"can you hear that?": sound in poetry

Sound has the incredible ability to make us feel a variety of emotions: sad, happy, confused, afraid, and on and on. Sound in poetry writing works a similar magic—it makes the reader feel, aiding in the production of that big scary word all writers agonize over, IMAGERY. 

When one thinks of sound, one immediately goes to traditional auditory noises such as water, tweeting birds, or even the sound of our boots in snow. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the woosh of the waves or the crunch of the ice as much as the next poet, but there is more to sound than our ole faithful onomatopoeias. Even when not read out loud, poetry is a particularly aural form of writing, and there are many fantastic ways to incorporate it into your poetry. A few trusty companions are consonance, assonance, repetition, and lineation.

Consonance and assonance are great methods in generating sound in a poem. Consonance explores the recurrence of consonant sounds, while assonance deals with the echoes of vowels. For example, if the subject matter of a poem is about wind shifting between the trees, then the poet might use reoccurring /w/ sounds or long /o/ sounds to imitate the way the wind swathes and rolls between the branches. Or if a poem’s tone is one of contempt, then the poet might employ clipped /c/ sounds or guttural /g/ or /u/ sounds to influence their tone.

Repetition is another great way to create sound, notably influencing the emotion of a poem. The repetition can come in the form of repeating words or a phrase. Take Carl Sandburg’s poem “In Tall Grass:”

Let there be wings and yellow dust and the drone of dreams

of honey—who loses and remembers?—who keeps and 

forgets?

In a blue sheen of moon over the bones and under the hanging

honeycomb the bees come home and the bees sleep.

The reoccurrence of the words yellow, who, and bees colors the page with the sleepy observational tone on the undisturbed innerworkings of nature. It is important to note that too many instances of repetition can easily distort sound, so be mindful. This poem is short and subtle, and Sandburg only uses each word twice, providing his readers an easy balance of image and sound that might be present in a real nature setting. 

Sound and lineation are a little more experimental, but together they have a lot of impact. The way a line breaks, the way enjambment is used instead of punctuation, or even using line indentations has this incredible ability to shape and shift the look and sound of a poem. The poetic line offers the poet a soundboard of pace, pause, and word emphasis. Take a look at the first three lines of Dee LeRoy’s poem, “Insulation:” “The old roof is being ripped away / fiberglass stuffed among the rafters / debris tossed into the yard.” LeRoy uses enjambment, omitting commas for line breaks, and only employing the end-stop at the end of the three-lined stanza. As the reader, we naturally linger after each break, creating that expected pause after punctuation. The suspension after each line gives the poem a listing effect, producing the overall sound of the poem and its image of a house under construction. 

The rhythm of a poem is like the beat of a drum or a long bow stroke of a violin, reverberating and moving the words along in a harmonious progression—quite literally sound seeping from the page. Play around with these poetic notes—the sounds of vowels and consonants, a repeating word, an unusual break in a line. These elements can create new noise, feeling, and space, creatively demonstrating exclusive poetic voices.

Sienna Taggart is a Spring 2022 editorial intern.