Many times, people forget that music is rooted in poetry. Most believe poetry to be a depressing, rhyming, boring few lines. However when diving deep into the meaning of poetry, we see that it is all around us, and can be enjoyed. In “Perrine’s Sound & Sense: An Introduction to Poetry”, Arp & Johnson explain what poetry is and how good readers should read poetry. Saying that poetry exists “…to bring us a sense and a perception of life, to widen and sharpen our contacts with existence”(2-3). Poetry is not created to tell us a story, but to draw us inside the story and experience it by activating your emotions, intelligence, senses and imagination.
So… How does JP Cooper create poetry in his 2017 song: “September Song”?
“September Song” is a poem with a beat tracked in the background. The poem is about his experience as a 15 year old boy falling in love with a girl. And how he remembered the experience of losing her, giving him nostalgia and regret. Listening to the lyrics, the audience can tell that this was a summer relationship that ended once school begin in the fall.
You were my September Song summer lasted too long
Time moves so slowly when you’re only fifteen
You were my September Song, tell me where have you gone?
He still loved her through fall even though they were no longer together. The “Song” is a symbol for all of the emotions he felt for the girl when they we together, but the meaning changes as the song continues to become his longing and nostalgia for their happy relationship when they were younger. The use of repetition also creates the passionate emotional struggle for the reader to experience as the boy did in this love story. JP Cooper, through his use of symbolism, repetition, and other literary devices creates and experience for the audience to think about, feel, sense and imagine, making it a poetic song.