Building from Sounds

 The poet build his poem up from sounds. One may get an idea, inspiration from a scene, a picture, a poem, or a line from a novel or news story, be obsessed with a word, or otherwise find motivation to write a poem, and one may even write a few lines or even a full first draft without considering sound, but in the end, with rewrites and revisions, it is the sounds that drive the poem. It is this obsession with the sound of words that makes a poet choose to be a poet rather than a writer of prose.

Sounds, along with rhythm, are what contribute to the music of the poem. They help it to dance. With songs, you will have a musical instrument (or many) that provide much of the music, as well as the singer's voice. In a poem, though, you have to rely on the words themselves, to their natural rhythms and to the combinations of sounds.

But rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and consonance not only help to make the work musical, they also help contribute to the meaning, help it to mean. As Edgar Allen Poe understood, different sounds evoke different emotions. Poe famously stated that the long O was the most sorrowful sound. Poe's O will slowly grow into deep sorrow along the poem's flow. Please note that, even with the content not having an emotional aspect, the line nevertheless probably felt at least a little sorrowful to you. 

Of course, sound associations are going to vary from language to language, culture to culture, and even among individuals. But I would be surprised if there were not some commonalities, a family resemblance among sounds and emotions to at least some degree. We all sigh or make a kind of mumbled growl when we're annoyed, for example. But sighing can also express sorrow or sadness, depending on the context--but the sigh of annoyance and the sigh of sorrow are different in their sounds. 

If you are going to use sounds to communicate some element of your poem, you'll likely have to play around with it and try your poem out on different people and ask them how they felt when they heard the poem. Poems are a form of communication, and they communicate more than the poet consciously intended--if it's in fact a good poem. It's therefore important that we communicate what we intend to communicate when it comes to sound. A comic poem full of long O's will probably not work particularly well. But who knows? Maybe you can pull it off. 

Rhyme Schemes

Rhyme is the repetition of sounds. As previously noted, alliteration is a form of rhyme. However, when most people think of rhyme, they think of end rhyme. While end rhyme has fallen out of favor in poetry, it's never fallen out of favor in songs, and it's an absolutely vital element of rap. In fact, a well-known term for rap battles and freestyle rapping is "dropping rhymes." 

If we're to be honest, the only place where rhyme has lost favor is among academics who study poetry. Your average person loves rhyme. That's why songs and rap continue to be full of rhymes. 

For a rhyme to be an end rhyme, it not only has to be found at the end of a line (which is, after all, why it's called an end rhyme), but it has to rhyme on the stressed syllable. If it only rhymes on the stressed syllable, it's called a masculine rhyme; if it rhymes using both the stressed and a following unstressed syllable, it's called a feminine rhyme. 

• Masculine -- thick / quick
• Feminine -- thickly / quickly

Of course, one can get really playful with one's rhyme and have three or even four syllables rhyming. 

However, there are a few "rhymes" that aren't actually rhymes. For example, stick and stick don't rhyme. They don't rhyme because they are the same word. A word rhymes only if it has part of the same sound(s), not if it is literally the same word in sound. Also, a stressed syllable doesn't rhyme with an unstressed syllable. The word three doesn't rhyme with quickly, for example. 

There are many kind of rhyming patterns (or schemes) you can use. We use letters to designate pattern. For example, if you have a ABAB rhyme pattern, the first line has to rhyme with the third line, and the second line has to rhyme with the fourth. 

Here are some popular rhyme schemes:

• Couplets -- AA
• Triplets -- AAA
• Alternate rhyme -- ABAB
• Enclosed rhyme -- ABBA
• Simple four-lined rhyme -- ABCB

In addition to these would be the mono rhyme, where each line has the same rhyme.

Of course, there are also different forms that rely on very specific rhyme schemes, such as the Petrarchan sonnet, the Shakespearean sonnet, the villanelle, the terza rima, the ballade, the ruba'i, and the limerick, among others. 

