
There’s so much to say about sound – it’s hard to know where to start and when to finish. From the 8th century BCE singers who were the pre-cursors of Homer’s epics The Iliad and The Odyssey, to today’s Slam Poetry and the exciting world of Hip Hop, poetry is all racket and clang down the years.
Hi everyone, it’s Peter from Australia and I’m hosting the bar – and tonight we’re doing a sound check at Dverse. So sit back and enjoy three cool things – that you probably already know – and a fun exercise below.
‘sound is the principal business of poetry’
Wallace Stevens
Cool thing 1. Two hemispheres working together
MRI studies have shown that, unlike prose, poetry is processed by both hemispheres of the brain. Areas associated with meaning, memory, introspection and music appreciation all light up when people read poetry.
While there have been schools of poetry that dispense with sound (concrete poetry for example) generally, I believe it’s better when sense and sound are working together in a poem.
Listen to Gerard Manley Hopkins from ‘as kingfishers catch fire’
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;
Pick any line in this sonnet and hear the sounds ringing.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame
Listen to the sound play – the ‘f’ sounds; the short and long ‘a’ sounds; the ‘dr’ repeating – the entire line is alive with sound. At the same time, Hopkins’ words describe a busy country scene of birds and insects. Sound and meaning work together to create a memorable vision.
Cool thing 2. English is relatively impoverished for sound – so we improvise
Here’s a fascinating (though incomplete) comparison of rhyme across languages. As you’ll see, some languages have few rhymes (Latin, Ancient Greek), and some like Spanish and Italian, Polish, Arabic, Vietnamese, have many.
Poetry in English has developed strategies to help words ring
- onomatopoeia – where the word sounds like the thing it signifies – ‘pop’, ‘splash’ ‘ting’
- alliteration (consonants repeating) & assonance (vowel sounds repeating);
- rhyme – where sounds match; slant rhyme where sounds nearly match.
- rhythm – where the regular beat of syllables creates a sound expectation in the reader
- repetition – refrains, and even the repetition of words along a line.
In traditional forms – sonnet, villanelle, pantoum and others – rhyme and rhythm are mandated – so if you like the form becomes a sound container for the poem’s ideas.
I bet you a pint/schooner/tulip or snifter that your favourite verse has some kind of sound patterning going on.
(If English is your second language, tell us in the comments section about rhymes and soundings in your first language)
Many poets write in free verse. But that doesn’t mean forget about sound and rhythm; it’s even more important. Here’s African-American poet Gwendolyn Brooks from 1963 with We real cool
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Listen to the sounds in this masterpiece. ‘We real cool. We/Left school…’ l’s repeating and long o’s. Each line is an enjambed ‘We’ and a double sound, keeping to the sparse vernacular of the pool players. If you follow the link you can hear the poet reading, how she lifts the ‘We…’ into a ‘Wh…’ like a whip. And when we get down to ‘Sing sin. We/ Thin gin.’ there’s four repetitions of the ‘in’ sound, leading to the grim final stanza.
Here’s Australian poet Omar Sakr from 2017 – from his poem ‘The H word’
My suburbs had hoods, baggy low-riders, we
all did. Around our necks they hung
loose in the heat, rode high in the rain.
Wonderful vernacular phrasing and lot’s of ‘h’ sounds which continue through the rest of the poem.
Cool thing 3. Extreme sounding – Welsh poetry.
“Imagine that the most popular show on your favourite radio station was a poetry competition, with local teams fighting to win a national trophy. Each poet is given a subject and a meter, then invited to leave for twenty minutes to compose his or her offering…This is a description of the most-listened-to show now on Radio Cymru, the BBC’s Welsh-language radio service.” from Extreme Welsh Meter by Gwyneth Lewis.
In English poetry we have around 15 common poetic forms (depending how you count them), in traditional Welsh poetry there are 24 poetic forms and four meters.
Here’s Dylan Thomas with Poem in October –
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron—
Priested shore
Listen to the ‘h’ sounds: heaven, hearing, harbour, heron; the long ‘e’s – ‘year’ ‘heaven’, ‘hearing’, ‘priested’ – it’s jam-packed, or what we in Australia call chock-a-block (or just chockas), with wonderful sound.
Thomas was Welsh, Hopkins spent time as a Jesuit novitiate in Wales – and many other poets have spent some time studying in Wales or were influenced by these traditions: WH Auden, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Marianne Moore, Louis Zukofsky and Australian poet Les Murray.
Here’s Australian poet Melinda Smithwith a poem also about ageing and time passing:
Submergence
I was all angle once
sharp and schist-like
a spiked rock dragon-back
arching into air
too late you learn the long
wash of days given grist enough
finds your fissures
chafes them wide
these days knowing I wade
in a rising tide of blonde of bland
when my time comes
I will degrade with particulate grace
become the merest dimple
in a cheek of beach
smooth and silted
with my own crushed dust
Marvellous stuff isn’t it?
Our exercise
OK soundsters – tonight’s just right to write a poem with a focus on sounds.
- Look at a poem in your draft pile that needs a sound lift or write something new
- Either way, the important thing is listen for those sounds. Read your draft out loud, read it to your partner, the neighbour, your cat or dog, the bowl of petunias on your mantle – do the lines sing?
