Poetry activates the same brain regions as music does.
"It's also interesting that um poetry activates the same part of the brain that music does. And so, and not just rhyming." (said at 0:32:40)
Neuroimaging studies demonstrate that poetry and music share overlapping neural circuitry, particularly within emotional and reward processing networks (such as primary reward pathways that mediate peak emotional responses and chills). However, poetry and music also rely on distinct neural networks: poetry strongly engages language-processing circuits (including left-hemisphere semantic and phonological networks), whereas music relies heavily on specialized auditory and tonal networks, and studies note distinct functional patterns within reward structures such as the nucleus accumbens.
- context: The emotional power of poetry: neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional princi… (Social cognitive and affective neuroscience 2017)
"Importantly, while these responses to poetry are largely analogous to those found for music, their neural underpinnings show important differences, specifically with regard to the crucial role of the nucleus accumbens." (abstract, results, passage verified)
pubmedfull study (doi)