While I'll be talking about both kinds of sonnets, the villanelle, the ballade, and the limerick later, because they have other features beyond rhyme, I will note that the terza rima and the ruba'i are primarily just particular rhyme schemes:

terza rima -- ABA BCB CDC DED EFE FGF

ruba'i -- AABA

Note that the terza rima is a particular rhyme scheme because it is interlocking. The central end word becomes the first and third rhymes of the next triplet. Thus, the poem is partly driven by the interlocking rhymes. 

The ruba'i can either stand as a single quatrain poem, be a series of similar quatrains, or be interlocking as well--AABA BBCB CCDC, etc. When it's a series, it's called a rubaiyat.

One of the interesting things about using end rhymes is that, because you are forced to fit the rhyme, you are oftentimes forced to find something more interesting than what we originally came up with. Sometimes, it can send the poem into unexpected directions. A lot of people don't like this, because they want to feel like they are in complete control over the work. But that's the wrong attitude to have when it comes to writing poetry. 

Rhyme allows you to both create the expected--the rhyme--with the unexpected in the question of what particular word will rhyme. And when it forces you, as a writer, to do somewhere other than where you thought you'd be going, it results in a combination of the expected and the unexpected in the very themes and topic of the poem. Anytime you can create a balance between the expected and the unexpected, you're going to be writing a better work than if it was all completely expected (boring) or completely unexpected (confusing). 

Rhyme is one of those constraints that can make your poem more interesting and artistic. 

Parallelism

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 The above quote by Abraham Lincoln is an example of what is called parallelism. 

Parallelism is a way to create patterns within your writing. This can of course be used in prose as well as poetry. Parallelism can be created by using the same grammatical structure in a series of sentences, and it can be created by having a series of lists. In the case of lists, if you have three things listed in the first sentence, you have to have three things listed in the second sentence for them to be truly in parallel. 

In the Lincoln's sentence, there are three sets of parallels, which are as follows:

• You can
• you cannot

• all [of] the people
• some of the people
• all [of] the people

• some of the time
• all of the time
• all of the time

It's a memorable phrase because of its parallel structure and contrasts. It is poetic, meaningful, and memorable--things you certainly should want in your writing.

It has been pointed out that in my fiction, I love to use parallelism. It is, apparently, part of my natural aesthetic. Take, for example, this section from one of my own short stories:

Kay crept to his side, finding the fly first, watched it walking across a leaf on the wax plant. Then she searched the tank for the archer fish, finding it right under the fly. The back of the fish tank was left open in case an insect made the mistake of crawling on the edge of the tank, the shelf decorated with African violets overhanging it, of the trailing wax plant. The black-striped silver fish stalked the surface, looking up, watching the fly. Oblivious, the fly felt its way across the leaf, tasting it with its feet. The fish watched the fly, trying to get lined up.

Let me now put the sentences in question in a list to show the grammatical parallels:

Kay crept to his side, finding the fly first, watched it walking across a leaf on the wax plant. 

Then she searched the tank for the archer fish, finding it right under the fly. 

The black-striped silver fish stalked the surface, looking up, watching the fly. 

Oblivious, the fly felt its way across the leaf, tasting it with its feet. 

The fish watched the fly, trying to get lined up.

Notice that in each of these sentences--all but one in this section--we have a subject, a past tense verb, followed by a comma, followed by a progressive verb. 

• Kay crept, finding
• she searched, finding
• fish stalked, looking
• fly felt, tasting
• fish watched, trying

I managed to prevent this section from feeling repetitive by including some variety in my sentences in addition to the parallel structures. The last thing you want to do is make the parallelism too repetitive. This draws you from artistic to inartistic. Remember that beauty involves the use of unity and variety simultaneously. 

(As an aside, notice that the first sentence also has alliteration--Kay crept, finding the fly first--and there is of course continued alliteration of "fish" and "fly.")

