SOUND
Molberg:
ENGL 3150
Course
Packet
The most recognizable sound effect
used in poems is rhyme.
When two words rhyme, they have a similar ending sound. Words that end in the
same letters, such as "take" and "make" rhyme, or words
with different endings but the same sound rhyme, such as "cane" and
"pain." Poetry also makes use of near rhymes (or slant rhymes), which are
words that almost rhyme, but not quite -- such as "bear" and
"far."
Other sound effects make use of
repeating letters or combinations of letters. Consonance is repeating the same consonants
in words that are near each other. The statement "mummy's mommy was no common dummy" is an example
of consonance because the letter m
is repeated. If the repeated letters appear only at the beginning of the words,
this is known as alliteration.
For example, "the big
brown bear bit into a blueberry" is an
example of alliteration because several words close together begin with the
letter b.
If the letters or sounds that are
repeated are vowels instead of consonants -- as in "I might like to fight nine pirates at a time" -- it is known
as assonance.
Assonance can be pretty subtle sometimes, and more difficult to identify than
consonance or alliteration.
Sometimes a poet might want to make
you imagine you're hearing something. This is part of a concept called auditory imagery, or
giving an impression of how something sounds. One common way to create auditory imagery
is through the use of onomatopoeia.
Think about words that describe a sound -- words like buzz, clap or meow. When
you say them aloud, they kind of sound like what they are describing. For
example, the "zz" in the word buzz kind of sounds like the noise a
bee makes.
*Think of the above concepts as you
read the following poems:
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
The Man
On The Dump
By Wallace Stevens
Day
creeps down. The moon is creeping up.
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche
Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho…The dump is full
Of images. Days pass like papers from a press.
The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun,
And so the moon, both come, and the janitor's poems
Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears,
The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box
From Esthonia: the tiger chest, for tea.
The freshness of night has been fresh a long time.
The freshness of morning, the blowing of day, one says
That it puffs as Cornelius Nepos reads, it puffs
More than, less than or it puffs like this or that.
The green smacks in the eye, the dew in the green
Smacks like fresh water in a can, like the sea
On a cocoanut—how many men have copied dew
For buttons, how many women have covered themselves
With dew, dew dresses, stones and chains of dew, heads
Of the floweriest flowers dewed with the dewiest dew.
One grows to hate these things except on the dump.
Now in the time of spring (azaleas, trilliums,
Myrtle, viburnums, daffodils, blue phlox) ,
Between that disgust and this, between the things
That are on the dump (azaleas and so on)
And those that will be (azaleas and so on) ,
One feels the purifying change. One rejects
The trash.
That's the moment when the moon creeps up
To the bubbling of bassoons. That's the time
One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires.
Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon
(All its images are in the dump) and you see
As a man (not like an image of a man) ,
You see the moon rise in the empty sky.
One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That's what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow's voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,
Pack the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear
Solace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher's honeymoon, one finds
On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,
Bottles, pots, shoes, and grass and murmur aptest eve:
Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say
Invisible priest; is it to eject, to pull
The day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?
Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche
Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho…The dump is full
Of images. Days pass like papers from a press.
The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun,
And so the moon, both come, and the janitor's poems
Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears,
The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box
From Esthonia: the tiger chest, for tea.
The freshness of night has been fresh a long time.
The freshness of morning, the blowing of day, one says
That it puffs as Cornelius Nepos reads, it puffs
More than, less than or it puffs like this or that.
The green smacks in the eye, the dew in the green
Smacks like fresh water in a can, like the sea
On a cocoanut—how many men have copied dew
For buttons, how many women have covered themselves
With dew, dew dresses, stones and chains of dew, heads
Of the floweriest flowers dewed with the dewiest dew.
One grows to hate these things except on the dump.
Now in the time of spring (azaleas, trilliums,
Myrtle, viburnums, daffodils, blue phlox) ,
Between that disgust and this, between the things
That are on the dump (azaleas and so on)
And those that will be (azaleas and so on) ,
One feels the purifying change. One rejects
The trash.
That's the moment when the moon creeps up
To the bubbling of bassoons. That's the time
One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires.
Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon
(All its images are in the dump) and you see
As a man (not like an image of a man) ,
You see the moon rise in the empty sky.
One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That's what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow's voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,
Pack the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear
Solace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher's honeymoon, one finds
On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,
Bottles, pots, shoes, and grass and murmur aptest eve:
Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say
Invisible priest; is it to eject, to pull
The day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?
Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.
Blackberrying
By
Sylvia Plath
Nobody in the lane, and
nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either
side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going
down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of
it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my
thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices.
These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such
a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate
themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.
Overhead go the choughs
in black, cacophonous flocks --
Bits of burnt paper
wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice,
protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea
will appear at all.
The high, green meadows
are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of
berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen
bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the
berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the
berries and bushes end.
The only thing to come
now is the sea.
From between two hills a
sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom
laundry in my face.
These hills are too green
and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path
between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills' northern
face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on
nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter
lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating
and beating at an intractable metal.
Dying
By
Emily Dickinson
I
heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The
eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I
willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,
With
blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
Holy Sonnet XIV
By
John Donne
Batter my heart, three-person’d God;
for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
John Donne
1572-1631
1572-1631
Carrion Comfort
Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist--slack they may be--these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee
and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me,
fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night,
that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
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