Can reading poetry make you a better writer? The way poetry pushes up against the rules of grammar makes it a great teacher even for the writing of standard prose. And while plenty of poems are best comprehended by the wise and mature, hip-hop is a form that’s more emotional and less subtle, and over at rapgenius.com, avid followers of hip-hop have annotated lyrics to tell the stories and meanings behind them. Is there a type of poetry that really moves you? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Poetry Improves Writing”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. I’ve always been a voracious reader, but recently I find myself drawn to one genre in particular, and that’s poetry.
And it sort of crept up on me. I just noticed the other day that every single book on my nightstand was poetry.
Like Natasha Trethewey and Katie Ford and Billy Collins, Audreon Rich and Kay Ryan.
And I’m not sure why I’m gravitating toward poetry above all the other forms.
But I’m thinking that maybe part of it is that we talk so often on the show about grammar and poetry pushes against the rules of grammar.
And I think because of that, it’s a great way to learn how to do any kind of writing better.
I think poetry is such a great teacher.
You know, you spend some time with it and you realize how much the style in which you say something can make your writing pack so much more of a punch, even when you’re writing prose.
And Grant, recently I’m hearing about more and more teachers who are using the poetry of hip-hop lyrics to teach writing in the classroom.
They’re building on that poetry that their students already love.
And so much of hip-hop really is poetic, isn’t it?
It is poetic.
There’s a couple things to say to this.
One is, if I can flatter you for a second, there’s wisdom that comes with maturity.
And I think poetry requires life experience to get the most out of it.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Your ideas and concepts are so dense in there.
To unpack them, you must have lived a good life.
That is very true.
A thorough life at least, right?
I think that’s very true.
That’s a nice way of saying I’m getting older, right?
No, I mean, we all get older.
It happens.
May you continue to grow older.
Thank you.
And the thing with hip hop, it tends to be more emotional, have a higher impact.
It’s not very subtle, right?
Mm—
And this reminds me, this is going to sound like a tangent for a second.
RapGenius.com just got a $15 million investment.
$15 million.
What rapgenius.com does is annotates the lyrics to hip-hop songs.
And it might not be fully academic, and you might disagree with it,
But you have people who are considering this as an art form.
They’re going into the site and saying,
Well, this is what I believe that this artist is saying with these words,
Or this is what I took away from it,
Or this is what my life experience shows me these lyrics to mean.
That’s significant, that somebody should see this merging of pop culture
And, frankly, the forensic exercise of analyzing a text in a humanities class,
Somebody should see it worth putting money into that.
So who’s behind it? Who’s doing the analyzing of the rap lyrics?
Is it crowdsourced?
Yeah, it’s the community.
No kidding.
It’s the people who love it, the people who enjoy it.
And there’s something important happening there.
And I love that you’re into poetry now, and I’m so happy to hear you share poems on the show.
You have one for us later, I hope.
I do. I have a couple, in fact.
If you have a poem that you’d like to share with us, something that really moved you,
We really want to hear it.
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