Sound Usage in Poetry

Three poets discuss the use of sound in poetry. They explore how sound contributes to meaning and voice in their work. They discuss the use of rhyme, syllabics, and alliteration to create specific effects in their poems. They also touch on the importance of sound in activism and the potential for sound-based poetry to make a comeback. Overall, they highlight the power and versatility of sound in poetic expression. Mena Loy once wrote, poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea. As a poet myself, I've been interested in the way sound works in poetry from a writing standpoint. I wanted to know if sound is as produced and upheld in modern poetry as it was in more traditional forms. In order to take a closer look, I asked three poets to read their original poetry and discuss how they use sound in their poetry as well as how sound is used in poetry at large. Child's Play Little some sucker, little mouth breather, little wetter of the bed I will never tuck you into. My womb is a trinket not meant to be touched, a souvenir cup in the back of the cupboard. The mothers complain of not sleeping, of their bodies gone soft as the soil. I pretend them into stones I can skip across water. I pretend I am their better. In the store aisle, I choose which toys I'd buy for you. Yes to the purple rabbit. Yes to the big green tractor. Yes to the blocks of wood with which to build a home. I say no to the masked man and his blood bright sword, familiar already with knives and their edges, the wounds they can make in bodies like mine. Yes to the smiling doctor and pink stethoscope. Yes to the bandages made of yellow stars. I pretend none of this hurts. I've been fixed right up. I'm as good at pretending contentment as any doll. Little empire, little stranger, little sorrow tucked in the crook of my elbow. Your name is a word I will mouth but not sound. Sound being sibling to existence and mother of song. I pretend I can't hear that music. I pretend it again and again. When I came up with the idea to dive deeper into the way sound works in poetry, I knew exactly who I wanted to interview first. Dr. Keri Jarrell is the Creative Writing Program Coordinator at Murray State and teaches a number of creative writing courses. I'm currently enrolled in her Advanced Poetry Workshop and her Advanced Genre Study in Poetry and Poetics. Dr. Jarrell, thank you for agreeing to help me with this project. Before we get into the poem you just read, I'd like to talk about poetry on a general basis. What poetic devices do you find yourself gravitating toward most? I really like rhyme. I like rhyme, so I use it a lot even if it's not end rhyme. And I like slant rhyme. So I would say I use, I end up using those in poems even when I say before I write the poem that I am not going to use those devices. I end up using them a lot. I like adsonance too. I think adsonance can speed up or lengthen a poem, slow it down. I think adsonance especially, I think consonance can be a little too noisy sometimes. But with adsonance, you can use short and long vowel sounds to manipulate the time frame of a poem and the reader's experience of it. So I like those a lot. But I think just repetition in general, I really like. So I tend to favor them. Could you give any listeners a brief description of what syllabic verse looks like? So poetry is written in lines. Well, most poetry is written in lines. Traditionally it's written in lines. And there are different ways that poets have come up with through the history of poetry to measure those lines. And one of the ways that people measure them is through syllabics, which is counting the number of syllables in a line. So if I was using a pattern of syllabics where, I don't know, I wanted a short line, then I might only use four syllables per line or something. And that would give me a very short line and would have a particular effect on the poem. And then when you combine syllabics with accents, which is where, you know, certain words, certain parts of words, get more stress or more weight when we say them. When you combine that pattern with syllabics, so you're counting not just the syllables, but you're also counting the accented marks, then you create what we know as meter, which is something that I write in a lot, or some kind of, sometimes I call it like a loosey-goosey meter, a kind of skeletal meter. But putting those two things together helps a poet measure their line. So they can work in a fixed form of syllabics or accentual syllabics, or they can just kind of make up a pattern for themselves and follow it. And poets today, not as many use syllabics as they used to. Poetry, for a long time, was based around syllabics. And that was one of the main way of constructing a poem. Yes, yeah. So syllabics, accentual syllabic verse, most traditional poetry, yeah, for centuries was written on some kind of a pattern of rhyme and meter. So they were designed, poems were very designed. And they were very artificial. And what we have, you know, like the word artificial now with us in our day has a lot of baggage with it. You know, we think of artificial as being something really bad. But artifice is just, you know, something that's been created. And, you know, when you look at a poem on a page, you know, it's different than a story, you know, someone has created it. So more modern writers wanted to move away from that. They wanted something that seemed maybe a little more natural, natural sounding, easier to work with. And so they kind of moved away from accentual syllabic. In an essay about poetic sound, Marjorie Perloff wrote, indeed, the discourse on poetry today largely fixated as it is on what a given poem or set of poems ostensibly says, regards the sound structure in question as little more than a peripheral issue, a kind of sideline. Perloff quotes Japanese German poet Yoko Tawada and says, the crevice between sound and language has never been more challenging to explore. Would you agree with these statements? If modern poetry is moving more away from syllabic and accentual syllabic verse, would you say that modern poetry moves away from the importance of sound? I don't know if it was away from the importance of it. But I think it's a I don't think it's the priority, perhaps that it used to be with a lot of writers. But I mean, I could be wrong about that, too. But I do think I