- If you like, record it and post it on your blog for us. This website might be helpful to those of you new to recording video and sound on your phone or computer.
- Remember, let your words ring.
- Link it up to our Mr. Linky.
- Don’t forget to check the little box to accept use/privacy policy
- Visit other blogs, enjoy some amazing poets, and
- Have sonorous fun.
And since we didn’t get to talk about performance poetry this time round, here’s American poet Gil Scott Herron from 1971 with The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
STOP PRESS: There will be a live OpenLinkNight on Oct. 29 which will be co-hosted by Björn and Sanaa. Join us next week for a live and lively exchange of readings.
Hello Peter… great prompt to prepare for next week’s live event… I sat down and did my own video this time. I think many of the sound tools you describe I use all the time.
You ask for how it is in my first language, Swedish, and I think rhymes are even harder for us than in English. I old poetry alliteration played a very big role, and there is a clear connection between the alliteration and the rhythm.
Hi Björn, thanks for joining in. I did a recording this time too (I kinda had too) – and quite liked it – and with some of the tools on phones and PCs it’s pretty easy. Interesting about Swedish using alliteration more than rhyme.
I enjoyed reading, and now when I work from home… I have my own setup/studio for the video conferencing, so recording was but so easy… Just listened to your reading… so good.
Good evening poets, and thank you Peter for this lovely noisy prompt! I only managed a short poem and can’t hang around too long as my laptop has been erratic. I will, however, catch up in the morning.
Hi everyone and welcome to MTB. Hope you enjoy today’s sonorities and join in the fun. Here in Australia the birds (particularly the Eastern Koel – a summer visitor from the tropics) have been singing their feathers off since first light. So grab a drink – be it coffee or something stronger, and settle in for some noisy writing.
Hello Peter and All. I like the sounds of your prompt and really like the Melinda Smith poem. It’s chilly and raining again today. Headed off to do an errand then will be back to read. A nice hot rooibos tea with O’Mara’s would be perfect if you’re pouring.
Yes, Melinda’s poem is a cracker isn’t it? Herbal tea and irish cream? Well, each to their own I suppose 😉
Yes it is, one that describes an inexorable trajectory. Peter, rooibos (grown only in S Africa) and is quite tasty with Irish cream. Try it, I dare you ::hands glass over:: Cheers!
Hello Peter, “Noisy writing”? I like the sound of that! 😀
“onomatopoeia”, what a long word, almost as long as its definition.
😀
Hi Peter, thank you for hosting. I was lucky enough to have an unforgettable noisy experience out in nature today, so that was all the inspiration I needed. Look forward to reading/hearing everyone’s sound-poems. It’s getting late so what I don’t read tonight I will catch up on in the morning.
Thank you for hosting, Peter. And hello to all my dVerse friends. Just back from a lovely fall walk through Boston’s Public Gardens and then along the Charles River. Did a bit over 2 miles…..
I enjoyed this prompt! Will do most of my reading for Poetics and today tomorrow and Saturday. I like to space out the reading….looking forward to a cacophony of posts for this one!
Hello Peter and Thank you for hosting! Loved all the information you shared here. Working on something, and I may record it as well!
Hi Peter, and All. Thank you for the full of sound prompt. The sound of a poem is important, and thank you for the reminder. I revised a pantoum, and I made a recording. It’s not the best quality, but it’s all I could manage today. 😏
Thanks for joining in Merril – I’ll duck over and have a read/listen – Pantoum is one of my favourite forms.
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Hi Peter, like your prompt … you’ve added a lot of whiz bang and zest into this one!
This is a fantastic prompt, Peter! I wrote a new poem and tried to focus more on sound. Hope I did justice and met the bar. 💝 It’s a cold night here and I am about to make my rounds 🙂 a hot chocolate for me please.
Thanks Sanaa, I’ll duck over and have a read – but I’m sure your words will ring out on this chilly night (though it’s a warm spring morning here)
Thanks for the host and for the prompt, Peter. Running pretty dry these days, so I bent the rules, posted a (very) oldie…But it “rings” about as well as anything I’ve done lately, so…
I appreciate all the poems that you shared as examples and will post one of my own soon.
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The sound link won’t work for me since I am using the free Word Press blog and they don’t let me do recordings or songs.
I’m sorry to (not) hear that. We’ll just have to read your poem aloud in our kitchens and lounge rooms.
I will do that! Thank you.
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Hi Peter! Thanks for a very cool prompt. I hadn’t posted a video poem in years. Used to have a site I dedicated exclusively to video poetry. I called it Visual Verse. But the uglier I got, the guiltier I felt visually assaulting folks — so I folded it down. Now you’ve encouraged me to traumatize the good people again. Your fault, but having spent over 25 years performing on stage — I’m easily encouraged… 😉
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Lovely prompt, Peter. It’s been a long time since I’ve been here so I was very happy to come back to this. I’m also looking forward to reading the contributions – I’ve missed my poetry fix!
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Thank you Peter (Paul from W.A.) I really love Hopkins, and I had to learn that poem in school, later for public speaking classes, amazing poem. A creative prompt, so much to like and work with.
Thanks Paul, glad you could join in. Teachers loved Hopkins – ours was The Windhover. 🙂
Ah yes, another of his great pieces, so many.
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