Download On Music and Sound in Poetry

Tab 1: Use of Music and Sound
On Music and Sound in Poetry
Poets often create music and sound in a poem in a variety of ways. When considering
these devices, consider that a careful mix of repetition and variety is important for the
music or sound to be effective. For instance, consider the fact that we love to see the
ocean because it is always the same and always different; we enjoy a baseball game
because it contains the same complex combination of pattern and variation. This is also
true in music—songwriters combine a repetition of tones in different varieties to create
patterns or melodies.
Similarly, poets repeat certain sounds in certain combinations and arrangements, and thus
add musical meaning to verse.
Poets can repeat the following to create music:
vowel sounds
consonant sounds
whole syllables
words
phrases
lines
groups of lines
Important Terms:
Repetition serves several purposes: it pleases the ear, it emphasizes the words in which
the repetition occurs, and it will give structure to a poem.
A syllable consists of a vowel sound that may be preceded or followed by consonant
sounds.
Alliteration: The repetition of initial consonant sounds as in “triad and true,” “battled
and bound five beats,” or “hallowed hall.”
Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds as in “slapdash,” “mad hatter,” “gold
crown,” and “…as kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame…”
Consonance: The repetition of final consonant sounds as in “struts and frets,” and “odds
and ends,” “first and last,” “short and sweet.”
Parallel/Crossed Alliteration: When two different systems of alliteration (any of the
above) are interwoven— as in time and tide or alas and alack
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
--Gerard Manly Hopkins (The KING of SOUND)
Rhyme: The repetition of the accented vowel sound and any succeeding consonant
sounds.
Masculine Rhyme: When the rhyme sounds involve only one syllable, as in
decks and sects or support and report.
Feminine Rhyme: When the rhyme involves two or more syllables as in
turtle and fertile or spitefully and delightfully.
Internal Rhyme: When one or more rhyming words are placed within the line.
End Rhyme: When rhyming words are placed at the end of a line.
Slant/Approximate Rhyme: Words that have any kind of sound similarity,
from close to fairly remote. (modern poetry)
Anaphora: repetition of an opening word or group of words in a series of lines.
Rhythm: The variation between accented and unaccented syllables in words.
Stressed/accented syllables: In every word of more than one syllable, one or
more syllables are accented or stressed—given stronger pronunciation than the
rest. Poets arrange stressed and unstressed syllables to create rhythm in a
poem.
Pauses: Pauses are created by comma, periods, other marks of punctuation.
When they happen in the middle of a line, they are called caesuras.
End-stopped line: Line in which the end of the line occurs with a natural
pause in speech.
Enjambment/Run-on Line: Line in which the sense of the line moves on
without pause into the next.
On Meter
Meter comes from the Greek for “measure.” When you “measure” poetry, you can
count it in several ways: by the number of syllables per line, or by the number of stressed
and unstressed syllables in a line. Remember that all words can be broken down into
syllables; when placed together in a line of poetry, these syllables create meter and
rhythm (mer/ri/ly or doz/en). The combination of sounds and syllables in a line of poetry
helps to create its music and rhythm, which are both critical to poetry.
Though there are other ways to measure a line, these are the most common. The
system of measuring a line of verse is called scansion (scanned). Usually, what is
measured in a line is:
1. The number of feet per line
2. The type of accented/unaccented lines in a foot
*Note: a breve ( ) is used to show unaccented lines, while an ictus ( )shows
a stressed syllable.
Feet
There are about 23 different types of feet in poetry, but there are six that are the most
common:
1. the iamb (iambic)
hello
2. the trochee (trochaic)
only
3. the anapest (anapestic)
understand
4. the dactyl (dactylic)
canopy
5. the spondee (spondaic)
work song
(unstressed/stressed)
(stressed/unstressed)
(unstressed/unstressed/stressed)
(stressed/unstressed/unstressed)
(stressed/stressed)
The most common foot in the English language is the iamb—most of us speak iambically
(And so/ I walked/ away)
Number of Feet Per Line
Typically, most poems have between one to eight feet to a line, however, there are some
poems that contain fourteen feet per line. The feet per line are measured like this:
1. monometer
2. dimeter
3. trimeter
4. tetrameter
one-foot line
two-foot line
three-foot line
four-foot line
5.
6.
7.
8.
pentameter
hexameter
heptameter
octameter
five-foot line
six-foot line
seven-foot line
eight-foot line
So, when we say that a poem is written in iambic pentameter, it means that each line of
the poem contains five feet and each foot has one unstressed and one stressed syllable:
Shall I/ compare/ thee to/ a sum/mer’s day?
Shape and Form of Poems
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Single Stanza
Couplet (2 lines per stanza)
Tercet (3 lines per stanza)
Quatrain (4 lines per stanza)
Sonnet (14 line poem with set rhyme scheme and pattern of make
statement, reverse it, deny and last two lines resolve it)
6. Villanelle (strict tercet form with first two lines repeated in next 4
stanzas and in last 4-line stanza, repeated again)