Dancing To Mozama Disco Kristo Music

Give me words that make me sway,

give me words that make my day,

give me words that bounce with style -

and if they make me dance and smile, I have music

- When Music Takes Over 

(from the lachrymose ways of rain and other poems)

I love to dance. Not the formation kind. Just the move-your-body-in-funny-twists kind of dancing. I see that life and love are dances we must master. I see that struggle and success are also movements we must excel in. Everything is a dance, an internal attempt to be in sync with external rhythms of existence. Since we are all in one big dance hall called the world, wouldn't it be smart to inculcate that musicality into our works? Musicality, also called beat by American poets, is a rhythmic essence peculiar to a particular poet, writer or body of work. In works with musicality, you can detect (when you read or listen to that poet, writer or work) that the words flow with ease and that the flow makes sense. That flow reaches recesses of your mind and lingers there even after you are done reading or listening.


Find your own unique rhythm. All of us have varied tastes. Someone might be an azonto dance master. Another might be a waltz king. We must play to our strengths, things that are integrals features of our personas. Like rhyme, rhythm can hold back or set your poetry free. The temptation to write like others comes into play whenever the subject of rhythm is raised. Of course, people respond to some beats better than others. However, the poet must not forget this Shakespearean advice in Hamlet: to thy own self, be true. Never, ever copy someone's rhythm. You will catch writer's block as quickly as a naked man in the Arctic. It is of supreme importance to stick to one's core id when it comes to the subject of rhythm.


Use it effectively to drive home the mood of your poem. Like beats to a song, rhythm sets the mood to poetry. It determines when certain words enter and exit a poem. It is important to stay true to rhythm as an abrupt exit can kill the effectiveness of a poem. Trust me, it is not only spoken word that has such challenges. Written word is equally as powerful in the mind of an engaged reader. He/she detects abruptness and dissonance just by the way words are woven into a poem.


Experiment with variations of your rhythm. By no means, use variations of your rhythm in a poem. This allows you to slow it down with words that have soft syllables, make it fast with words with short syllables or add oomph with delicate sounding words. One has to be absolutely intentional with rhythm because of its intangibility.


Write to an imaginary listener who loves music. Poets write to someone. A lover. An ex-lover. A parent. A crush. A boss. Whoever. When we read our poems out loud, it becomes easy to detect where rhythm is suffering. This enables us to edit the irregularity so we can keep the poem in the flow. One secret of rhythm is to write as if one was talking to someone who loved music. Not just any kind of music but the music we like. Poems are songs without melodies. It helps to keep that in mind when writing them.


Do not fight the flow of your poem during the first draft. You will have ample time to edit. You might begin a poem that has a rhythm you dislike. Instead of tossing it into the dustbin, write it out. Give it a chance to live. You might like it after a few reads or tweak it into a rhythm you like. Great songs are usually great poetry; great poetry does not have to be a song but it should involve several elements of a song.


Jazz pianist Thelonious Monk said that anything that’s good will make you laugh in admiration – Your poem (and writing) is your presentation of perspectives of the world to the world. You must pull your readers (and listeners) in. You must push off your guardedness and embrace the inner rhythms of your soul. They come out whenever you put pen to paper, waiting on you to involve them in the process of creation. As Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka says, the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.

Do not mute the music in your words.