Later in the same story, I used a kind of grammatical/list parallelism:

He picked one out, burned his fingers, and dropped it, then blew across the seeds to cool them and tried again. He tasted it, added some salt, shook the seeds, then tasted another one and nodded. 

• picked, burned, dropped, then blew and tried
• tasted, added, shook, then tasted and nodded

Each kind of parallel structure creates a pattern. Humans are pattern-creating and pattern-seeking creatures, and when we notice a pattern, we attribute meaning to the pattern. Patterns can create different kinds of moods--think about the calming effect of small waves breaking on the shore, or waves of grass in a field when the wind is blowing--and evoke different kinds of emotions. In the parallelisms I created above, there is likely a satisfying, calming effect. However, I could have a parallel between two characters, with contrasting feelings or attitudes or actions, and create a feeling of tension or anxiety. 

While these are examples in prose, I also have a poem that uses parallelism in the last line of each stanza:

The cypress and the willow weep the pond full--
The sorrows of all they have seen slowly drip
Off their long, light, green branches and leaves.
Sadness fills the pond.

Dusk calls the loons to fill the sky with their calls--

Such sad calls from water's mirror surface spread

Through the woods and echo off the mountainsides. 

Sadness haunts the woods.

The evening's mourning doves give way to gray owls,

Whose deep, full, sorrowful songs cause cool shivers

To spread through everything small, creeping, and warm.

Fear fills the dark woods.

As morning breaks, I wander. beside the pond--

My skin is clammy in the dew. The crickets

Chirp their last, and I find that I still miss her.

Fear haunts my sadness.

• Sadness fills
• Sadness haunts
• Fear fills
• Fear haunts

What kind of emotional effect does this use of parallelism create in you?

The Power of Limits

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 I took the title of this lesson from the above book. The author of The Power of Limits argues that nature is full of constraints that create particular kinds of patterns. He points out that the existence of these constraints does not at all prevent there from being a huge variety of things, but in fact is necessary for there to be variety. 

We like to think that freedom means lack of constraints. There are, of course, constraints that reduce freedom, but there are there constraints that increase it. People often misunderstand what "freedom" means, thinking it means that anything at all goes, and if you aren't free from constraints, you aren't free at all. This thinking is what lies behind opposition to the ideas of there being a biological human nature, or of there being cultural universals. 

But if you think about it, we have plenty of evidence that constraints aren't reducing freedom, particularly freedom of expression. The fact that religion is a cultural universal doesn't make people less expressive--it makes us more expressive. It's one more element in human cultures, and it adds to the variety of ways humans can express themselves, understand the cosmos, and be human. 

Does the fact that languages are constrained by grammar and syntax in any way prevent us from expressing ourselves, or running out of not only things to say, but ways to say them? Absolutely not. 

The same is true of literature. 

The use of constraints in poetry--whether they be the use of alliteration, end-rhyme, assonance, consonance, rhyme schemes, formalism, parallelism, or any number of other poetic tropes I'll be discussing--actually gives us more ways of saying things, and often new ways of saying things and thinking them. 

If we have to hit the rhyme at the end of the line, we have to think about how to get there. If the thing we were planning to write won't work to get a rhyme, we have to rework that line--or, we have to rework the previous line to get a word that rhymes better or easier, which will then cause us to have to rethink the next line anyway--and then, before you know it, you have something you didn't expect to have written. New ideas, new thoughts emerge. And if you're surprised, you can certainly expect your reader to be.

Art isn't supposed to be easy. The word "art" comes from "artisan," meaning a craftsman. You are supposed to be crafting your art. We are working in constraints as it is--the constraints of grammar and syntax, for example (though poets can challenge these, they can only challenge them within their pre-existing constraints)--and the addition of more only makes us have to pay more and more attention to what we are doing. In an odd way, by making us focus more, by making us not write on automatic pilot, the kinds of constraints one finds in, say, a sonnet can actually make you more in control of your work. 