mean, I agree with Perloff when, when she writes that the primacy of literary criticism or looking at a poem now is what does it mean and what it does to you on the kind of auditory level or the imagistic level is maybe like secondary, you know, people just want to know what the meaning of the poem is. And so they don't really give that much attention to what it sounds like, or, or what that sound might be doing, how the sound is developed, those sorts of things. So talking a little bit about the poem that you shared today, can you talk a little bit about how sound works in this poem, how it contributes meaning maybe or the way you use sound when creating the poem? So this poem is born probably out of having a lot of nieces and nephews that like to play, and they're often asking you to pretend. And so I was thinking about that. And I was but I was also thinking about the ways that as adults, we often pretend. Part of the appeal of the poem in writing it was seeing what I could what I could do with that and the idea of repetition, right? Kids like to do the same thing over and over and over again. But how do you make a poem do that without it getting really boring really quickly? So that was one of the things that I had in mind was I knew I was going to be repeating stuff. And another aspect of the sound in particular was I wanted to use a lot of polysyllabic words, but especially that had a weaker foot at the end. So like sucker, breather, wetter, never, mother. I just like a two syllable rhyme. I like a two syllable rhyme. And I like when it ends on a what we think of as a weaker syllable. Because I think it has a sense of continuance. Like if you end on a stress, or you use a lot of kind of punchy words together, which I also really like to do, it creates a really forceful sound and it doesn't it doesn't elongate like it's harder to continue that. Because you feel like something's like a door is being slammed finality. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So if you have a two syllable word and a weaker syllable, it's kind of like it's carrying you into the next phrase or the next word. And you also it's also a really easy way to use slant rhyme, right? Because these two end tails on the words always rhyme. So you don't necessarily have to have the first syllable exactly rhyme, but they're going to kind of echo each other anyway. So I wanted there to be a lot of echoes in the sound. So I knew I would be starting with that. And then there are plenty of those in the middle part of the poem, though I tried to place them out a little more. So you know, you have better in the fourth stanza, tractor in the fifth. So I kind of stretched them out a little bit in the middle, and then toward the end, intensified them again with the repetition of the little empire stranger. And then I wanted to really kind of flip the switch a little bit there at the end and use a two syllable word in repetition again, but a different sound. So I went with sorrow and crooked elbow. So the O sound there instead of the ER. I want only to lessen suffering felt outside of my own waters. Below my turbulent surface lays peace and comfort. Think into me, feel the encompassing cold of my care on your sun-sickened skin, your heat-addled mind chilled to sloth in my arms. I will take the pain, leave only calm behind. Take your frightened and weary breath from you, bear the burden of your unrest so you do not, and leave salt in my own kindness to fill your lungs. Slow your movements, my sweet one, for I am only to help, only to show you the acceptance that I can provide. I will pull from your mind the tortures of an uncertain future, for I prayed you would be my child in the end, as all who fall into my embrace find a home in me. Noah Foss is a senior creative writing major and humanities minor. They are writing a broader project covering the legend of Icarus for our advanced poetry workshop. I've asked them to talk with me today about their poem, Arresting Place, as well as the way voice works in poetry and how sound can contribute to voice in poetry. Leslie Wheeler, in her book, Voicing American Poetry, Sound and Performance from the 1920s to present, writes, while poetic voice is a metaphor, it also exceeds metaphor. This phrase evokes a physical process, a medium for art, and a means to social change. The term voice, in its multiple overlapping meanings, encompasses a range of possibilities for what poetry is and what it can do. Finally, and most paradoxically, voice is a critical term, simultaneously frustrates and enables analysis because of its ambiguity and irrationality. Rather than specifying critical procedures, it advocates for poetry's value. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how you think sound might contribute to voice in poetry. So for me, especially with this project, I'm doing a lot of persona poems. So I want to make sure that each of them have very specific voices. And some of that is coming through and how I'm using sound. So specifically for this poem, when I was trying to write it, the original thought that I had for tone was that I wanted it to be benevolently malevolent. And to me, that just kind of meant that like on the surface, I wanted the sounds to be very kind of like soft and flowing into each other. But I wanted the voice that I was creating to seem kind. Whereas when you read more into it, there's a little bit more of a menacing feel to the tone overall, the farther into the poem you get. As a poet, do you typically tend towards syllabic verse or you tend towards more free verse? I don't do form a whole lot. So free verse is typically where mine end up. Sometimes as I'm writing, I find that I am coming almost into a form. When I was talking with Dr. Jarrell about this one, she said that it feels like it wants to be a sonnet. It's very close to being a sonnet. But as far as like syllables, and I'm like thinking about it as I'm writing, I generally just get it on the page and then tweak from there. And as far as just like approaching poetry in my own work, I do tend to use a lot of alliteration. And I like to try and use repeating sounds as much as I can within a same line, but I don't necessarily focus on it, especially not in a first draft. As far as really trying to kind of narrow that down, I will kind of pare that down in a second or third draft of it. Do you feel like it's