While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song

Hear the words of David Antin, poet of talk and improvisation, who declared: “While I’ve had a great distaste for what’s usually called song in modern poetry or for what’s usually called music, I really don’t think of speech as so far from song.” In this saying lies a paradox, at once rejection and embrace. Antin distances himself from the artificial sweetness often labeled as "song" in verse, yet he affirms that speech itself carries music within it, that every word we utter is already half-song, half-poem, waiting to be recognized.

The meaning is profound. Antin reminds us that true poetry does not need to borrow false ornament or forced melody to become beautiful. Instead, it must recognize the rhythms that already dwell in living speech—the pauses, the cadences, the rises and falls of human voice when it speaks with honesty. To him, song is not something manufactured, but something embedded in the very way people talk. If modern poetry strays too far into artificial music, it loses its grounding; but when it listens to the natural music of human voice, it rediscovers its ancient root.

History bears witness to this truth. Consider the great oral traditions of the world: Homer’s Iliad sung aloud by rhapsodes, the West African griots reciting history to drums, or the Native American storytellers chanting their myths. These were not works set apart from daily speech—they grew directly from it. The tone of a mother’s lullaby, the chant of a priest, the call of a warrior—all blurred the line between speaking and singing. Antin, standing in this lineage, reminds us that the song of poetry is not imported from elsewhere; it is already alive in the voices of people as they tell their stories.

Even in modern times, this truth resounds. Think of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches. They were not written as “songs,” yet their cadence, their rhythm, their music stirred hearts across the world. His “I Have a Dream” speech rises and falls with a melody more powerful than many written songs, though it is pure speech. Here we see Antin’s insight: when speech is filled with passion, conviction, and rhythm, it becomes indistinguishable from song.

This teaching is also a challenge. It calls us to listen more deeply to the voices around us, to recognize the beauty in ordinary speech. Too often, we think of poetry as a rarefied form, separate from life. But Antin reminds us: the roots of poetry are in the living tongue, in the way people talk to one another. To honor this is to break down the wall between art and life, between literature and conversation.

The lesson is clear: do not look only to polished verse or carefully arranged melody for beauty. Look to the rhythms of ordinary speech, for in them lies a hidden song. When a friend tells a story, when a teacher explains a lesson with passion, when a stranger cries out in the street—there is poetry there. The task of the poet is not always to invent but to listen, to catch the music that already exists in the world.

Practical steps follow. Listen carefully when others speak; notice the cadences, the pauses, the repetitions. Read poems aloud, not as if they are lyrics forced into song, but as if they are living conversations, with breath and voice. When you write, pay attention to how people actually speak, and let that speech guide your rhythm. And when you seek inspiration, remember that song is not far away—it is already in your own words, waiting to be heard.

Thus Antin’s words endure: “I don’t think of speech as so far from song.” Let them remind us that the boundary between the two is thinner than we imagine. Every conversation is a melody, every utterance a rhythm, every voice a potential poem. To walk in this truth is to live in a world where music surrounds us—not only in instruments or formal songs, but in the voices of human beings, speaking their lives into the air.