Creative Writing: Week Three

Chapter Five, "The Sound of Poetry"

That the chapter begins with a Joy Harjo poem establishes an excellent foundation, since she, a Native American, writes poetry and plays a saxophone in her band, Poetic Justice.

As the poem itself indicates, Harjo writes often about American Indian traditions and struggles, especially those of women.

And as these links indicate, she writes both prose (or a prose poem, which which you will have an opportunity to experiment soon enough) and poetry.

The poem that opens your chapter serves the topic well, for one can "hear" the music in the lyrics, the chant that echoes in part the oral traditions of the American Indians. Note, for example, the repetition featured on P. 89: "I release you"; "I am not afraid."

Note, too, the manner in which the poem connects past and present, bridging into the future.

The music or sound comes, too, from the repetition of words, grammatical structures, consonants, and vowels.

The previous chapter addressed certain rhetorical devices, the writer's tools of the trade, if you will. This chapter reinforces the power of these tools to evoke strong emotions and images by suggesting other ways to emphasize and to bind.

As Harjo's poem makes evident given its structure, poetry derives from oral traditions, all the way back to Homer. But people tend to forget the performance side of the craft, which becomes popular once again with Slam Poetry in particular, of which more soon.

So as you read the chapter, recite out loud the poetry; and do the same when possible with what you write and all that you read.

Sophisticated poetry and prose use sound to achieve specific ends. You will begin to practice these techniques with your verse this week, for the assignments ask that you experiment with the devices discussed in this chapter combined with what you experimented with over the past couple weeks.

As your authors suggest, "poetry is as much an oral tradition as it is a written one" (90); and most children begin to feel the music in poetry while still in the womb, when mothers read: "From nursery rhymes to the Psalms, sometime we don't just memorize poems--we absorb them" (90). Music and poetry possess rather a natural connection, the rhythmical cadence of words and sounds.

The Langston Hughes poems illustrates well what we find in the poem that opens the section: structure plays an essential role in poetry. That is to say, form and content go hand in hand. And as you will discover, "free" verse hardly means that anything goes, for nothing is, well, free.

As with the Harjo poem that makes use of certain oral traditions, prayer, and traditional forms, Hughes's uses diction and form to mimic blues music. Read Hughes's poem out loud:

The po' house is lonely
An' the grave is cold.
O, the po' house is lonely
The Graveyard is cold.
But I'd rather be dead than
To be ugly an' old.

Note the rhymes, "cold" and "old" but also "house" and "lonely" as well; this chapter talks about true and slant rhymes.

If you go to this Langston Hughes link, you will find a number of his poems, including a recording of his reciting "A Negro Speaks of Rivers." You can also read "Po Boy Blues":

When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
Since I come up North de
Whole damn world's turned cold.

I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong.
Yes, I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong,
But this world is weary
An' de road is hard an' long.

I fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
Fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
She made me lose ma money
An' almost lose ma mind.

Weary, weary,
Weary early in de morn.
Weary, weary,
Early, early in de morn.
I's so weary
I wish I'd never been born.

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used with permission.

Both poems utilize similar patters. Listen, for example, to the repetition of the consonant "l" in the next-to-last stanza and the "w" in the final lines. These liquid sounds are repeated frequently and help bind the ideas, suggesting how sound gets used for a purpose.

As the authors emphasize, "In these poems the form creates the sound" (92).

The sound, to be sure, comes out in the performance. And with the advent of "slam" poetry, this performance aspect of good poetry enjoys growing popularity, which is a good thing--see your text about David Mura and Hal Sirowitz. You will find plenty of interesting information on the web, including this introductory site.

In the spring of 2009, Nebraska's great practitioner of Slam Poetry visited Peru State College. Give Matt Mason's poetry a listen, especially two that I love, "The Baby That Ate Cincinnati" and, probably his best known poem, "Make Star Love and not Star Wars" (both at the same link).