harder to incorporate sounds since you use free verse? Is it harder to use sound in free verse versus a structured form? Yeah, I think sometimes it definitely can be, especially when you come to like rhyming lines. Because for me, especially if I'm writing, I don't like to have rhyming lines if they aren't all rhyming, because I feel like it kind of, for my own writing, leaves it a bit disjointed. Unless it's a purposeful thing that I'm trying to do. There have been instances when I've done it to create a specific feeling. But a lot of the time, I try not to end rhymes. Within lines is perfectly fine for me. This is all just, of course, personal preference for my own writing. Because I do a lot of free verse, I try and steer away from some specific sounds and that kind of stuff, just because I feel like it becomes feeling like I just failed a structure rather than purposely free verse. Delusional, the full and echo cries, like those that wish to part with limbs insane, to nods of praying Mormon mother lies, sarcastic sympathy surrounds, sustains, the echo bouncing twists to the christened walls, outdoors of cloth to summer shining sun, along to holy pews and kitchen halls. There's some transgenderism going on, says Tobias, face scrunched in full disgust, after seborrheic stressed interest to class. And thus our morals are condemned to rust, clutching crucifix as by clutches mass, sustained and subtle chorus strings surround to me avoiding eyes to looking down. Danica first is a senior professional writing major and a creative writing minor. She is a fellow student in Dr. Gerald's advanced poetry workshop and I've asked her to discuss how she wrote her poem bid adieu. In his journal article, the meaning of sound patterns in poetry, Benjamin Ryszkowski writes, in focusing patterns relations between sounds call the reader's attention to relations between meanings, or other properties of the interrelated words. The specific nature of such relations must be resolved in each case, not as a whim of the reader, but supported by a reason interpretation of the text, and it's in a textual adherence. Danny, I wanted to ask you, were there any focusing patterns that you made and created while writing this poem? Yeah, so I was kind of focused on two different kinds of sounds while writing this, the two different consonants, specifically, so like the K, like K or C sound, it's actually mostly Cs in the poem, and then I wanted to contrast that with the S. Mine's like sarcastic sympathy surrounds sustained. I wanted to include these little injections of that S, that very fluid sound, to contrast it with all of these hard K sounds that are sprinkled throughout the poem, with christened walls and clutching crucifix, to kind of represent the rigidity of this really religious way of looking at things, and very transphobic way of looking at things, with me being a trans person, and being fluid in the way that those S sounds are. So I wanted to use those focus patterns to kind of represent that. Were there any changes that you saw in your writing, basing around sound first, instead of imagery first? Yeah, I definitely used a lot more alliteration than I usually do. I usually don't really do alliteration that much, whereas I have two very alliterative lines in this poem, and I think it focused in a lot more on character as well, because of the focus on sound, which I find very interesting, because I had to imagine people saying these sounds, and I had to kind of put myself into the sense of hearing this a lot more, whereas usually I'm just focused on seeing the poem, so that was really interesting. Do you think there's a link between sound and more structured forms, as opposed to writing in free verse? Absolutely there's a link. I'm not super familiar with a lot of forms, but it seems like almost all of them are about sound, like fundamentally, especially the ones like sonnets and stuff that are about the number of syllables, even if it's just something as simple as the number of syllables per line that affects the sound of it when you're reading it. So in this poem specifically, part of what motivated me to focus on sound was the fact that I wanted, it started with I want to write a sonnet to comment on Shakespeare, and then it turned into I need to use sound to comment on Shakespeare through a sonnet, which made me focus on the sound. So I think that forms, but even like not just following forms, but breaking forms intentionally can help focus in on sound. Yeah, I 100% agree. It's kind of hidden in my poem, the kind of metaphor of the S as the fluid and the K as the very restrictive, but I don't recall any poetry that I've read that does a similar thing, but I definitely think that it's something that people can play with and can use to have more metaphor embedded into their poetry, and there's a long history of activist performance connecting to transgender rights. Susan Stryker has a performance that was later turned into an essay from the 90s about the use of Frankenstein as a transphobic figure, and unfortunately I wasn't born yet in the 90s, so I didn't get to see the performance, but I imagine that the performance is so much more powerful because of the sound that she can represent when performing that monologue. That performance and essay, it's called My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamonix, I think it's how you would pronounce it, it's C-H-A-M-O-U-N-I-X, Performing Transgender Rage is the subtitle, and I imagine that she, through the sound, through her stresses and everything, she just imbues that monologue with rage while she's performing it. As a transgender person reading it, I can feel that, but I think for cis audiences, that sound will help portray that so much more. So yeah, I think sound is a very important thing for activism. Through my three interviews, there seems to be a consensus that form and sound go hand in hand. It seems as a whole modern poetry is moving away from sound. However, the necessity of sound is still intact due to its usefulness in providing unique voice-based perspectives. Sound is a unique tool poets can use to see their poetry in a different way and create depth and meaningful ways. Although poetry as a whole is moving away from focusing on sound, the experimentation of it by these three poets gives me hope that sound-based poetry will someday make a comeback.