Vocal Vibrations
In the poetry of Langston Hughes, you can hear the voices of the community he so eloquently represents. There are several voices Hughes creates as noted by Jones in "Listening Ear...," the speaking voice - orality of the community; literary voice - performance on the page; instrumental voice - speaking/reading sounds giving both senses of word meaning, all enriching the understanding of the poetic language and expressions trickled throughout the writing.
Using the prose to poetry exercise as seen in the Rhythmic Renditions of this unit students will have the opportunity to pay attention to acoustical properties and effects that are pronounced when hearing poetry and the written word, either internally or externally. Students will play with sound and meaning throughout their study in this unit; making meaning in partnership with the author. Reading aloud, vocalizing to understand the message, will be of the utmost importance in this unit. Students must learn to understand the basis of their own understanding to be effectively included in a group or choral poetry performance.
In using language there is no one recipe for the sounds created. It is a bringing together of all the elements that makes the symphonic transformation from the inner self. I am attempting to prepare my students for that transformation of self to word to meaning, shared with their community of peers at-large. Acoustical imagery and word structure, which embodies speech and language, can be found in lines of verse through the organization of speech employed by timbre, duration, pitch or intonation, intensity or volume.10 Timbre is used within this organizational framing, as well as the repetitive literary elements of alliteration, assonance and rhyme, duration, and references to accentual syllabic meter.
It is important to mention nonsensical sounds in this unit, for the African- and Caribbean poet places nonsensical syllables in crucial junctures where the text seems to collapse.11 Students will decipher the sounds in Amiri Baraka or Kamau Braithwaite's poems. We will work with Dinesh R. Makwana's poem "Senorita" as a group exercise. An excerpt from the poem:
Where my lipstick would be banned from every ocean buthis,
And that pride would stand and for his to please.
Then oh then, then oh then, I....
Ta Ta , Ha Ha , Ka Ka , Ma Ma,
La La, La La, Ta Ta, Ha Ha, Ma Ma,
Tat Tut, Tat Tut, Pat Pat, Tut Tut, Tat Tat,
Tat Tut, Tat Tut, Pat Pat, Tut Tut, Tat Tat,
Rasa Pasa, Fasa Masa, Hasa Kasa,
The song and step of the Senorita.
The only kudos was I'd breathed when others had died,
Gawking, the folk learned the immanent sari virtue anddivide,
Timid and destitute, I resembled the schlemiel andschlenter rogue,
This excerpt shows the use of phonetic sounds to represent rhythm of the dance of the Senorita. Students can use their bodies and voice to interpret the sounds of the words and the rhythm the sounds naturally create.
After hearing and reading these poems, students will be asked to create very short versions of their own poetic nonsense in representation of an idea or an emotion. This will aid in understanding of sound and meaning in a universal sense of the terms.
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