Sound in Poetry
Poems usually begin with words or phrase which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem. Every poem has a texture of sound, which is at least as important as the meaning behind the poem. Rhythm, being the regular recurrence of sound, is at the heart of all natural phenomena: the beating of a heart, the lapping of waves against the shore, the croaking of frogs on a summer's night, the whisper of wheat swaying in the wind. Rhythm and sound and arrangement -the formal properties of words-allow the poet to get beyond, or beneath the surface of a poem. Both Gwendolyn Brooks' "Sadie and Maud" (799) and Anne Bradstreet's "To My Dear and Loving Husband" (784) emphasize poetic sound to express their themes. Used to enhance sound in a poem, alliteration is the repetition of sound in consecutive or neighboring words, usually at the beginning of words. Both Brooks and Bradstreet make use of alliteration in their poems. "Sadie stayed at home. / Sadie scraped life..." (2-3) the repetition of s is evident in these two lines, reflecting the sassiness and independence that Sadie possessed. "Then while we
Both Brooks and Bradstreet use caesuras to complete individual thought and to add to the beat of the poem. "When Sadie said her last so long/ Her girls struck out from home. An obvious rhyme scheme like the one in Bradstreet's poem is aabb, ccdd can communicate meaning by forcing attention on a relationship between two people that are not normally linked. "Her girls struck out from home/ Her fine-tooth comb" (14, 16). Bradstreet's poem contains beginning rhyme, Brooks' poem, on the other hand, contains only end rhyme. It contributes to the overall effect of the poem because all of the words about one, we, thee, are stressed or emphasized; thus reinforcing the theme of the poem. Meter, the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that govern a poem's lines, largely creates poetic rhythm. The remembrance of carefree childhood ironically contrasts with the adulthood that both Sadie and Maud now face as they grow up: Sadie stays home and has two children out of wedlock; Maud goes to college and ends up "a thin brown mouse". The conventional way to describe a poem's rhyme scheme is to chart rhyming words that appear at the ends of lines. Assonance can be used to unify a poem as in Bradstreet's poem in which it emphasizes the thematic connection among words and unifies the poem's ideas of the husband and wife becoming one. The poem's theme speaks of the husband and wife becoming one, the poem's rhyme scheme is of two consecutive lines belonging together and having one sound. In addition to alliteration and assonance, poets create sound patterns with rhyme. The meter of Bradstreet's poem is iambic pentameter and it is evident throughout the poem.
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Acceptance Essays
