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Sonics in Poetry



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Mon Jan 08, 2007 2:11 am
Incandescence says...



We all know poets are not trained in institutions, that poets can not be "made" through rigorous scholastics--it is something inside that is far more meaningful and complex, something which can not be formulated or earned or given, that makes a poet truly unique. The same is also true of painters, scultpors, and musicians. Still, painters, sculptors and musicians very much require an acquaintance with their field's lively history as well as current theories and techniques. So while there is something inside of us that nobody can ever teach us to have, there are still many things we must learn on the road to becoming a poet.

One such thing is sonics. I wish today to speak to you about this device as well as the general manner and nature of Poetry. I have seen, here and elsewhere, many people argue that poems must be written in emotional freedom, and moreover, that poems are not language, but the content of the language. This is all well and true, but how is it we can separate the content from a poem's fluid and breathing body? A poem that is composed without the sweet and correct formalities of language, which are what set it apart from everyday speech, which is at most occasional, is doomed. It will not fly. It will be raucous and sloppy--the work of an amateur. This is one of my primary motivations for writing this article and presenting it before you.

First, a word of advice for beginning new writers and poetry amateurs alike: the part of the psyche that works in conjunction with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem--the heat of a star instead of its shape, to be sure--exists in a mysterious and unmapped way. It is only through a consistent return to this part of yourself that you will become a deft master of its regions, your pen a whip with which you can create worlds. But if you are inconsistent and frequently delay jotting your moments of inspiration and desperation (that is, when you are at the height of your emotional kinetics), then you will lose them.

Talent and beauty are watching and waiting for you just as much as you are them. They are fearful beasts, and if you come to their lands unexpectedly and leave without introducing yourself on a regular basis, they will appear fleetingly, or they will not appear at all. Why should they? They can stay quieted for a lifetime. Who really knows that wild and silky part of ourselves without which no poem can live? But we do know this: if you don't enter into a passionate and meaningful relationship with your voice and talent and beauty, there will be no way for that wild part of you to ever be articulated. For the young ones here, I think it is most important to stress to you that this is the first and most essential thing to understand. It comes before everything, even technique: not so much repetition, but consistency.

For the more advanced writers among us, I can only speak to our varying ambitions: to complete a poem and see it in print, to enjoy someone else's remarks on it. These motivations serve in some way as incentives to your work. Though each of these is reasonable, each also threatens the other part of a poet: to write like Keats, or Yeats, or Williams--or whoever it was who scribbled onto a page a few lines whose force you once felt and have never forgotten. Every poet's ambition should be to write as well. Anything else is only a flirtation.

None of this is bad, of course, but it can only begin you on your unimaginably long trip through poetry. What guides us more than anything inside is as improbable as carrying water in a sieve: to write well and to write memorably. That work is done slowly and in solitude.

To both the literati and neophyte, I have only one last remark before opening tonight's topic. Poetry is not stagnant; it is a river full of voices. None of them is timeless; each arrives in an historical context and almost everything, in the end, passes away. But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness and indeed need to receive poetry--these never pass. In order to be a good poet, we must see beyond our own accomplishments and diligently read the works of others. We must develop a gratitude apart from authorship, a fervent desire beyond the margins of the self.

So what is a sonic, you might ask? A sonic is a device in poetry that consists in an arrangement of sounds. You're all aware that to make a poem, we must all make sounds, and to make a good poem, we must not use random sounds, but chosen ones. Conceivably, you could wonder how important this selection really is, and further, how do we even know what sounds to choose?

Let me direct you to an obvious point: "Go!" does not sound like "Stop!" Also, in some way, the words do not feel the same. "Hurry up!" neither feels nor sounds like its opposite, "Slow down!" "Hurry up!" rustles with activity, leaps to its final punch; "Slow down!" pours from the tongue, as flat as two plates. Another obvious statement: a "rock" is not a "stone." But, why is a rock not a stone?

What makes a word a word? Its letters do. We must focus on the structure of a word in order to understand its uniqueness and sensibility.

I begin by asking you to consider the letters l, m, n, and r. I will call them liquids on account of the fluency of their sounds.

There are also another class of letters, which I will call mutes. They are b, d, k, p, q, t, and c and g hard. Three of these--k, g, and c hard--sound exactly alike. B, d, and g hard stop the voice less suddenly than the rest.

With this in mind, let's take an example. The following three phrases express the same idea, but in different ways--namely, their sonical qualities are different.

