The Sound of Words: An Introduction to Poetry

Rationale

Text-based Instruction

Students are unable to hear the voice of the author because they are waiting for the biographical information that they believe will unlock the meaning of the poem; they lack the confidence needed to interact independently with the text. When discussing poetry instruction with colleagues, I find that the biographical information of an author is of consistent interest. Beyond a normal curiosity, these inquiries seemed to establish the underlying assumption that this information is necessary to get at the truth of a poem. Teachers even discuss what is apparently a familiar strategy: let students read a poem on their own and share what they think—then tell them about the author so that they will know what it "really" means. No wonder students are reticent to interact with a text—they've been conditioned to believe that they cannot read it on their own. Why bother with one's own interpretation if it will be replaced by a corrected biographical reading? Imagine how massive a book of poetry must look to a student who can only imagine the tomes of information that would be needed to wade through to its true understanding—one binding visible and an entire concealed library ready to correct his initial response. And if they aren't engaged in "conversation" with the text, they will certainly not hear the voice of the speaker.er.

Now, I'm certainly not arguing that information about the author is irrelevant to the reading of the text. Obviously the background information to a poem such as Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" is essential to a full and complete reading. Can one fully appreciate the brilliance of the poem without knowing that the poem was written on October 27, 1962, or that the picture Plath references in the poem is an actual photograph of her father in front of a German language lesson on his blackboard, holding a book over his heart?⁴ Probably not. Yet it is dangerous to assume that biography is the key to an accurate, or final, reading of the text. If this were the standard, we could only read a poem after reading a poet's biography. This outside context may be an important part of the discourse—but it should not be considered the definitive discourse—especially if we expect students to interact willingly with a text on their own. .

Any text offers multiple layers of meaning; one can apply different strategies of interpretation to search for universal connections and understandings even when all pertinent information is not readily available. Take, for example, May Swenson's "Come In Go Out." Will the average student realize that it loosely follows the traditional Anglo-Saxon model with an accented meter of four beats per line, neatly divided into halves, with alliteration highlighting the emphasis? Likely not. Does that mean that the student cannot consider the implications of different ways to read the poem (based on the columnar design), or notice the significance of the rhyme, diction, and alliteration? If students recognize that the pattern emulates the ebb and flow of the water—and cannot make the historical connection—they can still discuss the significance as related to universals of humanity. Is it necessary to believe that their observations and understandings are insignificant because they are not scholarly enough? I would argue that this is the message that they have received, and that they are "listening" for that background information instead of listening to the voice of the author (or the speaker of the poem) with whom they don't believe they have the credentials to interact. .

Peter Elbow says that it is important to look through the "lens of text" that eliminates the history, the biography, "the actual person trying to do something to someone else." This type of close reading helps us better see the "bare meanings and relationships." Focusing on the background information can "muddy the water" and leave us "confused or mistaken in our reading or analysis." ⁵ For practical purposes, this strategy is essential as that is what they will be expected to do on their AP Language and Composition exam. More importantly for this curriculum unit, this approach serves as a template for how the poetry will be presented as I endeavor to establish and build on that interaction with the text, encouraging students to further enter into a discourse with the text that will allow them to listen to that text.

Focus on Sound

The exercises in this unit will focus on sound. Although all aspects of a text work together to create meaning, and it is artificial to assume that one can completely isolate one element to the exclusion of the others, I am establishing this focus because in my own experience it is the element most often left out of the conversation. Students can mechanically discuss diction, syntax and other elements of language analysis, but they don't have the appropriate tools to discuss the sound of the text. Arguably, this is the element that could bring it all together.

The discussion of tone has even fallen out of favor with literary critics. Once a common term in literary criticism, and a critical element of New Criticism, the term is "now disused."⁶ But according to Frost, the "living sounds of speech" are the actions of the voice, the "stuff of life" that are the "basis of all effective expression."⁷ Sound is just too important of a sense to be eliminated from the discussion of a text. Poetry, in particular, originated as an oral form that was sung or chanted. "Poetic form as we know it is an abstraction from, or residue of, musical form," and that "ghost of oral poetry," as John Hollander terms it, never completely disappears.⁸

In the Introduction to Landmark Essays on Voice and Writing, Peter Elbow cites Mikhail Bakhtin as a critic who emphasizes the importance of the sound in a text. Bakhtin argues that "intonation is the point where language intersects with life" and often unlocks the most important meaning in a text—meaning that is not "carried by the lexical, semantic meaning.""⁹ Too much focus has been placed on the visual sense to the exclusion of the "global fullness of experience" and the "richness of listening."¹⁰ According to Walter Ong, sound is "a special sensory key to interiority" that conveys meaning much more powerfully than the visual. Sound has a significant connection to what one would consider a sense of presence, and since the spoken word "moves from interior to interior," this exploration of sound facilitates our full discourse with the text.¹¹

Clearly Defining Tone

Another problem facing an instructor may be the lack of a clear definition of tone; this should be established if students are to work with the concept effectively. The typical definition students find in the classroom is "the attitude of the author," and clearly that definition isn't doing much good. The word attitude isn't specific enough to give students an understanding of what they are looking for. Even New Criticism divided the concept of attitude into two categories: feeling referred to the author's attitude toward his subject, and tone referred to how he felt about his reader—how he felt about saying what he had to say to that particular audience..¹² Ultimately, an understanding of tone is going to come from a discussion that presents the information more organically and less mechanically. It's a complicated subject, not a simple one sentence definition that students can easily mark off on a quiz—not if we want students to have the appropriate understanding of the term..

