect gift for all musicians and music lovers.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published March 27, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 25, 2021
A well-selected collection, very enjoyable to read.
This is a great collection for any lover of both poetry and music. There is a healthy mix of older and more modern poets, and most of these poets have multiple poems included in this collection. I love the inclusion of some translations of non-English poems, as it has exposed me to many more poets than I've heard of, outside of the English poetry canon.
This is a lovely collection and a great addition to any poetry or music lover's library.
This is a great collection for any lover of both poetry and music. There is a healthy mix of older and more modern poets, and most of these poets have multiple poems included in this collection. I love the inclusion of some translations of non-English poems, as it has exposed me to many more poets than I've heard of, outside of the English poetry canon.
This is a lovely collection and a great addition to any poetry or music lover's library.
October 30, 2022
This is, unfortunately, not the strongest Everyman's Library Pocket Poets collection I've read. Many of the poems are only tangentially connected to music and I can't believe that this is as good as it gets for a collection whose main focus is music, if the title is to be trusted. I also didn't really find any new favorites or connect with the poems in this collection, so it was a bit of a disappointing read overall.
October 30, 2023
This is a lovely little pocket edition, hardcover with dust jacket, from the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets. Its jacket price is $13.50, but I purchased it at the Keyser Ave. Goodwill in Scranton for ten cents. They have a huge inventory of books and often have incredible sales, like "all books ten cents".
This was an incredible bargain. I was expecting trite poetry, maybe two or three impressive poems. This is an amazing anthology.
As the jacket cover states, "'Music may be the universal language that needs no words - the language where all language ends,' as Rilke put it--but that has not stopped poets from ancient times to the present from trying to represent it in verse.
"Here are Rumi and Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop and Billy Collins; here are the wild pipes of William Blake,the weeping guitars of Federico Garcia Lorca, and the jazz rhythms of Langston Hughes; here are Wallace Stevens on Mozart and Tom Gunn on Elvis-- the range of poets and of their approaches to the subject is this wide and varied as music itself."
This was an incredible bargain. I was expecting trite poetry, maybe two or three impressive poems. This is an amazing anthology.
As the jacket cover states, "'Music may be the universal language that needs no words - the language where all language ends,' as Rilke put it--but that has not stopped poets from ancient times to the present from trying to represent it in verse.
"Here are Rumi and Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop and Billy Collins; here are the wild pipes of William Blake,the weeping guitars of Federico Garcia Lorca, and the jazz rhythms of Langston Hughes; here are Wallace Stevens on Mozart and Tom Gunn on Elvis-- the range of poets and of their approaches to the subject is this wide and varied as music itself."
October 26, 2025
I love this and glad I picked this up at a small bookshop in New Orleans.
I worked for Pandora Radio for 17 years and when I was first hired the company was called Savage Beast Technologies, and no one could really remember why the company was called that. Some speculated it was something Shakespeare said, or maybe it was an ancient Greek philosopher.
Well on the second page I learned:
Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
I've read that things inanimate have moved,
And, as with living souls, have been inform'd,
By magic numbers and persuasive sound.
-William Congreve
I worked for Pandora Radio for 17 years and when I was first hired the company was called Savage Beast Technologies, and no one could really remember why the company was called that. Some speculated it was something Shakespeare said, or maybe it was an ancient Greek philosopher.
Well on the second page I learned:
Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
I've read that things inanimate have moved,
And, as with living souls, have been inform'd,
By magic numbers and persuasive sound.
-William Congreve
April 1, 2024
a lot of them are very religious which like, fine. wasn’t really connecting with any of them the way i thought i would.
February 6, 2021
These Everyman's Library Pocket Poet books are a favorite of mine. This collection of poems about music is no exception. Although there were enough poems in this collection that didn't speak to me to bring its rating down a star.
As with all anthologies, this book is broken into sections. The first section - The Power of Music - contained the fewest poems I liked. The collection gets better once you're through the first section. Many of these poems are excellent. I adored Ginzberg's "First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels" which perfectly conveys my idea of a Hell's Angels party. "The Supremes" by Cornelius Eady, "The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes, and Charles Simic's "Bed Music" are also among my top favorites as the poets use words to describe familiar music, music performances, and life. "To a Daughter at Fourteen Forsaking the Violin" by Carole Oles is probably my favorite as she poetically describes what parents go through as their children learn to play an instrument but then move on to other things as adults. "The Pavilion of Music" by Chang-Wou-Kien is very short but captures exactly how I'd like to be remembered.
