The Sound of Words: An Introduction to Poetry

Linguistics & Lexicon

Students will use several concepts of "voice" as a foreground for them to play on words in their written and vocal expressions, clearly stating explicit notions of connotation and identity. We will study voice, in several forms: as the faculty or power of uttering sounds through the mouth by the controlled expulsion of air as in speech; as the right to present and receive consideration of one's desires or opinions; as an expressed opinion or choice; as the conscience;⁶ as capturing universal qualities of human nature. The aforementioned definitions will be a basis for discussion of voice in the classroom. Students will also learn the power of silence and the pause when crafted into poems that they will read or create in the poem themselves.

In discussing diction, there are accepted levels of diction. There are three distinctions: formal (literate), informal (standard) or slang. Diction is defined: as a style of speaking or writing as dependent upon choice of words; as the accents and inflections on words. It is also defined as intonation and speech sound quality which is manifested by an individual speaker; enunciation.⁷ Diction is important to spoken language because it includes all different types of words and is not particular about meter or rhyme. Language in and of itself has rhyme, and poetry makes the listener and reader aware of rhythm. Rhythm is more highly organized in poetry than in other uses of language.

Lexicon: lists of vocabulary terms to use when tackling word choice and construction to have readers understand character traits, themes and emotions the writer intends to convey to their audience. Being audacious in word and ambitious in ideas will lead my student poets to discover additional synonyms and antonyms to reference themes, emotions and character traits. Enunciation and word choice has a dramatic effect on tone which lends itself to the theme of the poem. I will ask students to choose from the following three poems: "The Revolution Will Not be Televized" by Gil Scott Heron; "Beat! Beat! Drums!" by Walt Whitman; and "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. Students will have to decide which words illustrate tone, emotions, and character traits, as applicable. We will begin to develop a standardized list of words that can be used to describe tone, emotions, and character traits in the poetic literature and post it in a word bank or word wall style on the classroom wall for students' future use.

Next, I will have students choose a short poem from a collection I will have previewed with them and change the tone of the poem by adding and/or deleting words, as well as extending or shortening lines for accentual modification. Their poems will have to be specific in the change. They will have to discuss the poems' first meaning, which we will have previously approached and discussed in class; then they will have to explain their new meaning and why they made the choices they did.

African- and Caribbean- Americans idiomatic speakers always improvise with intent; they compose on the spot, and the success of the improvisations depends on their mastery of nuances and the elements of the craft called for by the idiom. Improvisatory in practice, by force of circumstances, these speakers are adept at code-switching both in verbal and body language as the need arises.⁸ As a part of teaching the unit, pitch must be considered since it can alter lexical meaning indicating a writer's attitude.⁹