The Everything Writing Poetry Book (9 page)

Chapter 4
The Sound of Poetry

T
he sound of poetry is different from that of a short story, essay, or novel. Prose forms can be poised and polished, but they do not sustain the musical quality that poetry does. Poetry is derived from a time before writing was used—a time when religious rites, family histories, and stories were spoken, sung, or chanted. As you write, keep in mind the history of verse and pay close attention to the sounds of the language you use.

Consonants

Since languages generally begin in spoken rather than written form, the smallest units of English are its sounds. The English language divides sounds into two well-known categories: consonants and vowels. Within these categories there are hard and soft consonants and short and long vowels. There are about four times as many consonants as vowels in the English alphabet.

Hard Consonants

The consonant sounds are divided according to the way you use your lips, tongue, nasal passages, and vocal cords. For example, there is one pair of consonants whose sounds are created by stopping the air at your lips. Say the letters
b
and
p
to yourself. Notice how you close your lips to start each sound. Notice also that you voice the
b
and keep the
p
silent. These are both hard sounds because of the small burst of air and sound you release when you open your mouth again.

Now say the letters
d
and
t
. Notice this time that you stop the air by pressing the tip of your tongue against the ridge behind your upper teeth. You should also notice that you voice the
d
and keep the
t
silent. Like
b
and
p
, these sounds are hard because of the burst of air and sound that comes when you pull your tongue away again.

Now say the letters
g
(“hard”
g
) and
k
. With these two you stop the air by pressing the back of your tongue against the back of your mouth. The
g
sound is voiced, and the
k
sound is voiceless. Again, the hard sound is produced by the burst of air that occurs when the breathing passage is opened again.

Soft Consonants

Now, try saying the letters
v
and
f
to yourself. You should immediately notice three differences between these two letters and the six that you sounded out earlier. First of all, you do not completely stop the air as it passes through your mouth when saying these two letters. Secondly, you can maintain the sound of the
v
or the
f
for several seconds, but you can't do this with
b, p, d, t
, (hard)
g
, or
k
. Finally, the sounds of the
v
and the
f
are softer; you do not produce a burst of sound and air but rather a steady stream. For these reasons,
v
and
f
are considered soft consonants.

There are several other pairs of voiced and voiceless soft consonants, but there are also a few single voiced soft consonants. One of the latter is
l
, heard at the beginning of words like
licorice, laughter
, and
love
. The
r
sound appears in words such as
rug, real
, and
royal
. The
w
sound, made by blowing the air stream through puckered lips, appears in
window
and
windy
. The
y
sound (
yellow, yes
) is made by pushing the middle of the tongue toward the roof of the mouth.

Vowels

Though you learn that the vowels in English are
a, e, i, o, u
, and sometimes
y
, there are actually several vowel sounds, sometimes classified roughly as long or short. However, these classes are not steadfast, as vowels are affected by the consonants in the syllables around them. For example, the
u
sound in the word
pup
is considered a short sound. But if you say the word
pub
, that short
u
suddenly sounds longer. The difference is that in the word
pup
, the short
u
sound is followed by the voiceless sound of
p
, while in
pub
, it is followed by the voiced
b

A better way of classifying vowel sounds is by the tongue's position when each is spoken. The words
front, central
, and
back
are used to describe which part of the tongue is raised highest toward the roof of the mouth, and the words
high, mid
, and
low
describe how high the tongue is raised. A mid-central vowel is one that causes the middle of your tongue to rise halfway to the roof of your mouth.

Rhyme: Part 1

Probably the one sound tool that is most closely associated with poetry is rhyme. If two lines end with words having the same terminal sounds, you might automatically assume that you have found a song, nursery rhyme, jingle, or poem. Rhyme creates a melody or rhythm that may correspond well with the subject matter you choose for a particular poem.

The essential feature of a rhyme is two or more words that end in the same vowel-consonant sound combination, regardless of spelling. For example, the words
bored, board
, and
toward
rhyme. The words
father
and
bother
also rhyme. Certain types of poems can be identified by the pattern of rhymed words they contain. But before you learn how to identify poems by their rhymes, you need to identify the different types of rhymes themselves.

Places to Rhyme

The most common place to put rhyming words in poetry is at the ends of lines. This kind of rhyme is called
end rhyme
. Here is an example of some end rhyming taken from Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare:

That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang
.

The words that rhyme here are
behold/cold
and
hang/sang
, placed at the ends of alternating lines. Note, however, that although Shakespeare ends each line with a rhyming word, he does not end a sentence with each line. He weaves all four lines into a single sentence. If the poem is read as though it has no line breaks, the rhymes almost vanish among the other words.

Another form of rhyme is called
internal rhyme
. With this technique, the rhyming words can be tucked anywhere within a line or in consecutive lines. Sometimes, a word within a line can rhyme with a word at the end of the line. An example of such an internal rhyme appears in the second stanza of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”:

The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din
.

The internal rhyme appears in the third line with the words
met/set
. Note also that Coleridge uses the end rhymes
kin/din
. The strong rhyme pattern, reinforced by the phrases that end when the lines end, gives the poem a songlike quality.

Types of Rhyme

The English language, despite its huge treasury of words, does not make rhyming easy. Several rhyming dictionaries—all slender volumes—offer lists of rhyming combinations. To make up for the language's lack of rhyming options, poets have resorted to rhyming variations. As a result, there are three broad categories of rhymes.

The first category is
true rhyme
. In this variation, the vowel/consonant combination at the end of two or more words sounds exactly the same. The words
true, clue, blew, through, new, flu, zoo
, though spelled differently, all have the same vowel sound (the high back vowel) at the end.

The next category is
slant rhyme
, also called
near rhyme
or
off rhyme
. In this type, one of the sounds in the combination, either the consonant or the vowel, is changed. The result is that instead of having words that ring in your ear (
baby/maybe
), you have words that ring and clatter alternately (
baby/barber
). Other examples of slant rhymes are
creak/croak, wish/wash, play/plough
, and
heaven/even
. The advantage of the slant rhyme is that it gives you more opportunity to delight your readers with original rhyme combinations.

The last category is
eye rhyme
. Unlike the other variations, this form of rhyme depends upon words that have the same spelling but different sounds when spoken. For example, consider this group of words ending with -
ough: through, though, tough, cough
. Also, look at these words that end with -
ove: love, prove, dove
(past of
dive)
. These words look as if they should be spoken the same way but strangely are not. Still, like slant rhymes, eye rhymes allow you to expand your rhyme combinations.

Rhyme: Part II

Consider the difference between these two pairs of words:
believe/relieve
and
matter/batter
. If you say them out loud to yourself, you should be able to hear a distinction. In the first pair, the second syllables of the words are stressed, and in the second pair, you stress the first syllables.

Rhyme Stress

This difference in stress, or beat, is another way to categorize rhymes. The first pair of words,
believe/relieve
, is called a
masculine
or
rising rhyme
because your voice rises as you say the rhyming syllable. The second pair,
matter/batter
, is called a
feminine
or
falling rhyme
because your voice falls when you say the rhyming syllable. If you go back to the lines quoted earlier from Shakespeare and Coleridge, you will note that both poets used masculine (rising) rhymes. Note also that most of the rhyming words in the poems are monosyllabic—a common feature of masculine rhyme.