If you spread gasoline around on the ground and light it, you'll get a quick conflagration, and then it will go out. If, however, you build an engine, you will still light gasoline, but that gasoline will now be directed into useful work. You can do many more things with an engine than you can with a conflagration. One you can burn grass and trees with; the other you can use to create cars and tractors and airplanes and factories. Constraints like poetic forms are like engines. With them, you can do a great many things--a great many more things than you can do with standard, non-poetic prose. 

Prosody

Everyone has a prosody, or theory of poetry composition. That theory can (and often is) a general theory of how one should "properly" write poetry, of how you yourself prefer to write poems, and/or of how any given particular poem will be written. 

In the latter case, I may decide that an idea I have for a poem will be best expressed as a sonnet. My theory of composition for that poem, then, will include making it only 14 lines, with the poem split up into  uneven parts (a 14-line poem divided into two balanced 7-line stanzas isn't a sonnet). There will then have to be a rhyme scheme that helps divide the poem into parts. The Patrarchan sonnet is divided into two parts, while the Shakespearean sonnet is divided into four, as we can see below.

Petrarchan rhyme scheme:

ABBAABBA CDECDE

Shakespearean rhyme scheme:

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

There are other details about sonnets we will go through in another section, but we're just going to focus on a few things here.

Sonnets are typically composed using iambic pentameter, so that would be part of one's theory of composing one's sonnet. And so on.

Of course, we don't typically just write poems where we're changing our theory of poetry composition from poem to poem. We also have our own personal theory of composition. 

When I first started writing poetry, I wrote free verse poems. That is the most common form being written today, and most poetry-writing classes will not encourage you to write poems in any other way. I didn't at the time have any sort of conscious theory of poetry composition, but a few things did recur that kind of acted as a finger print on my poetry, and which basically constituted a tacit theory. If you have written a number of poems, you likely have such at tacit theory at the very least. This is likely also reflected in the kinds of poems you like to read. 

Later, I met the poet Frederick Turner, and because of his influence, I started writing formalist poetry. I started writing formalist poetry because I encountered Turner's general theory of poetry composition. He argued in favor of formalism on the basis of how our brains work, being rhythmic, pattern-detecting, pattern-making systems. I became persuaded, and this in turn affected my personal prosody. I became a formalist, and the prosody of each poem was then affected. 

I want you to think about your own prosody. What is your personal theory of poetry composition? What is your general prosody (how do you think poems ought to be written)? Why? Why do you think prosody can change from poem to poem? That is, why do you think one poem seems "right" as a sonnet, while another seems "right" as an ode, and another seems "right" as free verse?

Rhythm and Alliteration

 

Alliteration has fallen out of favor among literary writers, including poets. If you use a lot of alliteration in your prose, you'll be accuse of writing "purple prose"--which is ironic, given that the term itself alliterates. 

Alliteration is the repetition of first sounds in words that are in close proximity to each other. It is a type of rhyme (not all rhyme comes at the end of lines, or at the end of words) that can help create rhythms in a work. "Purple prose," for example, repeats the P sound. "Coca-Cola" repeats the hard C sound. But that is not sufficient. In poetry, a word alliterates with another only if both sounds are on the stressed syllable. In this sense, it is indeed similar to how end-rhymes work. 

Alliteration was used in Old English poems to create the rhythms of the works rather than using regular alternations between stressed and unstressed syllables. Alliteration creates a kind of strong punctuation that can help emphasize a rhythm. It can be particularly effective in rhythmic styles that slightly deviate from the standard iambic pentameter.

Sapphic verse, for example, stresses two syllables after the first unstressed syllable, which is then followed by four iambs (there's slightly more to it than this, but let's leave it here for now and return to Sapphic verse later). Alliteration can help the reader really emphasize the repetition of the stressed syllables and thus notice that those syllables are there rather than the expected iamb. 

The power of alliteration can be seen by the fact that it's so often used in company names. 

Coca-Cola
Krispy Kream
Dunkin Donuts
Best Buy
PayPal

And think about the fact that people sometimes call Wal-Mart, "Wally-World."

