Poetry Week Day Two: Sound Matters

If you do poetry readings, you’ll hear Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky a thousand times. Poets love it, and it goes like this:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

Is it nonsense or is it art? I’d argue that it is art. Those nonsense words are so well chosen you know exactly what they mean. Everyone can feel a “burble” or understand the meaning of “frumious”. The mere sound of the words is enough to define their meaning. The Jabberwocky is proof that the sound of your language is even more important than its definitions.

How does this play out in ordinary poems? Let’s see.

The Hill – by Robert Creeley

It is sometime since I have been
To what it was had once turned me backwards
And made my head into
A cruel instrument.

It is simple
to confess. Then done,
to walk away
to come again.

But that form, I must answer,
is dead in me, completely
and I will not allow it
to reappear—

Saith perversity, the wilful
the magnanimous cruelty
which is in me
like a hill.

Creeley is celebrated for his masterful use of sound. You’ll see it particularly in that word, “magnanimous,” which stretches out loudly and enormously, making it the main event of the entire poem. That sound gives the hill a terrifying height. The round vowel sounds are pinched and shrunken in the small “I” sounds of “is dead in me, completely”.

Ted Hughes is another poet who focuses heavily on sound. He often creates conflict through assonance, as you’ll see it in Crow:

“Blood her breasts her palms her brow all wept blood. “

The repeated consonants rub against one another abrasively and are difficult to say out loud. The goal? To make readers uncomfortable. To slow down the pace of their reading. To turn a line into a main event.

Hughes resolves that assonance later in the poem with:

“And saw the stars millions of miles away
And saw the future and the universe”

These sounds slide out gently and easily. They suit the beauty they’re referencing.

In poetry, you can create conflict merely by using words that are uncomfortable to say. You can create serenity by choosing sounds that flow easily and rhythmically together.

We’re going to do a tough and interesting exercise today: Write a nonsense poem as Lewis Carrol did. Let the sounds define your words’ meaning. Have fun with it. Really feel it.