The chapter presents any number of terms which which you should become familiar and that you will use in your writing.

Experiment, for example, in your "Hospital Wing" and "Snap Shots" poems with the use of "mimetic" and "onomatopoetic" words, from "sleazy" to "bark."

Remember, however, that one utilizes these devices for a specific purpose and not just because the assignment asks that you do so. Though, again, to create new habits requires that you work though that awkward feeling of the unfamiliar. So share your experiences when you include a preface to all your poems.

This site provides an analysis of how sound functions in poetry; the reading, however, can become demanding. But as with this less demanding site, you will appreciate the effect of these sound devices if you read the lines out loud. The latter site also provides additional links of interest.

Read, for example, Wole Soyinka's "Black Singer" out loud, to feel the sounds as you recite. Feel the texture as well in this line from Gerard Manley Hokpins' "God's Grandeur":

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

You can feel the repetition of the vowels and consonants such as "o" and "w" and "b." The sounds in effect bind the words and solidify the idea. However, as you experiment with these sound devices, remember this warning:

Too much alliteration tends to either irritate or to amuse readers, as in limericks or children's poems. (96).

Tone, in other words, plays an important role in your decision making regarding structure, word choice, and sounds.

When people think of poetry, they think of rhyme, though not usually about alliteration. Instead, "rhymes" come into play.

The goal always is "to write good poetry" and not to worry about the rhyme. And until you can handle with ease the danger of end rhymes, avoid them.

Become familiar with the various kinds of rhyme, however, and experiment. Know what defines true rhyme, eye rhyme, and slant rhymes, for the distinctions are very important.

You will find many excellent resource pages on the internet to reinforce what the text has to say, including this informative page about rhyme. This link will take you to another page that discusses rhyme, providing some very good examples that help you distinguish the variety of possibilities.

You will write a poem experimenting with rhyme--see the description on Page 103.

Remember the why of the matter and consider, too, how rhyme works.

The manner in which a sentence or line of poetry works will help you better appreciate how the poetic line engages the reader. Sentences have natural places of emphasis, the beginning and the end of a line.

So if you write in rhymed couplets and each line ends on a comma or a period, the reader will probably only hear the sound and consequently not really appreciate the idea, especially if you utilize short lines.

To de-emphasize this sound, to mute the rhyme, that can turn into noise, utilize the various types of rhymes and manipulate the sentence structure, making use of techniques such as enjambment.

End-stopped lines are useful when you want to emphasize something; as in all effective prose, however, you want to use variety so that repetitive patters do not mute the ideas.

In other words, you have many tools for muting rhyme (as in a slant or an eye rhyme) and using rhyme.

In general, you do not want rhymes to call attention to themselves but to emphasize an idea or an image.

To appreciate to the maximum how to manipulate habitual practices with sound and sense, read aloud the poetry of e. e. cummings--he accomplishes in the true sense of what Jean Cocteau's says about poetry, the need to re polish commonplaces:

Take a common place, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job.

Consider here what else Cocteau says of poetry. And when you reach for ideas, do not ever bypass the commonplace:

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surrounds us and which our senses record mechanically.

One of the discussion threads concerns Cocteau's ideas here and what we have discussed to this point about writing.

Cummings, in part, achieves his effect by transforming the commonplace, forcing us to see things anew, perhaps again for the very first time:"Spring is like a perhaps hand" and "Perhaps Spring is like a hand" seem very different!

Check out other cummings poems, including "anyone lived in a little how town," one of his most famous, that and "in just-."

When you write your poem about a special object, try, too, to think of an organizational pattern. And get the "plum" out in front as in the William Carlos Williams poem--listen as well to your hidden head.

Experiment and enjoy.

This page has been visited 247 times since 11/04/2007

http://www.hpcnet.org/peru/schoolartsandsciences/language/clemente/fall2006/creative/3/sound

Last Modified: 09/06/2009