1. Hush!
2. Please be quiet!
3. Shut up!

We might use the first phrase to quiet a child when we don't want to give an indication of anger or disturbance. There are no mutes in this phrase.

The second phrase is curt but remains civil. We might use it in a theater when asking strangers to be less noisy. Notice that this phrase uses four mutes--p, b, q, and t--but in almost every case the mute is instantly "calmed down" or quieted; twice by a vowel and once by a liquid.

The last phrase is the most curious and instructive. It is abrupt and indicates a displeasure and an unarguable impatience. Someone using it means business. It uses two mutes-- t and p--which are not softened; the mutes are the final, brittle explosion of the word. Both words slap shut upon their utterance with a mute.

Now, this group of phrases certainly doesn't give evidence of a universal trend, and indeed, such a proof is beyond the scope of this article. For now, it is left to the diligent reader to verify this for him or herself. So, returning to our intial question, what is the difference in a rock a stone? A rock ends on a mute: it is sharp and abrupt. Indeed, when we hear the word "rock," we often think of something unpolished and sharp, jagged. The k at the end of the word suddenly stops the breath--there is a seed of silence at the edge of the sound. Brief though it is, it is definite and cannot be denied, and it feels very different from the -one ending in stone. Since stone ends on a liquid, we often feel its smoothness and rounded sides.

Before leaving you to experiment, I would like for you to consider one of Robert Frost's most well-known and moving poems.


Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


Please pay special attention to the first four lines. They are rife with liquid and soft sounds. There are also three sets of double ll's. The heaviness of the vowels is only intensified by the use of dipthongs. The only two words that end in a mute ("think" and "up") are within the lines and thus are softened. All other mutes are softened within the words themselves. One could scarcely read these lines in anything other than a quiet, musing, almost whispered way.

One can say any number of things about the second stanza: it introduces the narrator's little horse--the only object the narrator focuses on and the only other living creature in the poem. In any case, we are drawn by the speaker to look at the little horse too, and as we do so the sounds of the whispery introduction--the interior monologue, if you will--are interrupted with raps of sharper sounds--not mallets, not that heavy, but different. "My little horse must think it queer" is not a very rattling line, but the sound of "think," with its lightly snapping k this time followed not by a softer sound but by the snippet "it," and "queer," an echo of the k, makes it altogether livelier than the first stanza.

In stanza three, the full reversal has taken place. Instead of the guttural mutes being quieted, they now proudly march across the lines and insist on being heard. The reader can't help but feel discontent, that something is stirring--indeed, this must be the feeling ancient warriors felt as the far-off sound of battle drums drew near--and it leads us to ready ourselves for the resolution of stanza four.

There, "the woods are lovely" takes us exactly back to the mood of the first stanza, but the second half of that lines thumps out "dark and deep," both words beginning and ending with a mute. They represent, in the sound, themselves, and more than themselves. They say not only that the woods are dark and deep, but that the narrator has come to another place in his mind and can speak in this different way, designating with the voice, as with the gesture of an arm, a new sense of decision and resolution.

Now, I don't mean to suggest the Frost sat down and counted out the mutes, liquids, etc., while writing his poetry. Or that any poet does anything of the sort. I mean to suggest that poets select words for their sound as well as their meaning--and that good poets make good initial selections. Of course they also revise. But they have already--"naturally," we are tempted to say--worked from such a font of knowledge and sensitivity that often near-miracles of sound-and-sense have already happened.

How do they do this? Language aptitude differs from person to person, we know. Also, just as a bricklayer or any person--even a brain surgeon--improves with study and practice, surely poets become more proficient with study and practice. Verbal skills can be learned. They can be discussed and practiced. Then, a wonderful thing happens: what is learned consciously settles, somewhere inside the chambers of the mind, where--you can count on it--it will "remember" what it knows and will float forth to assist in the initial writing.

Frost kept no jottings about sonics while he wrote "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." He did not need to. He was a master poet. The poem is an extraordinary statement of human ambivalence and resolution. Genius wrote it. But more than one technical device assisted, the first of which is an extraordinary use of sonics.
"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders." -Hal Abelson
  





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Wed Mar 21, 2007 9:23 pm
Chandni says...



Your first comment on this article Brad :)

The pleasures of poetry, well on this International Poem Day this sure gave me nice read!

Cheerios, Chandni
I should not keep on, I'll just creep on creepin'on.
  








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