Learn Simple Guitar Chords to Play with Your Poetry

Another poem from my application packet was a song.  A song is a type of poetry that is generally musical.  It tends to have some semblance of rhythm and melody.  Songs can be lyrical (focused more on expression or conveyance of emotions) or narrative (telling a story) or both.  Some songs utilize rhymes and meter, some do not.  Some songs, generally called instrumentals, do not contain words at all, but utilize music to convey the story or emotion.  Some songs have clear meanings, some are more abstract, and some are purely nonsense verse (noting that sometimes nonsense can still convey deep emotional ties or humor). 

This narrative song utilizes many techniques and tools to convey the meaning.  It starts with a "simile" (a comparison of things that uses the words "like" or "as").  It also uses "dialect" and "colloquialism" (dialect is the type of language used in an area, and colloquialism is the way people actually talk in a given area at a given time).  Both of these tools are available to the writer under what is called "poetic license".   Poetic license gives the author the ability to deviate from facts and rules to create a desired effect or impact on the reader or listener.  For instance, this song uses "'em" for "them"; uses the phrase "I got my name..." instead of the correct grammar of "I have my name..." or possibly "I have got my name..."; and misuses "don't" in place of "doesn't".  It also utilizes "allusion" which is a fancy way of saying a reference to something, somewhere, or someone.  "Alliteration" is a term used to describe when the author repeats the initial consonant sounds (for instance, "sometimes, I swear, the salty air").  This same line also demonstrates "in-line rhymes" where "swear" and "air" rhyme though not at the end of the line.  Whenever an author repeats like vowel sounds, that is called "assonance".  In the line that says "While you're writing", the words do not rhyme, but there is assonance with the words "while" and "writing" because of the long "I" sound.  There is a "pun" or "wordplay" represented here in the line "That makes the Capital lowercase".  The Capital referring to Washington D.C., and then using the word "lowercase" as a contradiction to capital (uppercase) letters.  The wordplay being on "capital" being a "homonym".  There are "soft rhymes" ("perfume" and "moon") and "perfect rhymes" ("lowercase" and "face"). "Hyperbole" is used in the line "Sometimes, I swear, the salty air is all I need to breathe".  A hyperbole is an over-exaggeration.  Obviously, a human has no physiological need for salty air to be the only thing one breathes.  There is a line that is not meant to be taken literally about having a ticket to ride on a cricket's song.  This is an example of a "figure of speech" that is not meant to be taken literally (how would one purchase a ticket to ride on the noise a cricket makes?). 

This song contains two "verses" (stanzas which progress the story), a "chorus" (a type of refrain that is generally repetitive and captures the essence of the poem), and a "bridge" which is typically a different melody or scheme to let the reader or listener know that something is changing.  Here, the bridge informs that reader that the narrator is forgetting one city and choosing to only think of his home town.

This poem was written about working on a detail in Washington D.C. and missing Cape Canaveral. 

Missing the Cape
(Springtime in DC)

Fighting the crowds, suits like shrouds Wandering down Fourteenth

I got my name on a cubical

While you’re writing ours on the beach

The Potomac flows to the Atlantic

So my thoughts float to your reach

Sometimes, I swear, this salty air

Is all I need to breathe

I wish I had my feet in high tide                     |

And that I was there with you                        |

The snow don’t feel like sand on my toes    |

And there’s far too much to do                      | (CHORUS)

Please send me a postcard                             |

Dabbed with your perfume                            |

Tonight at 9:00, we’ll look at the sky            |

And share the same bright moon                 |

It’s your smile and relaxed style

That makes the Capital lowercase

It’s your small-town home, and how you’re grown

That puts that color in your face

It’s easy to wish, and hard to resist

Like the lighthouse from the Cape

With folks all around, faces to the ground

This lonesome finds its place

(Repeat Chorus)

Cherry blossoms, I’d toss ‘em all in the reflection pool                                           |

Museums, I’ve seen ‘em, they can’t hold a candle to you                                      |     (BRIDGE)

I’m writing this letter because I was better off down there                                           |
Got a one-way ticket on the song of a cricket and it’s carrying me through the air |

(Repeat Chorus)

So, please send me a postcard dabbed with your perfume

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1E-xrVmaf4ikDE1EAeLMwRwajd9N4Rc1_