Langdon Hammer says that discussing tone is like discussing a person's mood. Tone is the key to interpreting the author's intentions—the way a word or phrase was intended to be said—and therefore the "manner of relationship the writer constructs with his reader."."¹³ Frost famously refers to tone as the "sound of sense," the sound that emanates from the voices we hear behind a door even if we don't understand the words.¹⁴ It is the "vital element," the "animating spirit of the living voice."¹⁵ Robert Pinsky describes the sound that emanates from the text as the "energies that course through the lines and make them feel alive."¹⁶

Frost says there are hundreds of tones.¹⁷ While there may be a unique quality of a person's voice, people "display enormous variation" in how they speak depending on the occasion. They use different tones of voice at different times depending on whether they are "excited, scared, angry, sad."¹⁸ These tones "come through the door." We understand them because we recognize them based on our own experiences. We hear the tones that we have used; we register tones we've heard before. They are "common property." This ability to discern the tone is what Frost calls "the imagining ear."¹⁹ Because this sound comes from an "interior space from which we are barred," we use this sense to "construe the interiority of other speakers," thus enhancing our understanding of the author's purpose.²⁰ Bakhtin says that intonation "lies on the border between life and the verbal aspect of utterance," injecting life-energy into the text, providing greater insight into the extraverbal context—the authorial intention..²¹

Frost argues that it is a "fundamental fact" that certain forms of writing depend on sound, which he emphasizes as the "basis of all effective expression—not merely words or phrases, but sentences,—living things flying round,—the vital parts of speech."h."²² He says that the success of a poem depends more upon the "meaning it conveys by tone of voice" than that which it conveys through the meaning of the words.²³ Failing to focus on such an important part of the text limits a student's ability to interact with the text. Discussing the complexities of the concept will enhance their reading experiences.

What Creates Sound?

Ultimately, we must guide students in the sophisticated task of recognizing sound on the page when their prior instruction has probably been limited to a discussion of sing-song rhyme and the "buzz buzz" of onomatopoeia. So how does one go about this? What creates the sound on the page?

Obviously, a written text does not have the advantage of posture, facial expression and changes in audible voice in conveying its tone. ²⁴ Tone is derived through context—the relationship of words with each other as they are constructed within the sentence..²⁵ The sentence construction is a notation for suggesting tones of voice in the same way that a musical notation suggests the development of the sound.²⁶ This context includes the dramatic situation, but, more importantly, the "syntactic context of the sentence, which conveys, independently of any semantic information, a distinctive ‘posture.'"²⁷ Elbow says we must pay more attention to "how things are said" and the relationship "between their words and their meanings and their referents."²⁸

When referencing the tone of a written text, we cannot literally hear the tone the way we can the spoken word—the sentence provides an intangible construction of the sound we can hear through our "imagining ear." A number of acoustical variables work together to create an "intonational contour" that gives the reader direction on how to read a sentence, "which words will be emphasized, and to what effect." These variables can include pitch (high and low), stress (volume and emphasis), ²⁹duration (quantity), degree,³⁰ speed (fast or slow), intensity (relaxed or tense), rhythm, timbres (breathy, shrill, nasal), glides and jumps, varied lengths of pauses, syntax, diction, structure, strategies and stance,³¹ line breaks and punctuation.³²

Frost refers to metrical beat as something for the "rhythm of the vocal tones to play across, to make a figure in, to make a posture in."³³ Pinsky divides his discussion of stress into both accent and duration. Accent is, of course, whether the sound is stressed or unstressed. "A stressed syllable is determined only in relation to the other syllables within the foot."³⁴ Further, he argues that accents fluctuate by degree. In other words, in a line with four stressed syllables, each of those stressed syllables does not have the exact same stress. The stressed element of one foot might actually be closer to the unstressed element of another foot. This variation means that the "actual rhythm of the words is not singsong or repetitious."³⁵ A change of pitch (usually higher) can also indicate an accent. The duration of a syllable can alter word sounds or accent pattern and comes in a matter of degrees.³⁶ The variation in meter and the tension between the "concrete utterance and metrical grid" create the tone.³⁷

Robert Hass goes into much greater detail about the "rhythms and rhythm play that make texture in our lives,"³⁸ focusing on how rhythm works with the imagination we exercise as we listen to the text. He reminds us that rhythm is power—power that makes us move and has access to our subconscious. Rhythm engages us in multiple phases. The first phase is one of alertness where we become aware first of sounds, then of patterns, then of repetition. When that pattern changes, it signals to us—"as it would to a hunting or a grazing animal—that something in the environment is changed."d."³⁹ In the second phase, we move from a required attention to more of a "field of play." The effects are difficult to describe except metaphorically (as dance, weaving, dialogue, interplay, enchantment, magic) and therefore at this level of awareness the rhythm is an "idiom of the unconscious" that seems to "an echo of many other human activities."⁴⁰ The third and final phase involves the resolution of rhythmic play. Rhythms are seen in myriad elements of nature, but "only human beings complete them."⁴¹ There are numerous possibilities for the endings of the rhythmic play, and the "articulation of what the ending feels like is active making."⁴² This ending naturally suggests the insight the reader looks for when the "endings are true enough." Change is required for a thing to be complete,⁴³ again emphasizing the variation and tension that contribute to the tone.

The information presented here is not a succinct blueprint for a student to follow, but rather an indicator of the complexity of sound issues that can be discussed as part of what contributes to tone. The key is to move beyond the mechanical dissection and the reliance on the visual. "The imagination of the ear," Frost writes, "is more peculiarly poetical than the imaginative eye, since it deals with sound which is what poetry is before it is sight."⁴⁴ Focus on the "concrete images of sound—concrete tone images" will enhance a student's ability to analyze the text by adding depth and specificity to the question of the author's attitude..