POETRY ANALYSIS: SOUND

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SOUND

Introduction

Sound represents an essential aspect of most poems, but it can be elusive element to isolate for analysis. Even professional critics often disagree about the sonic effects of particular poems.

The sound of word in itself gives pleasure. However, we might doubt Isak Dinesen’s assumption that “meaning in poetry is of no consequence.” But most good poetry has meaningfull sound as well as musical sound.

The sounds of consonants and vowels can contribute greatly to a poem’s effect. The sound of s, which can suggest the swishing of water, has rarely been used more accurately than in Surrey’s line “Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less.

The easier way to write about the sound of a poem is usually to focus your discussion. Rather than trying to explain every possible auditory element a poem possesses, concentrate on a single, clearly defined aspect that strikes us as especially noteworthy. For example, if we might demonstrate how elements of sound in a poem emphasize its literal meaning. Don’t look for hidden meanings. Simply try to understand how sound help communicate the poem’s main theme. Here us might examine how certain features (e.g. rime, rhythm, meter, alliteration. Etc.) add force to the literal meaning of each line. Or, for ironic poems, we might look at how those same elements undercut and change the surface meaning of the poem.

SOUND          :

·         Onomatopoeia

Relating sound more closely to meaning, the device called onomatopoeia is an attempt to represent a thing or action by a word that imitates the sound associated

Onomatopoeia is often effective in poetry.

e.g.                        zoom, whiz, crash, bang, ding-dong, buzz, schlurrp.

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            The sounds of musical instruments, the noises of wind, sea, and rain, the rattle of milkcarts, the clopping of hooves on cobbles, the fingering of branches on the window pane, might be to someone, deaf from birth, who has miraculously found his hearing. “For readers, too, the sound of words can have a magical spell, most powerful when it points to meaning.

·         Alliteration

Among such pattern long popular in English poetry is Alliteration, which has been defined as a consonant sound at the beginning of successive words-“round and round the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran”-or inside the words.

Alliteration is the repetition of the same initial consonant in consecutive words or in words in close proximity to one another.

e.g.                        The D got dunked by the duct

                  The T was totally terrified

            As we have seen, to repeat the sound of a consonant is to produce alliteration, but to repeat the sound of a vowel is to produce assonance. Like alliteration, assonance may occur either initially. It slows the reader down and focuses attention.

·         Rime / Rhyme:

A rime (rhyme), defined most narrowly, occurs when two or more words or phrases contain an identical or similar vowel-sound, usually accented, and the consonant-sounds that follow the vowel-sound are idenctical: hay and slaigh, prairie schooner and piano tuner. From the example it will be seen that rime depends not on spelling but on sound.

                                   i.            Masculine Rime:

A rime of one-syllable word (jail, bail) or (in words of more than one syllable) stressed final syllable

e.g.               di-VORCE      re-MORSE

                         HORSE       re-MORSE

But once, years after, in the country lanes,

         Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew.

Met him, and of his way of life inquired,       àmasculine rime

         Whereas he answered that the Gipsy crew,

His mates, had arts to rule as they desired      àmasculine rime

                                    ii.            Feminine Rime

A rime of two or more syllables, with stress on a syllable other than the last.

e.g.               TUR-tle, FER-ale

                     in-tel-LECT-u-al, hen-PECKED

And learning backward in a pensive dream,

         And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers,    àfeminine rime

Plucked in shy fields and distant wyehwood bowers,  à feminine rime

         And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream

            In rime, spellings look alike but pronunciations differ Venus and menus. Rime in American poetry suffered significant fall from favor in the early1960s. recently, however, young poets have begun skillfully using rime again in their work.

CONCLUSION

In poetry, we will find poetic devices. Poetic devices are the techniques employed by poets, such as repeating sounds within a line or stanza, imitating sounds, repeating words and phrases, and utilizing comparisons, to create powerful images.

The poetic devices may be formed sound devices and figurative speech or language. We can think that make poem is not easy, we need kind of alternatif supporting part to make it good. They are contains rime, meter, alliteration, assonance, euphony, cacophony, repetition, or onomatopoeia (each striking instance of the relevant) detailed analysis, it often helps to chose a short poem.

The References

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Ø  Literature of writing by Martin Steinmann and Girald Willen, Second Edition 2004, Wardsworth Publishing Company, California

By: Lukman Hakim