The use of alliteration can thus create the rhythm itself, emphasize unusual rhythms (such as two stressed syllables next to each other), and even add another layer of pattern on top of a regular rhythm such as iambic. Alliteration may have "fallen out of favor" among "serious" poets, but all that attitude does is deprive you of a tool you can use to create more complex patterns and rhythms, affect the mood of the piece, and add to the style of your poetry. 

Rhythm and the Brain

 

Rhythm is a kind of constraint that is very natural to human beings, because they are a part of nature itself. 

Rhythms are a kind of pattern--a pattern that takes place in time. Waves breaking on the shore have rhythms. Bird songs have rhythms. Your heart beats to a rhythm. 

The brain, too, is full of rhythms--complex rhythms, brain waves, and so on. So, it should be no surprise that we humans are attracted to rhythms and make rhythms. Humans make music with rhythms. Birds are born with their songs, and we are now learning that many can learn new songs and modify old songs. Humans too, seem to be born with a musical sense, only we not only sing (some of us quite poorly), but externalize those rhythms into musical instruments we create. 

When you apply music to words, you get songs and rhythmic poetry. Good songs and poetry combine simple patterns, such as iambic, with more complex patterns, such as the occasional violation of the regular pattern, the subtle differences in lilt, word and syllable length, and stops and pauses due to punctuation and the presence of a cesura (a pause, either naturally placed there by the writer and reader as they read the line, or literally placed there with a space by the poet). 

The combination of regular rhythm and more complex rhythms prevent the poem from becoming too blandly repetitive, and it feels/sounds more beautiful. 

As mentioned above, the brain is rhythmic. It is why we are attracted to rhythms, and why we create rhythms--particularly when we make art. More, the rhythms of poetry and other rhythmic art coordinate the brain's rhythms, making the brain's rhythms match those of the poem, for example. Of course, those rhythms were made by another person, by another brain, so when your brain matches the work's rhythms, your brain is creating similar patterns as those of the artist when the artist was creating. 

Rhythms thus bring us together as people. Drums make us dance together in rhythms and rituals. We get together at concerts to unify in rhythms. A rhythmic speaker is more compelling and will get a group of people to act together. 

There is no mistaking the power of rhythms. Which is why it's a vital element for the most artistic of speech acts: poetry. 

What Is Missing--The Lipogram

(Note: links with a star next to them will take you to Amazon pages where you can buy the books in question.)

A lipogram is a kind of rule-based writing in which the author does not use a particular letter. Most of the world's poetry is written using constraints--such as particular rhythms, rhyme schemes, etc.--and this is simply one of the poetic tools you can use. 

 Whenever I have taught writing, I have always given an assignment in which the students were to write a one-page essay without using any words that contain the letter E. This assignment was always met with disbelief that it could even be done. I assured them that it could.

Why would I assign my students to do a lipogram? 

One of the benefits of such an exercise is that it forces you to slow down and think about each and every word you're using. Many writing problems are simply a result of being fast and sloppy. We are used to our language, and too often we think because we have spoken it almost all our lives, that we are masters of it. In a sense, we are, but if that were transferable, we wouldn't have so many people writing so many ungrammatical sentences--sentences they would never speak, as they simply could not speak them, they are so unnatural. 

That may seem an odd situation, but that is perhaps a topic for another post. I'll simply say that while acquiring speech is automatic and natural, writing is a technology that must be actively taught. 

