In his book What to Listen for in Music, Aaron Copland states the following: 

There are two ways in which structure in music may be considered: (1) form in relation to a piece as a whole and (2) form in relation to the separate, shorter parts of a piece. The larger formal distinctions would have to do with entire movements of a symphony, a sonata, or suite. The smaller formal units would together make up one entire movement (99).

 Copland then goes on to explain that there are similarities between the construction of a musical piece and the writing of a novel: 

Paragraphs are composed of sentences. In music, the sentence would be analogous to the musical idea. And, of course, the word is analogous to the single musical tone.

  The similarities between poetry (words) and music have long been known. Both have an audible component as well as a visual one: they are represented on the page as well as in the ear. Both have “tone.” For example, the difference in tone between a B Flat and an A Major is clear to the ear. When the single notes are struck, B Flat is minor, darker, more nuanced. A Major is ringingly clear, bright and optimistic. When the notes are played individually, the A Major sounds uncomplicated because nothing interesting is happening inside the soundboard. The note is clear and unadulterated. When the B Flat is played, the difference in tone emerges because inside the console, the note is being dampened, affected, changed in some way. We hear the different forces exerted on the note as tone. The tongue and the mouth similarly exert different levels of force on sounds. When we say “oo”, more involvment is required by the body. Conversely, sounds like “ah” and “a” as in “apple” require less involvement and produce a different tone. 
 When played together, B Flat and A Major are dissonant, giving a distinct impression of disorder and chaos. We can hear instinctively that the two do not belong together. If a composer desired to produce that effect, he would know exactly how to make it happen. By placing different notes together, the composer can make his listeners cringe with discomfort, feel soothed with euphony, or imprisoned in imposed silence, among other things. The poet is a composer also, with these same tools in her grasp. 

 Music also does something poetry does not intrinsically do: music provides direct access to the emotions. With words, we are required to listen to them, to know them, to dismantle them, then reassemble them, while running them through a filter of personal experience and knowledge. The presence of so many different levels of understanding often causes the words to be reassembled incorrectly in the receiver’s mind, often through the use of signs and symbols, some of which the listener may not understand or be able to correctly appropriate. The meaning of poetic words and phrases can therefore be lost or misinterpreted, thus producing a varied array of results. Music, however (apart from lyrics), does not pass through the same filter. Music is produced by the body and is received by the body. It is wordless, and the ear relies on tone and rhythm to convey a bodily emotion. We are more serious when we hear the sounds of the cello, more incited with the bold brass of the trumpet, and swayed to movement by drumbeats. We do not need words because music falls within the realm of the unspeakable and is understood without language. Poetry, however, seeks to become more like music in this way. 
Steven Bonafide Rojas’ “The Creed of a Graffiti Writer” is an excellent example of how certain musical conceits can be used to get the point of a poem across intuitively, just as music does. Just as Duke Ellington’s “Blues To Be There” starts with a raucous brass interlude, strident and insistent, so does “The Creed of a Graffiti Writer” begin with long vowel sounds demanding time on the tongue and a higher pitch in the voice to produce. The poet’s choices of long i sounds (strike, night, hide), oo and ou sounds (New, our, moon, source), long o sounds (York, shadows, patrol, stroll), demand duration and are the equivalent of long brass notes. Like the trumpet or the trombone, these sounds draw attention to a theme that will be recurrring. 
 For the poet, the themes are repeated in the sentences beginning “We are”, and we can expect to find in them certain literary devices that provide some of the same effects as musical ones. Beginning with “We are The Addicts of Aerosol” of line 8, we find alliteration (both consonance and assonance), symmetry (provided through accent), prominence of hard consonant sounds and long vowel sounds (duration and tone), and similar line length. Word choice profoundly affects the way we perceive the tone of poems. For example, Rojas could have chosen a different word than “strike” and still have achieved the same literal meaning. Consider, “We attack at night,” or “We bomb at night.” But choosing the long i sound has implications greater than the literal meaning of strike: it compliments the duration of night and hide. The great “brass” intro to Rojas’s poem provides the whole work with the “in your face” manifesto quality the poem needs to achieve in order to be successful. 

 Ellington’s “Blues To Be There” would have an entirely different effect if it began with the percussive notes of the solitary piano or the long, low notes of the saxophone. First, however, Ellington has to give you a sense of the liveliness the “blues singer” is missing out on. The “there” of the “Blues To Be There” must first be established as a major theme. After this occurs, the saxophone takes over with its yearning drone. The blues singer (the beholder) is perhaps looking out over the river, to the lights of the city, yearning for a place he cannot be. The percussive instruments that mark the progress of time are relinquished to the background. 

One can see in Rojas, this similar percussion in the background of his poem. The first nine lines have an accentual rhythm that is symmetrical. One can see the rhythm of accents per line being 2-2-1, 2-2-1, 2-2-1. The accented words are as follows: 

Line 1: strike, night
Line 2: streets, York
Line 3: canvas

Line 4: hide, shadows
Line 5: pig, strolls
Line 6: moon

Line 7: only, source or light (depending on individual intonation. In my intonation, the stress could fall on one or the other, but not, as far as I could tell, on both.)
Line 8: Addicts, Aerosol
Line 9: Krylon

 Individual variations could occur on line six, where “our” could technically be accented. However, if the line’s enjambment is followed, the stress falls most naturally on the first word in the next line, “only.”)

 In music, duration and dynamics are very closely linked. Duke Ellington exploits the feeling we experience at the height of yearning by drawing the saxophone up to its highest pitch, holding it, then dropping it down into the depths, creating an upwelling of breath like an exhale. Suddenly, the reedy sound of the clarinet takes over, trilling through rapid notes, speeding up the listener’s response. Rojas mimics this pattern by using long vowels in opposition with short ones. He writes: 

Our tags rag black books and cardboard
scratched on windows and train doors
stickers slapped over any motherfucker
you had beef with
only in self defense (BUM, 212)

 In these lines, you can see the prevalence of short vowel sounds. They take less time on the tongue and their effect is to increase the speed of the lines as they are read/spoken. Where once, the words were drawn out and insistent, now they are fast, almost tripping over themselves, jubilant and free. Coming so soon after lengthy-sounding lines like “We are the Tye Dye Tone,” these short vowel sounds have the same effect on the reader that Ellington’s clarinet riffs produce in the listener. 

 Finally, at the end of “Blues To Be There,” Ellington repeats the refrain of the beginning, but in more muted tones. The sounds are long and low like voices drifting over the water. The blues singer has realized that he is not in the place he yearns to be. He is distinctly where he is and a sort of matter-of-factness of concrete reality takes over. For Rojas, this moment is the clarification of his intent: the restating of who he is and what he does. 

We are the artistic poets
that perform magic with spray paint
and just call ourselves writers
Graffiti Writers (213).

 There are in these lines no patterns of insistent long vowels, no subverting short ones. There is a distinct deficit of alliteration. Though alliteration does exist, it is not found here with the same prevalence and force as in previous sections of the poem. There are no double entendres, no hidden agendas. There are only the direct words; all the artifice of the previous lines relegated to the background like the accentual rhythm, which here is roughly 3-3-2-2. There is only now the artist, the blues singer, stating the crystal clear message: No apologies.