Sound What to Listen For in Poetry

What’s Important?  A feature of any good poem is unity. It’s sounds cannot be separated from its themes, structure, imagery, etc.  While knowing the terms is helpful, it is more important to understand that rhyme and rhythm contribute to the meaning and effect of a poem  What counts on the exam is your ability to explain the function of the technique

Rhyme  End Rhyme—the repetition of identical sounds at the end of successive lines  Slant Rhyme—sounds that are close to each other, but not exact duplicates (seen/been, ill/all, summer/somewhere), it can help break up the monotony of repetitious conventional rhyme  A beautiful girl said something in your praise And either because in a hundred ways I had heard of her great worth and had no doubt To find her lovlier than I thought  Internal Rhyme—two or more words that rhyme in an individual line of poetry, may be used for emphasis or individual unity  The splendour falls on castle walls

Rhyme Scheme  The pattern of rhyming words within a given stanza or poem  For convenience, each similar end rhyme is usually labeled with a letter of the alphabet  You will most likely be asked to analyze the effect/meaning of the rhyme, not the actual scheme. Discussing the function of the rhyme will be useful on the essay

Onomatopoeia  Words that replicate sound—boom, buzz, clang  Creates a vivid sensory image

Repetition  Alliteration—repetition of initial sounds in words and syllables  Assonance—the repetition of similar vowel sounds, can create a slant rhyme (earth/hearth, little/beetle  Consonance—repetition of consonants appearing within a line or at the end of words (odds and ends, struts and frets)

Meter and Rhythm  The poetic unit of measurement is the foot. Poetic feet may consist og two or three syllables  Iamb—two syllable foot, unstressed/stressed  From eve/ry room/ descends/ the paint/ed face  Trochee—two syllable foot, stressed/unstressed  Mitten, gunshot, apple  Spondee—two syllables, both stressed  High on the shore sat the great god Pan  Dactyl—3 syllables, stressed/unstressed/unstressed  Criminal, possible, traveler  Anapest—3 syllables, unstressed/stressed/stressed  Regulate, lemmonade, palisade

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening  How do the rhyme and rhythm conttribute to the poem?

Caesura and Enjambment  Caesura—some lines of poetry call for an internal pause, usually indicated by a period, semicolon, dash, or other punctuation, mimics patterns of human speech  I saw the Almighty Man. His hand Was resting on a mountain, and He looked upon the World and all about it  Enjambment—a run-on, indicated by the lack of punctuation at the end of a line, eliminates the need to pause  We Real Cool

Blank Verse  Written in meter, but does not rhyme

Free Verse  Ignores conventions of meter and rhythm  These poems derive their effects from irregular length of line and recurring imagery  Sound patterns such as alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme, and even end rhyme may compensate for lack of meter