You probably first read a poem to yourself, silently, but most poems also create sense
though
sounds, unlike
concrete poetry, which
generally operates visually. Try reading the poem aloud. Sound brings attention to
both
individual words that are drawn together through their sound as well as to the overall
feeling
or experience. For example, repetition of sounds like s,
m,
l,
and f
might encourage a soft or sensuous feeling: Season of mists and
mellow fruitfulness . . .
Rhythm. A poem’s
rhythm can be regular or irregular. When it has regular
rhythmical sound patterns, we say the poem has a certain
meter. The type of
meter is based on the
number of syllables per line and how many unstressed (x) or stressed (/) syllables
there are.
(“I WAN-dered LONE-ly AS a
CLOUD“; x / x / x / x / ). A small, distinct group of accented words is
called a
foot (for example, a
CLOUD
; x /). The various meters—tetrameter, pentameter, etc.—are
based on the number of feet per line. The
meter in the above example has four regular feet, and is therefore tetrameter; each
foot has an unstressed syllable [x] followed by a stressed one
[/], and is called an iamb. We would then say that the line is in iambic
tetrameter; if it had an extra
foot—that is, five feet—we would
call it
iambic pentameter.
Also, think about the poems’s pace, whether it moves
slowly or quickly, jerkily or
fluidly.
Melody. Melody refers to sound effects, such as
rhyme,
alliteration,
assonance, and
consonance,
with each producing a unique melodic effect.
Rhyme is a type of
melody, and
rhymes can be perfect with identical vowel sounds (guy
and
high
) or slant, when the sound of the final consonants is identical,
but not the vowels (shell
and pill,
cement
and ant
).
[Key terms: concrete poetry, rhyme, rhyme scheme, rhythm, meter, stress, alliteration, consonance, assonance, scansion, prosody, foot / feet, iambic pentameter, melody, slant rhyme, perfect rhyme, couplet, blank verse.]