Carter Kaplan: Oh, I am always working on my publishing projects. I don’t listen to music so much these days. I think it is true that there is more “music” in 100 lines of Milton that in a Beethoven symphony.
Grok: That’s a beautifully provocative thought. You’re echoing a very old and serious idea: that the highest “music” isn’t necessarily sonic at all, but lies in the rhythmic, harmonic, and contrapuntal architecture of great language. Milton’s blank verse in Paradise Lost does have an extraordinary musicality—its rolling periods, the subtle variations in stress and caesura, the way the syntax builds and resolves like a long musical phrase. Some readers (including Samuel Johnson and later critics) have argued that Milton’s prosody achieves a kind of intellectual and emotional polyphony that pure instrumental music can only approximate. Beethoven’s symphonies, of course, are overwhelming in their emotional and structural power—especially the late ones (the Ninth, or the quartets). But your point stands as a defensible hierarchy for certain temperaments: the music of ideas, articulated with precision and grandeur in words, can strike deeper than even the most sublime arrangement of notes, because language carries conceptual weight that sound alone cannot. Do you find that same “musical” quality more in certain poets over others? Or is Milton uniquely supreme for you in that regard?And since you’re deep in publishing projects, may I ask what kind of work you’re focused on right now? Fiction, poetry, philosophy, or something else? I’d be genuinely curious to hear.
Carter Kaplan: I think Milton’s music (poetry) is superior to most poets, in terms of aesthetics, but also in respect to the “Sound and Sense” formula, whereby the sound of a poetic line reflects the sense of the grammar. Maybe this is an instance of synesthesia?
Grok: Yes, you’re touching on something very precise and insightful. Milton is indeed one of the supreme masters of what Alexander Pope later called the “Sound and Sense” principle—where the sonic texture of the verse (rhythm, vowel quality, consonant clustering, line breaks, enjambment) actively embodies and reinforces the meaning rather than merely decorating it. In Paradise Lost, this is taken to an extraordinary level. Consider how the heavy, Latinate syntax and slow, piled-up consonants can make the verse feel laborious and fallen when describing Satan’s descent or the weight of sin, while lighter, more fluid passages (like the description of Eden or the war in Heaven) shift in prosody to match the sense. The famous opening lines are a masterclass in this: the delayed subject, the massive periodic sentence, the way the rhythm feels both grand and burdened. It’s not quite clinical synesthesia (where one sensory experience involuntarily triggers another, like seeing colors when hearing sounds), but it is a highly developed form of aesthetic synesthesia or cross-modal correspondence. Great poets and readers experience the sound as carrying semantic and emotional weight—almost as if the ear is “seeing” or “feeling” the idea. Milton’s blindness may have intensified this; with sight removed, his auditory imagination became even more dominant, and the verse feels sculpted for the inner ear. Compared to most other English poets:
Shakespeare has incredible musicality, but it’s often more dramatic and character-driven.
Keats achieves lush sensuousness, but rarely sustains Miltonic architectural grandeur.
Wordsworth can be profound, but his sound is usually plainer and more conversational.
Even Pope (who theorized Sound and Sense) is more witty and pointed than Milton’s organ-like resonance.
Milton stands almost alone in creating a verse music that feels simultaneously architectural (like a cathedral) and organic, where the prosody itself becomes part of the theology and philosophy.Do you have a particular passage or book of Paradise Lost where you feel this Sound and Sense synergy is at its most powerful? Or do you see similar effects in other poets (perhaps Dante in Italian, or Virgil)? And if you’re comfortable sharing, how does this aesthetic principle influence the publishing projects you’re working on? Are you editing or writing poetry yourself, or applying these ideas to prose?
Carter Kaplan: Prose. Frank Zappa says something very interesting along these lines. When “explaining” his guitar solos (see his album Shut Up and Play Guitar, for instance), he says talking—the human voice—is a driving force for construing/composing his solos.
Grok: That’s a fascinating connection you’re making. Frank Zappa did indeed describe his guitar solos in exactly those terms. In interviews (including one from around 1979 during the Shut Up ‘n Play Yer Guitar era), he explained that his playing deliberately moves away from conventional “regular music” rhythms—straight 4/4 or predictable eighth notes—and instead draws from the irregular, natural flow of human speech. He said something very close to:
“What I do is more like talking, like reciting poetry. People don’t talk like this all the time and that’s the way the regular music goes. That’s not the way you talk so why should it be the way you play?” In another discussion, he framed the guitar as a voice: the most direct way to communicate emotion is to “make it talk,” adopting the rhythmic attitude of speech rather than studied, repetitive melodic lines. His solos often feel like extended monologues or conversations—full of unexpected pauses, accelerations, interruptions, and phrasing that mirrors how we actually speak: uneven, expressive, and alive with micro-variations in timing and emphasis. This ties beautifully into what we’ve been discussing with Milton and the “Sound and Sense” principle. In both cases, the medium (poetic line or guitar line) isn’t just carrying content—its sonic/rhythmic shape is part of the meaning. Milton’s verse uses enjambment, heavy consonants, and grand periodic sentences to embody theological weight or cosmic scale. Zappa’s solos use speech-like irregularity to convey wit, sarcasm, surprise, or raw emotional contour without lyrics. It’s another form of that aesthetic synesthesia you mentioned: the ear “hears” the sense through the sound. In prose (your current focus), this could translate to sentence rhythm, cadence, and pacing that feels spoken rather than merely written—varying clause length, strategic pauses (via punctuation or white space), and a living, conversational energy that avoids mechanical regularity.
Does Zappa’s approach influence how you think about prose rhythm in your publishing projects? For instance, do you aim for sentences that “talk” in uneven, speech-derived patterns to heighten emotional or intellectual impact, the way Milton sculpts his lines or Zappa sculpts his solos? I’d love to hear more about how these ideas—poetic musicality and speech-like flow—play out in the specific prose you’re working on.
Carter Kaplan: Great questions! I’ll have to think about how these intersections of sound and sense work in the language(s) I use in my writing. Meanwhile, got to go. Talk to you later, thanks.
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