Among my least favorites are "The Guitar" by Federico Lorca (I play guitar and he totally missed the spirit of a guitar) and a couple by Jan Zwicky and Amy Lowell. There are quite a few that I'm just neutral toward.
This anthology wouldn't be my first Pocket Poets recommendation if you've never read one. But it's nevertheless a good choice. Recommended.
As with all anthologies, this book is broken into sections. The first section - The Power of Music - contained the fewest poems I liked. The collection gets better once you're through the first section. Many of these poems are excellent. I adored Ginzberg's "First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels" which perfectly conveys my idea of a Hell's Angels party. "The Supremes" by Cornelius Eady, "The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes, and Charles Simic's "Bed Music" are also among my top favorites as the poets use words to describe familiar music, music performances, and life. "To a Daughter at Fourteen Forsaking the Violin" by Carole Oles is probably my favorite as she poetically describes what parents go through as their children learn to play an instrument but then move on to other things as adults. "The Pavilion of Music" by Chang-Wou-Kien is very short but captures exactly how I'd like to be remembered.
Among my least favorites are "The Guitar" by Federico Lorca (I play guitar and he totally missed the spirit of a guitar) and a couple by Jan Zwicky and Amy Lowell. There are quite a few that I'm just neutral toward.
This anthology wouldn't be my first Pocket Poets recommendation if you've never read one. But it's nevertheless a good choice. Recommended.
March 8, 2020
Great. If you are interested in music, love music, whatever the case - if music is for you, in you, etc, then you can't go wrong with a handy-dandy compilation of musical poems such as this.
If for no other reason, just this poem alone (by Robert Phillips), it was well worth the read:
The Death of Janis Joplin
October 4, 1970
“Oh Lord, won’t you buy me
a Mercedes-Benz!”
Because she was a white girl,
born black-and-blue,
Because she was outsized victim
of her own insides,
Because she was voted
“Ugliest Man on Campus,”
Because she looked for something,
and found nothing -
she became famous.
“Tell me that you love me!”
she screamed at audiences.
They told. Fat Janis wouldn’t
believe. Twenty-seven,
a star since twenty-four,
she tried to suck, lick,
smoke, shoot, drip, drop,
drink the world.
Nothing worked.
Bought a house, a place
to go home to.
Bought a dog, something to give
love to. Nothing worked.
Jimi Hendrix died, Janis cried:
“Goddamn, he beat me
to it.” Not by much. Three weeks later
she joined him.
Part of something at last.
If for no other reason, just this poem alone (by Robert Phillips), it was well worth the read:
The Death of Janis Joplin
October 4, 1970
“Oh Lord, won’t you buy me
a Mercedes-Benz!”
Because she was a white girl,
born black-and-blue,
Because she was outsized victim
of her own insides,
Because she was voted
“Ugliest Man on Campus,”
Because she looked for something,
and found nothing -
she became famous.
“Tell me that you love me!”
she screamed at audiences.
They told. Fat Janis wouldn’t
believe. Twenty-seven,
a star since twenty-four,
she tried to suck, lick,
smoke, shoot, drip, drop,
drink the world.
Nothing worked.
Bought a house, a place
to go home to.
Bought a dog, something to give
love to. Nothing worked.
Jimi Hendrix died, Janis cried:
“Goddamn, he beat me
to it.” Not by much. Three weeks later
she joined him.
Part of something at last.
August 22, 2021
I didn't really get this as a collection. It seemed like most of the time, it was just a collection of poems that mentioned, or implied something about music. But they didn't seem to be linked thematically much beyond that.
There were some poems I liked, but most I didn't. Or, I might have liked them, in a different context, but in this context I didn't really get them. Perhaps that's on me. But I didn't really enjoy reading it, beyond the occasional good poem in the batch.
I think in the future I'm going to steer clear of anthologies.
There were some poems I liked, but most I didn't. Or, I might have liked them, in a different context, but in this context I didn't really get them. Perhaps that's on me. But I didn't really enjoy reading it, beyond the occasional good poem in the batch.
I think in the future I'm going to steer clear of anthologies.
