Poems to Music

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Comment by Brant Lyon on June 13, 2008 at 11:53am

I am a poet/composer/musician who writes and performs music for poems. I invite you to check out my latest CD, "Beauty Keeps Laying Its Sharp Knife Against Me" (Logochrysalis Productions 2008) at cdbaby.com/brantlyon for an idea of how I believe music and poetry can work together most intimately. (The mp3 files at that site give a taste of 2 mins. for each track, only, however. For the official site, go to logochrysalis.com, or to myspace.com/brantlyon.) A couple years ago I founded a 'jazzoetry' series, "Hydrogen Jukebox", in the tradition of Kerouac and the Beats, but the genre has become much more sophisticated, and there is much, much more to what I have termed POEMusic than a boozy sax blowing behind a beatnik poet, or some arbitrary musical "backdrop" to a poet reciting their work, as you'll see... Artfully done, the text and the music must make total sense. I consider it its own genre and artform.
Brant Lyon

Comment by Elizabeth Barrette on April 14, 2008 at 7:14pm

I've actually had one of my poems set to music. The band "Implant" contacted me from BELGIUM requesting permission to include my poem "Surface Tension" (originally published in the magazine Dark Planet) on their album Self-Inflicted. I agreed; and they did an amazing job with it. Their style is sort of techno-club music; not what I usually listen to, but it works.

Also in my collection I have a few CDs of poets reading their work or other people reading poetry, often with a musical backdrop. It's a presentation worth preserving.