Trying to write an essay without using words containing the letter E is a fun exercise. But imagine trying to write a short story without them. Or try a novel. Impossible? Tell that to Ernest Vincent Wright, author of Gadsby*, and to George Perec, author of A Void (Versa Mundi)*. Me, I simply tried to do it with a poem:

I am a lion, a high-soaring bird,
I'm coiling and hissing a softly hot word.
I am a spirit with amorous wings,
A mouth that can only spill words if it sings.
I am light, not shadow or gravity –
I am a painful and dark black cavity.
Do you know what all I say? I’m smiling
And as I laugh, do you know who I’m styling
My soul against? An abyssal dragon
Has flown into dark clouds and sky – an agon,
War whipping my soul into strong and hard
Long-living spirit that will always stand guard
And bring a gift for all of mankind. Gift?
It’s in a box, a box brought up from a rift,
A box I carry down and carry up –
I cannot touch lunch or drink from a cool cup
Until my body and my blood turn warm
And I unfold again my old human form.
A monstrous animal or living light –
A spirit that in its good growth fashions flight
From fast-growing wings that lift us aloft –
Shall all of us grow hard, or stupid, soft?
I had to go down to climb mountaintops,
This light gift . . . I laugh, so that no laughing stops.

You may be wondering how my students did. Many wrote some pretty terrible pieces (I only graded their ability to not use words with the letter E, to be fair in regards to the assignment), but a few wrote some very beautiful mini-essays. And everyone's writing improved dramatically on their next assignment.

Now, go out and write your own lipogram! It will be fun!

Prose and Verse

 Broadly understood, any literary writer--including those who write novels, short stories, and plays--is a poet. We tend to make a distinction, though. Poets write in verse; novelists and playwrights write in prose. And while when we typically think of poetry nowadays we think of lyric poetry, poetry also comes in the forms of epic poetry--and plays.

What is the difference between prose and verse? It's difficult to make the distinction with a majority of contemporary poems being written in free verse. While there are certainly free verse poems that are verse, there are also those that are really prose with line breaks. The existence or absence of line breaks is not what distinguishes prose from verse.

So what, then, does distinguish them?

What you are reading in this blog post is prose. You speak in prose. Prose is language walking. 

Verse is more rhythmic. It may have very regular rhythms--like Iambic--or is may have more irregular rhythms, or have rhythms created by alliteration or sentence structures or numbers of syllables. In all of these cases, though, the language isn't walking. It's dancing. 

Of course, one can dance one's walk, and walk one's dance. 

Novelists like William Faulkner definitely dance their walk. Hemingway's dance is more subtle. 

If you want to read truly prosaic prose, I recommend a good scientific article. 

Most formalist poetry is dancing language. Walt Whitman's poems are very much dancing, though he's introducing a new kind of rhythm. Postmodern poets like Bob Perelman make their poems walk to such a degree that one could call their works prose with line breaks. 

Poets like Perelman and Margaret Atwood have a strong tendency to write what I would call prose with line breaks. This creates other demands on their poems, meaning they have to find other ways to make their works "poems," but to me at least it's clear they're not writing in verse. The presence of line breaks doesn't make a work verse.

I do believe, though, that all literary works of art at least dance their walk. There has to be some kind of rhythm. How else could a work of literature be beautiful? 

Welcome

 Here at The Metamodern Poet, I am going to primarily give advice about writing. I am myself a poet, and I am primarily a formalist poet. However, I did not start off that way. Like many people, I started off writing free verse poetry. While I did have a tendency to--mostly accidentally--use fairly regular rhythms, and while I was (and am) partial to alliteration, it was only in the past 20 years that I started writing formal verse on a regular basis. 

Among the advice I will give will be justifications of that choice. There are good reasons to write in regular rhythms, to use rhymes, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and parallelism, among other tropes. I not only want to advise you on your writing, but justify the advice. 

Now, you are probably wondering: why The Metamodern Poet? There will be a full post on that in the near future, but the short answer is that metamodernism is a reaction to the limits of postmodernism, including postmodern art and literature. The metamodern poet combines what we learned from postmodernism with what we learned from Modernism, the Renaissance, Medieval poetry, and ancient poetry--and not just the European tradition, but all the world's traditions. That is, metamodern literature is intended to span both time and place in influence. The sonnet as well as the ghazal. 

I hope you will enjoy the advice I give here. I look forward to sharing my ideas with you, and I look forward to hearing from you!