March 6, 2018
This is a lovely looking book, part of everyman's library pocket series. Of course I don't totally love the selection of poetry... it feels very "high art" usual suspects. although my two favorite from the volume were toward the end: Billy Collins' "Piano Lessons" and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Ballata." Classic funny and poignant Collins and Ballata basically sums up how I feel about all these "Master Class" offerings of late...
June 26, 2023
I found this book by chance at my local library, and it contains a diverse mix of poems (in terms of rhyme, style and historical era) all on the subject of music. It enabled me to discover some truly lyrical masterpieces and some lesser-known poets. My favorite entry is "Sonnet" by Elizabeth Bishop.
March 14, 2024
The words of the chosen poems emanate sounds from the page. A true homage to Music, Musicians and the Craft.
October 9, 2020
I’ve read a good handful of the Everyman’s Pocket Poets series and this was a fairly standard installment. There’s a good selection of verse, with a lot of lovely selections, but some of the poetry felt like a bit of a stretch and I found myself noticing that it wasn’t as moving or diverse as I think it could have been.
It’s always hard to really review anthologies, because there are so many authors and tones and I want to give everyone their due but I can’t and really, a good collection’s about the collection and the layout of the poems as much as anything else. Suffice to say, there are some profoundly moving poems in this book, from poets who clearly understood the power of music and musical imagery, who were rhapsodic about pop groups and classical composers and the sound of singing on the breeze. There are also excerpts of longer poems, which left me wishing the whole piece, or even a longer excerpt, had been included because I felt a lot was missing, and other poems that didn’t seem to have much place in the book except that they had a word like “violin” in them.
As for diversity, there’s a good range of topics, verse types, and eras. You’ll find a poem or two you like, no matter your taste! But it’s fairly heavily weighted to the Western canon and musical styles, to Anglo authors, and to white people. I count a solid handful of Black poets, but only two from the Middle East and one from China. I know there’s a stronger musical tradition in Asia than that! Surely more than one poet has written about it! Not to mention Africa, Latin America, Indigenous peoples….
So my real criticism is that this book, like most of the others I’ve read, suffered from narrow thinking and a lack of imagination. For all it’s a solid collection, it could’ve had more punch and a wider scope, and I think it will probably appeal more to the casual poetry reader and listener to music than it will to people solidly steeped in either. (Music is my second love after words and like I said, some poems hit home and others … I’ve felt more listening to symphonies and rock songs than those poems evoked.)
I did discover a few new poets, though, and there were a few poems I had to double back on not because I didn’t get them the first time but because the writing was so good. It’s a good collection for what it is, I was delighted every handful of pages, and I’m not going to stop picking up this series anytime soon, for all I often wish they were slightly better.
To bear in mind: Not really applicable this time round, except for the rather Western selection.
7/10
It’s always hard to really review anthologies, because there are so many authors and tones and I want to give everyone their due but I can’t and really, a good collection’s about the collection and the layout of the poems as much as anything else. Suffice to say, there are some profoundly moving poems in this book, from poets who clearly understood the power of music and musical imagery, who were rhapsodic about pop groups and classical composers and the sound of singing on the breeze. There are also excerpts of longer poems, which left me wishing the whole piece, or even a longer excerpt, had been included because I felt a lot was missing, and other poems that didn’t seem to have much place in the book except that they had a word like “violin” in them.
As for diversity, there’s a good range of topics, verse types, and eras. You’ll find a poem or two you like, no matter your taste! But it’s fairly heavily weighted to the Western canon and musical styles, to Anglo authors, and to white people. I count a solid handful of Black poets, but only two from the Middle East and one from China. I know there’s a stronger musical tradition in Asia than that! Surely more than one poet has written about it! Not to mention Africa, Latin America, Indigenous peoples….
So my real criticism is that this book, like most of the others I’ve read, suffered from narrow thinking and a lack of imagination. For all it’s a solid collection, it could’ve had more punch and a wider scope, and I think it will probably appeal more to the casual poetry reader and listener to music than it will to people solidly steeped in either. (Music is my second love after words and like I said, some poems hit home and others … I’ve felt more listening to symphonies and rock songs than those poems evoked.)
I did discover a few new poets, though, and there were a few poems I had to double back on not because I didn’t get them the first time but because the writing was so good. It’s a good collection for what it is, I was delighted every handful of pages, and I’m not going to stop picking up this series anytime soon, for all I often wish they were slightly better.
To bear in mind: Not really applicable this time round, except for the rather Western selection.
7/10
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews