Commercial Poetry: poetry

Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Saturday, December 21, 2024

The Outerview Series: Part XII - The Meaning of Meaning

      "Every songwriter knows you can sell form without substance.
       Every prose writer knows you can sell substance without form.
       You can't sell neither."

      "Poetry isn't about what you say. It's about how you say it." - Gary Gamble (rec.arts.poems)

A reporter can produce quality prose in minutes before going on air to present the facts to a waiting population. Prose is timely.

The poetic elements that we've discussed in this series usually take much longer to fashion refined verse. Each word must fit with all of the others, like sculpted stones in an ancient edifice. They may need to stand for ages.

What role does substance have in poetry?

Prose tends to be about information: answers and facts. It may be how many will find your verse (i.e. via web searches). Poetry tends to be about questions and comparisons (e.g. metaphors, similes, contrasts).

Metaphors and Similes

      A simile is a direct comparison, typically signalled by the word "as" or "like".

      "Like a hurricane" suggests the person or thing being described is tempestuous.

     A metaphor is not just associating two similar things; it blurs any distinction between them. The first requirement is that it not be true.

     "You are a rock star."

     If you're saying this to Rod Stewart it's a literal. If to someone who isn't in the music business it's a metaphor. The tenor is the thing described: "You" in this case. The vehicle is the description--the thing to which the tenor is being compared: "rock star" in this example. Your metaphor should be somewhat fresh. "Rock star" might once have brought up thoughts of hard heavenly bodies but today it is little more than cliché.

     Consider this expression about a condition, trepidation, and alternatives: escape or combat.

"In terror, flight or fight."

     The different sounds help define the condition, "terror", independent of both actions, "fight" or "flight". Add some alliteration and the distinction between fear and fight/flight blurs:

"In fear, there's fight or flight."

      Add rhyme and we mash together all three words...

"In fright, there's fight or flight."

       ...which may focus our attention on fright and flight because they have a consonant between the alliteration of "f" and the rhyme of "-ight".

Parenthetically, this is but one example of how poetry--even the crudest commercial or political jingles--may have been humankind's original form of propaganda.

Genres and Subjects

       Consider your own posting habits. How often--or how rarely--do you pass along a poem on social media?

       "Maybe once or twice. Funny ones, probably."

       Like prose, poetry can be written on any topic and in any genre. No, poetry doesn't have to be emotional, profound, or anything else. In fact, the most popular genre is humor. Personalities and politics are also popular. The seven most memorable poems of this century were about a crazy 15th Century priest, beans, a warrior who died over 200 years ago, WWII nostalgia, sunflowers, non-necessities, and space junk. Not a single love poem came close and, of course, cryptocrap was never a consideration.

      "Why not love poems? Are the best poets today not romantic?"

       Good question. Let me turn it around, though. How many love poems written in the last sixty years can you recite?

       "Uh...well...none. Lots of songs, though!"

        Exactly. In this genre in particular, spoken verse cannot compete for attention with song lyrics. It's certainly not an issue of quality...

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung." - Voltaire

      ...with music getting worse every day. It's just a matter of numbers. No matter how good your love poem is it will be drowned out by Top 40 hits on the radio. It follows that if you want anyone to hear your love poems you will need to set them to music. Or embed them.

       "Embed them?"

       Yes. Insert them into something else, such as a television series or a movie.

       "How would that work?"

        In the case of "The Paradox of Love", you'd write an entire movie script to serve as prologue to a final farewell poem.

        Now, instead of seeking attention, you will be presenting something that a multi-million dollar film could be riding on.

        "No pressure!"

        Exactly.

        "Okay, so if not lovey dovey stuff, what do we write about?"

         Your listeners. Their interests, not yours. Their emotions, desires, curiosities, environments, and strengths.

        "But I don't know their interests."

        Look at social media. People will spend all day and night telling you what fascinates them. Write about those things. And humor. Nothing is more effective than making people smile or laugh.

        "Okay, but specifically, what works best among the serious stuff?"

         SOABs. Sympathetic Or Ambiguous Biographies. Glimpses into the lives of recognized figures. Actors, politicians, newsmakers, reporters, anyone people will recognize.

         "Why not unsympathetic views?"

          That can work as entertainment--humor--but less antagonistic views can survive both the author and the subject [if only as elegies].

         "Can you give examples?"

          The three greatest poems of this century have been accounts of historical figures: "Studying Savonarola", "Beans" (about Salvador Allende), and "Tecumseh". If someone were to film a documentary or feature film on any of those they would find that poem online and ask the author for permission to use it in their production.

          Because fewer people are interested in history than current events, our biographies will focus on our contemporaries.

          Cliché is boring. It won't enter our memory because it can't be distinguished from what is already there. Cryptocrap is an extreme reaction to triteness that ends up being every bit as dull. It reads like rot-13 gibberish:

Zvffvat lbh ntnva,
V rzoenpr funyybj tenirf.
Cnyr snprf, qbhtuyvxr oernfgf
uryc zr sbetrg.

          ...and has less than zero performance value. That is, it actually drives audiences away.

The truly great poems, lines, and phrases stop us in our tracks not because they are different/original but because they are better than everything else we've heard recently. "Hookers" by Marco Morales will reside in the memory of anyone who encounters it:

Missing you again,
I embrace shallow graves.
Pale faces, doughlike breasts
help me forget.

     N.B.: The second line is startling not because you don't know what it means; it is startling because you do. It is like an explosion of understanding.

     The frequency and support for these astounding lines is a style issue. Morales used the "killer and filler" approach with the other lines feeding into "I embrace shallow graves".

     In "Studying Savonarola" Margaret Griffiths adopts the standard approach, building to a climax with the cretic "unconsumed".

Say you die, scorched into ashes, say

you pass from here to there, with your marigold
eyes, the garden darker for lack of one golden flower,
would bees mourn, would crickets keen, drawing long

blue chords on their thighs like cellists?
Say you disperse like petals on the wind,
the bright stem of you still a living stroke

in memory, still green, still spring, still the tint
and the tang of you in my throat, unconsumed.

      DPK attacks relentlessly, each line dripping with ambiguity to excite both halves of her polarized audience, pausing only to consider each euphemism carefully:

    September came like winter's
    ailing child but
    left us
    viewing Valparaiso's pride. Your face was
    always saddest when you smiled. You smiled as every
    doctored moment lied. You lie with
    orphans' parents, long
    reviled.

       To be successful, you need to master the techniques and produce stunning lines. Quality over quantity. You need to be optimistic, starting with the state of the art. Yes, poetry is dead and you'll need several miracles to resuscitate it but that just means the competition, as numerous as it is, isn't particularly strong.

       There is a famous joke about Chicago Bears Running Backs Walter Payton and Matt Suhey camping in the Arctic. A breathless Walter Payton comes into their tent and begins changing from mukluks to sneakers.

     "What are you doing?" wonders Suhey.

     "There's a polar bear coming!"

      Suhey laughs and points out: "You can't outrun a polar bear!"

      "I don't need to outrun the bear," Payton retorts. "I just need to outrun you!"

      Your listeners want to hear "good stories well told" in 21st century language. You don't need to write better than Shakespeare or Eliot. You might not need to write better than DPK or Maz, who haven't been seen for more than a decade [and weren't well known then].

      You just need to outwrite everyone else producing today, virtually none of whom are household names. To recap, these are the 10 commandments for poetry promotion:

1. No diaries. Write about everyone and everything except yourself.
2. Speak. Poetry is a mode of speech, not writing.
3. Forget copyright infringement. Encourage others to perform your work.
4. Form! No one has ever been interested in memorizing prose with linebreaks.
5. Network. Make contact with poets, actors, and producers.
6. Humor. Make poems out of jokes.
7. Concision. Less is more.
8. Repeat sounds: rhyme, assonance, consonance, alliteration, anaphora, etc.
9. Sonics: Use harsh sounds to create tension, soft sounds to relax.
10. Be humble and helpful. And optimistic.

The Outerview Series

Friday, December 13, 2024

The Outerview Series: Part XI - Attracting and Impressing

If you spend time on Q&A sites (e.g. Quora) the most common poetry-related query is "Where can I post my poetry online?"

No one ever asks: "Where can read or hear [contemporary] poetry online?"

The second most popular question from neophytes is: "How can I protect my masterpieces against plagiarism?"

LOL! (By not producing anything worth stealing.)

Is money the opposite of poetry?

      When heiress Ruth Lily died in 2002 she left approximately $100,000,000 to the Modern Poetry Association. It wasn't until 2018 that all the lawsuits were settled, by which time it had grown to $257,000,000 or what is now The Poetry Foundation, publishers of Poetry magazine. It has partnered with the National Endowment for the Arts to produce the "Poetry Out Loud!" initiative. For its part, Poetry magazine was established in Chicago in 1912 by Harriet Moore. In June of 1915 she published T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" [after Ezra Pound scanned it for her to convince her that it wasn't merely "the muttering of an old man"].

      "That's the one with all the different line lengths and extra syllables before them, right?"

       Yes. Heterometrical, with a lot of anacrusis--extra syllables before the meter.

       After that brilliant start, how has small-p poetry [other than song lyrics] fared? With all of the money, effort, and other publications, how many poems have entered our public consciousness in, say, the last half century?

       "I can't think of any--"

       Zero. A perfect record, unblemished by success. With all of that money, all of the learning, critical and promotional resources--online and in print--and all of those venues you would think this would be a golden age of poetry. You'd think we'd know at least as many poets as novelists. You'd think we'd quote contemporary verse at least as much as Shakespearean.

        Nope. Not a single iconic poem since that limerick about a man from Nantucket in 1961. So how can we revive a dead art form? How do we resurrect verse?

        While it may take generations, the course of action is remarkably simple: Do the opposite of what got us into this situation. Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.

Post Production

Having posted your performance the real work begins: Getting people to hear it at a time when poetry is dead. 99.9% of the verse you and I will hear in our lives will be song lyrics. We're talking about spoken poetry--a virtually impossible sale. It follows that this will require unusual if not unprecedented measures over a long period of time.

No one introduces their novel, news or short story as "prose" so don't refer to your presentation as "poetry". Just start talking. No introduction. No explanation. Tell your story and get off the stage. Provide the text and author's credits below the video. Give your post, if not your poem, an inviting or provocative title and hashtags of intriguing subjects. For example, this meme (i.e. text only) poem, "Paradise Has No Colonies", has tags corresponding to each line's theme, aspects of a prostitute's life: experience, redemption, incest, artifice, subterfuge, education, identity, childbirth, and pedophilia.

Revival

      If poetry is to be resurrected it must be as a participatory sport. Two hundred years ago people read verse in every available periodical not as a life lesson but as fodder for home entertainment [before movies, radio, television, the Internet, etc.]. The object, then, is to get people to perform your pieces.

      This leads us to Pearl's 14th Paradox, which the uninitiated will regard as heresy:

      "Do you mean actual plagiarism? Isn't that theft?"

       Consider this famous quote:

"Good artists borrow. Great artists steal."

Some attribute it to Pablo Picasso, but most can benefit from the wisdom without getting bogged down in authorship.

As a poet you need people to do covers--performances--of your verse. 99% will credit you for writing it but what is important is that they treat the words as their own while uttering them.

You need the actor to pause for thought before each phrase as a speaker does normally. In that sense, yes, you do need them to "steal" your words. (As with cover songs, authorship won't be an issue afterwards. Anyone who can see the posting date will know who created the poem.)

This "theft" is and always has been essential to poetry's proliferation.

In order to appeal to people's competitive natures, encourage visitors to record their own performances of your poem and post the URLs to their version below yours. Create a contest out of each of your works. Start by challenging family, friends, then strangers to outdo each other.

Next: The Meaning of Meaning

The Outerview Series

Thursday, December 5, 2024

The Outerview Series: Part X - Production

      We've written and edited our best verse and, poetry being a mode of speech, not writing, we now want to find listeners.

      "Why not readers?"

       Poetry doesn't attract a lot of those. Given the state of the art, there isn't nearly enough poetry to fill even one page of text in a periodical, let alone dozens in the average journal. What readership there might be amounts to contributors hoping to divine the editor's tastes and interests.

     "But people did used to read poetry, right?"

      Folks used to read poetry for two reasons: To find something to perform for their friends and family or to analyze why people enjoyed hearing that particular verse. At the very least, when people read poetry they were able to do so imagining how it would sound--something they could well envision because they listened to so much verse during their lives.

     "So if we want people to read our poetry we need to recite it to them?"

      Perform it for them, yes. But more directly, we want them to hear and appreciate our speech. Or rhymes, if you wish.

Enactments and Narrations.

      An enactment involves one or more presenters performing a poem on camera, with or without action. Your laptop camera or your telephone might suffice. If you have the cash, consider getting a tripod (photo at top, often under $20, usually with a remote start button) and, for sound better than a telephone call, a microphone ($6 and up). A popular choice is the Hollyland M2 (a little over $100, about the size and shape of a quarter).

      The performers need to look and sound as if they are making it up as they go along. Try to avoid looking up and to the right; this makes it seem like the speaker is trying to recall lines.

      Enunciate clearly. Textual subtitles are a good idea if hoping to attract non-anglophone audiences.

      It is a good idea to record each stanza or strophe separately, perhaps from different angles. This is particularly effective when there is a change in perspective or tone, as at a sonnet's volta.

      Insofar as lighting is concerned, position the light facing the actor(s) from two different angles [in order to avoid shadows]. A room's ceiling light can be augmented by a lamp on the floor.

      If you are too shy to appear on camera record your voice and do a slide show with still photographs in the foreground. Networking with a photographer would be a good plan. For this purpose a wired microphone will do, often providing better audio than a similarly priced wireless model.

      Speak with natural inflection. Don't give up until you are satisfied with what you have recorded. Above all: Never introduce or, worse, explain your poem. Ever. Anywhere. The only exceptions are "terms and times": a word or phrase that is either archaic (e.g. annotations of Shakespearean verse) or jargon (e.g. a mention of "Dragon" in a piece about chess).

      When you post it online you might include the text below your video.

Music https://pixabay.com/music/search/instrumental/

      Check out some of the royal free instrumental download sites. These tunes can be snipped for use before, after, or in the background at low volume during your poetry performance. Occasionally, we'll see instrumental slide shows with verse text. No recitation.

This is usually because the poet has a unique, overriding need for anonymity.

Now that you have your final version posted, how do you gather viewers?

Next: Attracting and Impressing

The Outerview Series

Saturday, September 7, 2024

The Outerview Series: Part VII - Production

      At this point we know that poetry is memorably speech, how to scan verse, rhyme, and use sounds to stitch words together. So what do we do now?

     "Write poems and get them published?"

     To what end?

     "What do you mean?"

     How many contemporary poems do you read each day?

     "Well, none, but..."

     Exactly. No one is going to read your poem, even if it is printed in a magazine.

     "Okay, post it on my blog then."

     And how much time do you spend reading verse on blogs? Or social media?

     "Probably none..."

     Precisely. No one reads poetry. Except, perhaps, others who want to be published there and trying to get a feel for the editor's preferences.

     Thus, the question becomes: "Under what circumstances would anyone want to read or hear our poetry?"

     "If it's set to music, maybe?"

     Yes, but let's just talk about spoken verse here. When might people want to read or hear poetry, as opposed to song lyrics?

     "Never?"

      Pretty much, yes. Never.

     "So what do we do?"

      We create an audience.

      "And how do we do that?"

      We ask ourselves: What do people find interesting?

      "Movies? Television?"

       Right. So our task is to get our poems into movies and/or television.

       Consider the three best poems of this century. All were made into slide shows. They attracted 1444 hits over a combined (14+14+15) 43 years. That is 33.58 hits per year. All were historical perspectives, the idea being that anyone making a documentary or feature film would web search the subject, find the poem, and consider including it.

       Never happened. A more targeted approach is in order. Find out what your favorite director's upcoming project is, write a poem about that, make a video, post it onto social media, then join an online discussion group for that director or genre and, after establishing yourself, casually mention your piece there.

       If that is not your style then write for an upcoming event. You have four months from now (2024-08-25) until Kamala Harris is sworn in as POTUS. Use that time to write, perform, record, and post an inaugural poem. Get going on it!

Other Venues and Embedded Poetry

      In addition to songs there are open mics and slams. These attract participants and their entourages more than listeners, per se.

       Shakespeare didn't publish his sonnets. What poetry he did publicize was his dramatic verse. Plays. He made enough to sustain two theatres--not just the troupe of actors but the actual buildings. It is unclear that the Bard could do that today but it is certain that no one else has managed to do this in the 21st Century.

       A different approach is to write a novel or movie script that includes (i.e. "embeds") poetry. For example, "The Paradox of Love" is a novel/movie about two open mic poets who fall in love. One has to depart [because of an undisclosed illness] so the poem she wrote as her wedding vows now serve as her farewell.

       Consider this: There is only one time every four years when the anglophone world listens to a poem: the U.S. presidential inauguration ceremony. At that, only after a Democratic victory.

       So here's a practical suggestion for American versers: Write an inaugural poem and have it performed (i.e. by yourself or someone else) on a video posted to YouTube. Add "2025 Inaugural Poem" after the title (e.g. "Locked Towards the Future" - A 2025 Inaugural Poem) so scouts can find it. Not an American? Pair up with one.

       You may need to network, joining up with a performer and, perhaps, a songwriter. In any event, writing and producing a performance (even on your telephone) will be only half the battle. You will need to spent at least as much time, energy, resources, and imagination finding an audience.

       Good luck!

The Outerview Series

Thursday, August 15, 2024

The Outerview Series: Part VI - Super Sonics

     So far, we've learned that poetry is memorably speech. It uses a lot of memory aids ("mnemonic techniques"), including cadence and meter, both of which are best identified if we scan the whole poem, line by line from right to left. Two elements are key: concision and repetitions of sounds, starting with rhymes.

     Every language has a set number of sounds, called "phonemes". Even today, some African languages have over 100 distinct sounds. As humankind emigrated to other areas many of these were lost. Mandarin has 56. English, 44. Algonquin, 29. By the time people inhabited Hawaii they were down to 13. There is a tribe along the Amazon with as few as 7; their babies learn to communicate through humming before they can speak!

     Many of these phonemes were originally onomatopoeic, like "moo", or "hiss". Thus, regardless of what language you speak, you might be imitating the sounds of animals, some of which may have gone extinct thousands of years ago.

     Rhymes are a subset of sounds. In going to the superset we transition from the easiest aspect of poetry to the most complex.

     "I just read ahead. Do we have to know all of these different type of sounds?"

     No, but we need to know of them and the importance of their length and strength. Sonics are what separate an amateur's work from an experts. It is what attracts praise from sophisticated editors and contest judges. In close decisions, it wins slams. We will go with a "quick and dirty" approach, focusing on what someone needs to know, and footnote two excellent articles by Rachel Lindley at bottom.

     For now, we'll begin with, arguably, the five most pleasant sounding words ever written:

Ozone on the midnight wind

...and examine what makes these lyrics so unforgettable.

Length

     The time it takes to make a sound can set a pace [with other sounds of that duration] or make a phoneme stand out [from sounds of different lengths]. For vowels, the "i" and "e" in "bit" and "bet" are called "short" for a reason. A long "oh", as in "ozone", is medium length. A long "i" (e.g. "lie") sounds like "ah-ee" or "uh-ee", a combination of sounds tantamount to a dipthong (e.g. "oi" as in "oink" or "ou" as in "out"). Similarly, a long "a", as in "cake", sounds like a short "e" followed by a long one: "eh-ee".

     Among consonants, ones that we can spit out (e.g hard "g" as in "get, "b", "k", and "p") are very quick. The "s" sound in "yes" or the "zh" sound in "pleasure" or "joie de vivre" take longer. The "sh" (e.g. "shop") and "ch" ("chop") sounds are longer still. We make "m" and "n" sounds largely through our noses and it takes a while to distinguish them.

     Thus, "Ozone on" ("Oh-zohn awn") is a very slow start to our example line, as is "night" ("na-eet" or "nuh-eet"), but the "i" in "mid" and "wind" is quick. The line drives along slowly, as if in a construction zone, pumps its breaks with "mid", and then comes to a slow stop with "wind". The word "the" ("thuh") is medium in duration, transitioning from the slothlike first half of the line to the cautious arrest.

A           | E       | I         | O       | U
ah aw ai | eh ee | ih uh-ee | aw oh | uh oo oo yu
cat paw ate | pet see | sit eye   | pot low | cut put gnu cue

Y             | Shwa <- Like a shortened "u" from "put"
ye uh-ee ee | ½ oo <-- between the b and l in "able".
yet sky   any | cook <- Sometime written with an inverted "e".

B   | C    s | D   | F   | G j   | H   | J   zh | K   | L
but | cow ice | die | foe | go age | hot | jut raj | kit | lit

M   | N   | P   | Q   | R   | S   zh      | T   | V   | W   | X | Z
man | now | pin | que | raw | see leisure | tea | vet | wet | ks | zen

Ch | Sh | Ph   | th | th
chi | she | phil | the | thin

      As an exercise, try grouping the above sounds as "short", "medium", and "long" in duration. Then create a second list, categorizing them as "soft", "medium", or "harsh":

Strength

      The softness/weakness or harshness/strength of consonants can echo and enhance an atmosphere of relaxation or tension, respectively.

      Poe's famous trochaic heptameter opening in "The Raven" uses a lot of strong consonants before vowel sounds to create tension/suspense:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

      Linking the sounds of "weak" and "weary", internal rhyming with "dreary", highlights our sense of ominous vulnerability.

      In our example line, most of the sounds are soft ("m", "n") or medium ("z"):

Ozone on the midnight wind

The only hard sounds are "d" and "t" and those come after vowels, not right before them. The "t" at the beginning of, say, "tight" is harder than the one at the end, or the one at the end of "night". Similarly, the consonants at the beginning of "bib", "dud", "gig", "kick", and "pop" are sounded more strongly than the same consonants at the ends of those words.

Connection

Note that in the words "midnight wind" the "d" and "n" sounds switch, both coming after a short "i". As with all sonic repetitions, this links the two words in our subconscious minds. This linkage is made firmer by the fact that the two words, "midnight" and "wind", have more than one sound in common. This is particularly strong if the sounds occur in stressed syllables. Meanwhile, the "n" phonemes in "Ozone on" link those two words, creating the sense of being high--perhaps literally and figuratively. This creates a mood of being euphoric in a dark breeze.

In this way our words and our sounds can have different meanings, or the same meanings with different emphasis.

Which of these two fabrics did Erin Hopson choose in her ekphrastic masterpiece, “How Aimée remembers Jaguar"? Satin or linen?

where wel|come sat|in soothes | the burn.

where wel|come lin|en soothes | the burn.

     Both lines work as iambic tetrameter so rhythm/meter aren’t an issue.

     If Erin wanted to alliterate with “satin soothes” she’d have gone with the first line.

     Instead, she wanted to link the “l” of “linen” with the “l” in “welcome”. This makes the line about hospitality more than healing. More about the care than the cure. A poet has to do this with every phoneme in every word. Think of a game of Jenga. One wrong word and the whole poem collapses.

To recap, in general:

- A group of long sounds slows the pace, creating a sense of ease.
- A group of short sounds quickens the pace, creating tension.
- A group of soft sounds eases tension.
- A group of harsh sounds creates tension.
- Hard consonants sound more so before vowels than at the end of words.
- Repeating sounds links the words that contain them.
- Repetitions involving stressed syllables make stronger links.
- Multiple repetitions (e.g. "wild" & "life") make stronger links.

Next: Productions

============== Footnotes ==============

Heavy versus Light Syllables

AI: A heavy syllable is a syllable that contains a long vowel sound or ends in a consonant. Heavy syllables are considered "stronger" or "weightier" than light syllables, which contain short vowel sounds and no final consonant. In prosodic analysis, the distinction between heavy and light syllables is important for determining the rhythmic structure and stress patterns of words and phrases.

From the Poetry Free-For-All "Blurbs of Wisdom":

Rachel Lindley - Aural Imagery and Sonics

Consonants come in two general "flavours" - voiced and unvoiced. Voiced consonants occur when you let your vocal chords vibrate as you form them. Unvoiced consonants occur when you don't. As a general rule of thumb, unvoiced consonants have a harsher sound than voiced consonants, which generally take longer to form because of the vocal chord involvement and are also softened by the vocal chord vibration.

The Speedy Ones

1. Unvoiced Plosives - that's a fancy way of saying that these are sounds you make when trapping air behind your teeth or lips and then releasing it explosively without letting your vocal chords vibrate. Unvoiced plosives include T and P. They're fast, they're harsher, and they're made in a "spitting" fashion. Using these sounds can help you create a sense of staccato speed. You could use them to emphasize a sense of shock or surprise, irritation, physical lightness, a sense of lightheartedness, and so on.

2. Voiced Plosives - the talkative version of the above. Voiced plosives include D and B. These sounds can create more sense of forcefulness than the above, but without the same harshness of sound and as such without the same effect in communicating, say, irritation. These are "bouncy" sounds and "demanding" sounds. Just look at what those two words start with. B's are great for building humour in imagery, and D's are great for building forceful urgency.

3. Unvoiced Glottals - Glottals in general are sometimes lumped in with plosives, because they are also made by trapping air and then explosively releasing it. However, in this case this is done in the back of the throat. The lone unvoiced glottal is K. Because of its clicking effect, it's great in enforcing quickness and urgency, and because of its unvoiced nature it's great at enforcing a sense of anger or danger, or a sense of snatching something quickly.

4. Voiced Glottals - The lone voiced glottal is a hard G. It can be used to create a "gurgling" effect ("gurgle" being a perfect example). Say you wanted to get across a sense of someone choking on their words or feeling indignation - a lot of G sounds can help build that effect. It has some of the demanding nature of a D and can also be used to enforce humour. It can increase speed, although not to the same extent as an unvoiced glottal can.

The Slowpokes

5. Unvoiced Fricatives - These are formed when you release air continuously through a small opening between the teeth, lips, or throat without letting your vocal chords get into the game. These include SH (as in "sheep"), S (as in "sleep"), H, TH (as in "thick") and F (as in "fur"). Because of their hissing nature, lots of fricatives are used to good effect in creating a sense of threat, intensity, and sensuality. H can also have an effect found in voiced fricatives: it can communicate a sense of heaviness of atmosphere or physicality by the way the air has to be forced out the throat in order to create any sound at all. "Heave!"

6. Voiced Fricatives - the effect of the hissing sound is changed dramatically when you let your vocal chords vibrate. They include Z ("zoom"), ZH ("azure"), TH ("soothe"), and V ("vapid"). These are more sensual, buzzing sounds, long and drawn out. They can help create an erotic atmosphere, a relaxed one, a sense of peace, a sense of heaviness. Because Z and ZH are a higher-pitched vibration and are therefore more strident, they can also be used to enforce a constant annoyance, like a fly buzzing.

7. Nasals - nasals are formed by almost completely closing off the lips, teeth, or throat and letting things hummmmmmmm. These include M, N, and NG. These sounds are some of the most drawn out. I mean, you can hum on one breath for a long, long time. These sounds can have a huge range of effect. M tends to get the best job, and can be used to create a sense of relaxation, sensuality, and largess. N is middle of the road. It can be used to create similar effect, but it also has a touch of a higher-pitched nose vibration in it, which can create a more strident effect. The one with the ugliest job is NG. Because it is a seriously high-pitched nasal vibration, it can be used to create an atmosphere of irritation and annoyance and emphasize strong vibrational environmental effects. (for example, "clang").

8. Approximants - these are sounds that don't know whether they're vowels or consonants. They are the missing link between the closed sounds of consonants and the open sounds of vowels. There are two kinds of approximants: liquids / resonants, which include R and L, and semi-vowels, which include W and Y (although some would say that Y and W could also be diphthongs, they're so close to the edge). These sounds can seriously smooth out rhythm and tone, having a "liquid" effect on sound and imagery. R, being formed so close to the vocal folds, has more vibration and therefore can create a sense of "growling", good in communicating anger, desire, and such.

9. Affricatives - these are the diphthongs of consonants, made with a rapid-fire switch from one consonant sound to another. These include CH (chair) and J (judge). Since CH is a combination of T and SH, it has the explosive effect of an unvoiced plosive in combination with the hissing effect of an unvoiced fricative. It's the brother of SH, only more demanding. "Chomp!" J, being a combination of D and ZH, has a softer side, is more sensual, but has more oomph and emphasis than a standard voiced fricative. "Jump!" It's meatier than the slithering fricative types, juicier. Affricatives don't creep up on you with their charm, they beat you over the head with it.

Rachel Lindley - Rhythm and Sound in Poetry

Now let's add consonant and vowel phonemes to the mix. When you read a poem aloud, keeping in mind the rhythm as you do so, you may begin to get a sense, not only of the relative speed and pitch of the voice, but the overall "feeling" or "atmosphere" that may be generated by the sounds. (Remember: always read aloud.) For instance, if you have a lot of short, quick phonemes, such as a lot of unvoiced plosive consonants or glottal consonants like "t", "k", "p", or "g" and a lot of short vowel sounds like "eh", "ih" or "ah", a line moves quickly and sharply. Enough sharp, unvoiced consonants like "p", "t" or "k", and when read aloud you will feel as if you almost spit the words. Add a lot of unvoiced sibilant fricatives or affricatives like "s", "sh" or "ch", and a line may sound hissed, which can be either threatening or alluring, depending on the length of the vowels. Short vowels like "ah", "ih", and "eh" can increase pitch and speed; long, open vowels (especially dipthongs) like "aw", "oh", "ow" and "oo" deepen and slow the pitch and speed. Voiced fricatives like "th" in "them", "v", "z" or "zh" sounds in combination with nasals or semi-vowels like "w", "m", "n", or "y" will generally smooth (a perfect example, by the way) and slow a line.

The Outerview Series

Sunday, August 11, 2024

The Outerview Series: Part V - Rhyming is Fun

At this point we understand what poetry is: memorable speech. We know where it is: primarily, in song lyrics. We know that lines find their rhythm, such that we can discern the cadence and meter by scanning whole poems from right to left. Now we come to the fun part.

A perfect rhyme is a repetition of a vowel sound and an ensuing consonant sound, if there is one, in a particular position. Most often that position is at the end ("terminal" rhyme) of the line but it can be at the beginning ("initial" rhyme) or middle ("medial" rhyme) of the line. For example, here is a closing iambic pentameter couplet:

We see | the rage, | but through | the lie | we learn
that we | don't age. | Not you | and I. | We burn.

"See" and "we" are initial rhymes. "Rage/age", "through/you", and "lie/I" are medial rhymes. "Learn" and "burn" are traditional end-rhymes.

Perfect rhyme works best with lighter, shorter works: nursery rhymes, teen-oriented hip pop and rap, and humorous pieces.

For serious works perfect rhyme is fine for a while but, like fish and visitors, becomes awkward after a while. Long works like Shakespeare's plays and John Milton's "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" are in blank verse: meter, yes; rhyme, no.

In order to lessen the effect of rhyme in serious verse poets will adopt one of three tactics: distance, form, or imperfect rhymes.

Distance

Increasing the number of syllables between the two rhyming words makes their similarity less salient. For example, in iambic pentameter the end rhymes will be ten syllables apart (e.g. "learn" and "burn" above). Instead of having the next line rhyme, as in rhyming couplets, we could have rhymes skip a line or more. For example, sonnets can have odd and even numbered lines rhyme. We call this a rhyme scheme, with letters starting with "A" assigned to each different rhyme: ABAB or even ABCABC where we wait three lines before the sound will be repeated.

In bacchic (i.e. de-DUM-DUM) monometer there are only two words between the rhymes, as we see with "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks:

We real cool.
We skip school.
We lurk late.
We strike straight.

Note that this involves both initial and terminal rhymes, and the initial one, "We", repeats the exact same word. This is called "identical" rhyming as we see in the first two lines here:

It takes trouble, and it takes courage to be free.
But you 'll find, it you are soft enough, love will hang around for free.
And the coldest bed I found does not hold one but it will hold three.
I hope you never have to know what that can mean. - "Cactus" by Ferron

Form

We can break the lines differently so that the non-identical rhymes don't stand out as much. For example, "We Real Cool" is actually written and performed like this:

We real cool. We
skip school. We
lurk late. We
strike straight.

This linebreaking is called "curgination". Its effect is greater when the rhymes are more distant, as we see with DPK's classic curgina, "Beans":

September came like winter's
ailing child but
left us
viewing Valparaiso's pride. Your face was
always saddest when you smiled. You smiled as every
doctored moment lied. You lie with
orphans' parents, long
reviled.

The hesitations before each tactful euphemism distract us from the rhyme. For many, only when it is decurginated does the ABABA rhyme scheme become evident:

September came like winter's ailing child
but left us viewing Valparaiso's pride.
Your face was always saddest when you smiled.
You smiled as every doctored moment lied.
You lie with orphans' parents, long reviled.

Another use of form to hide perfect rhymes is corata: presenting the poem in paragraph form:

The spring retreats, its promise spent on tulip kiss and poplar musk. The summer's greening rays relent when day meets dark at purpling dusk. Twin tumbleweeds roll past and part the dirt to sketch in chicken tracks, so soon obscured: convectional art mandalas till the winds relax.

Can you see where the lines end?

The sonnet exhibits a glaring exception to this distancing: A sudden tightening of the rhyme scheme from ABAB or even ABCABC into a couplet signals the end of the poem. Those last two lines sound like a "Ta Da!" finale:

Come autumn, combines comb the fields
to harvest gold canola oil
for toast before November yields
its cold. Like whitened coffee, soil
beneath integument snow extols
the blood and bone of remnant souls.

T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was a masterpiece in terms of distancing and softening perfect rhymes through the use of form. In this case, that involved heterometric iambic lines with a lot of anacrusis (i.e. extra syllables before the iambs kick in, marked here in curly brackets).

{Let} | us go | then, you | and I,
{When} | the ev'n|ing is | spread out | against | the sky

This is in addition to these long lines of iambic heptameter (in addition to trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter) creating distance between the rhymes:

My morn|ing coat, | my col|lar mount|ing firm|ly to | the chin,
My neck|tie rich | and mod|est, but | assert|ed by | a sim|ple pin

Imperfect Rhymes

The most sophisticated and effective way to de-emphasize rhymes is to avoid perfect ones. Find sounds that sound similar, not identical. Think of "m" versus "n", or "layer" versus "air". Or "bits" versus "bets". These go by many names: slant rhymes, half rhymes, off and consonantal rhymes ("pick" & "rock"), etc. The strongest and most common, especially in singing, is assonantal rhymes where only the vowels are repeated. "Cool" versus "boot".

We saw an example of this above with Ferron's "Cactus": free-free-three-mean. Here is another from the same song, with "owl" rhyming with "town":

It's been a year
since you left home for higher ground.
In the distance I hear a hoot owl
ask the only question I have found
to be worthy of the sound it makes
as it breaks the silence of your old town.
These letters are another way to love you.

Think of rhyming as a subset of our next topic:

Next: Sonics

The Outerview Series

Wednesday, July 3, 2024

The Outerview Series: Part IV - Scan Poems Backward

      So far, we've established that poetry is the speech we preserve verbatim and that it is currently found almost exclusively in song lyrics. To fit the music, poetry is in set lengths called "meters", alongside other lines that take about the same amount of time to bring forth. In a sense, all meter is quantitative.

      Today, we're going to see how these meters work to create rhythm, especially in spoken verse.

      "Why the sudden focus on spoken poetry?"

      Because if it works in speech it will do so even more mellifluously in song. Determining how we build cadence is called "scansion". Knowing that meter involves counting something--alliterations, stressed syllables, patterns, tempos--let's begin with a historical perspective: In 1066, the French counted syllables, perhaps because they didn't stress them as strongly as the English, who counted only accented syllables. The result of the invasion was a mashup or compromise, with subsequent English verse being "accentual-syllabic". Each line would have the same number of syllables with stressed ("DUM") ones interspersed with unstressed ("de") ones. These form patterns called "feet" because each stress corresponded to a dance step. These are the most common feet:

de-DUM = iamb <- Iambic pentameter:

Gray wolves | surround | the eg|ret. Fox|es slink | away

DUM-de = trochee -> Trochaic pentameter:

Time was | gravit|y as | shooting | stars des|cended.

de-de-DUM = anapest -> Anapestic hexameter:

Brock would say | no more val|orous war|rior exists. | Sure as ap|ple trees bud

de-DUM-de = amphibrach -> Amphibrachic tetrameter:

the pleas of | a peacemak|er can't be | imparted
while even | your traplines | have got to | be guarded.

de-de-DUM = dactyl -> Dactyllic pentameter:

Yours was the | song of that | egret, your | life like a | burning poem.

      This is one of the myriad reasons why we need to hear poetry. Our ear will learn to detect these cadences--typically after only seven syllables. All of this is, and so much more, lost on the page.

     "Wait, hold on. I heard a lot more accented syllables than you highlighted. Are you cheating here?"

      Good catch! Yes, I "omitted" a number of stresses here to concentrate on the base rhythm. Here I've added them back in for reference:

Gray wolves | surround | the eg|ret. Fox|es slink | away

Brock would say | no more val|orous war|rior exists. | Sure as ap|ple trees bud

the pleas of | a peacemak|er can't be | imparted
while even | your traplines | have got to | be guarded.

Yours was the | song of that | egret, your | life like a | burning poem.

This shows that we can add accents to give the cadence some variety, some flair. Toward the same end, we can delete all of the stresses in a foot. For example, the second last foot in these two lines are "pyrhhics" (i.e. "de-de"), having no beat, when reciting the verse without music:

The rain | in Spain | falls main|ly on | the plain.

But I | have prom|ises | to keep,

     Here is a tribach (de-de-de) followed by a molossus (DUM-DUM-DUM):

out on the | wine dark sea

     These deviations are called "substitutions". Do not confuse these with their evil twin, the dreaded "inversion", where the poet switches the order of the cadence. Note the switch from de-DUMs to DUM-de in the second line here:

Pale fac|es, dough|like breasts <- Spondee (DUM-DUM), iamb, iamb.
help me | forget.                <- trochee, iamb.

      Lines often "find" their rhythm as they go along, such that patterns at the end of the line are more reliable than those at the beginning. Thus, don't sweat the first foot. In fact, we'll often see unaccented syllables--second class citizens, essentially--dropped entirely from the beginning of line. For example, is this line trochaic, missing a syllable from the end ("[x]" marks the spot):

Tyger, | tyger, | burning | bright [x]

    ...or is it iambic, missing a syllable from the beginning :

[x] Tyg|er, tyg|er, burn|ing bright

         Trusting the ends of lines more than their murky beginnings, we already know the answer: iambic tetrameter. We have already discerned that, if scanning a line to detect its cadence or meter, we should start at its end and work backwards.

     There is another critical aspect in this particular poem. Were we to have seen Blake's entire piece there wouldn't have been a mystery in the first place:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame | thy fear|ful sym|metry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist | the sin|ews of | thy heart?
And when | thy heart | began | to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And wat|er'd heav|en with | their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he | who made | the Lamb | make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame | thy fear|ful sym|metry?

    We note that, while 18 lines are ambiguous, trochee or iambic, there are six lines of perfect iambic tetrameter and zero lines of complete trochee. Ergo, when someone hands you one line and asks you to scan it, the proper response is not iambic, trochaic, dactylic, amphibrachic, or anapestic; it's: "Let me see the whole poem!"

    This is line 1 from the first canto of Lord Byron's "Bride of Abydos" (1813):

Know ye the land where cypress and myrtle

    Can you tell me what meter this is in?

    "Where's the rest of it?"

     Perfect answer! When Edgar Allen Poe read this he said the poem could not be scanned, but if he had continued reading he'd have seen many verses of perfect anapestic tetrameter and no lines of anything else:

Where the light | wings of Zeph|yr, oppress'd | with perfume,
Where the cit|ron and ol|ive are fair|est of fruit,
Where the tints | of the earth, | and the hues | of the sky,
And the pur|ple of Oc|ean is deep|est in dye;
'Tis the clime | of the East; | 'tis the land | of the Sun —
Where the vir|gins are soft | as the ros|es they twine,
Can he smile | on such deeds | as his child|ren have done?
Are the hearts | which they bear, | and the tales | which they tell.

     He'd have been able to see that this line is simply missing two unstressed syllables in its initial foot:

[x] [x] Know | ye the land | [x] where cyp|ress and myrt|le
Where the rage | of the vul|ture, the love | of the turt|le,

     "Wait, what about the "-le" at the end of the lines, messing everything up?"

     These have a weird "schwa" sound. We see it most often in "-er" and "l" sound endings (e.g. "pencil"). Consider these semi-syllables: counted if needed, ignored if inconvenient. In the same poem we see the "-er" overlooked in "flowers" while the very same "er" is counted in "ever" twice, and "never" in a subsequent line:

Where the flowers | ever blos|som, the beams | ever shine;
And the voice| of the night|ingale nev|er is mute;

     "I see what you mean when you called unstressed syllables 'second class citizens'."

     They are like Rodney Dangerfield. They get no respect. In fact, the might even be replaced by commas. Check out the second of these two lines from Shakespeare:

The best | of men | have sung | your at|tributes,
Breasts, | lips, | eyes, | and gold|en hair!

      That's iambic pentameter with only 7 syllables! Imagine the shame: three perfectly good syllables, the basis of our language and civilization, replaced by lowly commas!

      There are fancy names for most of these irregularities. Syllables missing at the beginning of lines? Acephaly, meaning "headless". Missing syllables at the end of lines? Catalexis. Extra syllables--full ones, not just the semi-syllables we mentioned--at the end are hypercatalexis. Extra syllables at the beginning of lines? Anacrusis, as we see with T.S. Eliot's heterometrical "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":

Let | us go | then, you | and I,
        (iambic trimeter with anacrusis)
When | the ev'n|ing is | spread out | against | the sky
        (iambic pentameter with anacrusis)
Like | a pat|ient eth|erised | upon | a tab|le;
        (iambic pentameter with anacrusis)
Let | us go, |through cert|ain half-|desert|ed streets,

     While we often use the terms "line" and "meter" interchangeably, "meter" refers to the syllables that form feet (iambs, in this case). The syllables elsewhere (e.g. the first word in all four of the lines above) and the semi-syllable at the end [of "table"] are part of the line but not the meter.

     We now know the key to scansion: scan poems backwards. Not just one line in isolation but the whole poem. Practice this with your favorite poems and songs [bearing in mind that they could be accentual instead, in which case just count the stresses in each line].

     200 years ago every grade six graduate (which Poe was not) understood this. Today? Not so much.

Next: Scan Poems Backward

The Outerview Series

Sunday, June 30, 2024

The Outerview Series: Part III - What is Rhythm?

       In our first two outerviews we defined poetry as verbatim speech whose audience is all but limited to song lyrics. It makes sense to begin by learning about poetry that can most easily be converted to song.

      Over the last thousand years all successful English language poems have incorporated rhythm. This has usually involved meter, which facilitates the addition of music to create song.

     "And what is 'meter'?"

      Meter is the quantification of something in order to segment the poem.

     "And what are those things being quantified?"

      It could be a number of things. In classical Greek verse and song it is tempo--the time it takes to say or sing a line. In the latter case, the same number of bars and beats each line. When that drum is struck the word being spoken is highlighted. Stressed. Even if it wouldn't normally be.

      Let's have you read aloud the text onscreen:

      "You carry the weight of inherited sorrow from your first day till you die toward that hilltop where the road forever becomes one with the sky."

       That was a natural enunciation of these words. It's how you'd say them in a speech or a recital. Now let's listen to Bruce Cockburn sing these lyrics from "The Rose Above the Sky" (at top):

You carry the weight of inherited sorrow
From your first day till you die
Toward that hilltop where the road
Forever becomes one with the sky

        So, what have we learned so far?

       "With song, it's all about the beat."

       Close enough. That need to have every line take the same length of time is called "quantitative" meter.

       Now, going back to quantifying, here are three other things that can be counted: alliterations, accents, and feet. Check out these two lines from DPK's "Leaving Santiago":

We come from | a nation | of cowards | and corpses
both roll down | the river | en route to| the ocean.

       This is alliterative verse--something that goes back to before 1066--because there are three repetitions of an initial sound of a stressed syllable in each line: two on one side of midway, one on the other; three hard "c" sounds in the first line, three "r" iterations in the second.

       The same two lines could be considered accentual, with the same number of stressed syllables--four, in this case--in each line. N.B.: In accentual meter the unstressed syllables don't matter.

       Finally, these two lines illustrate the most recent evolution of meter: accentual-syllabic. This deals in feet: typically, a stressed syllable and one or two unstressed ones in a particular order. In this case, it is a pattern of four "de-DUM-de" soundings called "amphibrachic tetrameter":

We come from a country of cowards and corpses
both roll down the river en route to the ocean.

      "Is 'amphibrachic' anything like 'iambic'?"

      Yes, in a "right church, wrong pew" way. Iambic is a binary because it has two components: an unstressed syllable, then a stressed one (de-DUM). It sounds like marching. Amphibrachs are trinary because they have three: de-DUM-de. It sounds like hopping. Here is a chart of all the cadences and meter lengths, of which iambic is by far the most common:

============================ Meter Types ===========================

Beat   Name
   uu = Pyrrhic    (aka Dibrach)
   uS = Iamb        = Marching
   Su = Trochee     = Imperative (aka Choree)
   SS = Spondee
uuu = Tribrach
Suu = Dactyl      = Waltzing
uSu = Amphibrach = Hopping        Metres:
uuS = Anapest     = Galloping      Monometer = 1 foot
uSS = Bacchic                        Dimeter = 2 feet
SuS = Amphimacer (aka Cretic)       Trimeter = 3 feet
SSu = Antibacchic                 Tetrameter = 4 feet
SSS = Molossus                    Pentameter = 5 feet
uuuu = Proceleusmatic               Hexameter = 6 feet *
Suuu = First paeon                 Heptameter = 7 feet
uSuu = Second paeon                 Octameter = 8 feet
uuSu = Third paeon
uuuS = Fourth paeon    * Hexameter = "alexandrine" if iambic.
uuSS = Ionic a minore
SuuS = Choriamb
SSuu = Ionic a maiore              Stanzas:
SuuS = Antispast                   2 lines = couplet
SuSu = Ditrochee                   3 lines = tercet
uSuS = Diiamb                      4 lines = quatrain
uSSS = First epitrite              5 lines = cinquain
SuSS = Second epitrite             6 lines = sestet or sixain
SSuS = Third epitrite              7 lines = septet
SSSu = Fourth epitrite             8 lines = octet or octave
SSSS = Dispondee
uSSuS = Dochmios

"S" = Stressed (or, more accurately, "long" in the original Greek)
"u" = unstressed (or, more accurately, "short" in the original Greek)

======================================================================

      Some poems or songs can have more than one meter. In fact, 4 iambs followed by 3 iambs in so common that it is literally called "common meter":

Amaz|ing grace | how sweet | the sound
that saved | a wretch | like me.
Was lost, | but now, | I'm found;
was blind, | but now | I see.

      "So we want our lines the same length or lengths."

       And durations. Correct. And we have names for each kind: "isometric" if all of the lines the same length, "heterometric" if the lines come in different lengths.

      "Will this be on the test?"

Earl Gray

Saturday, December 21, 2024

Metaphors and Similes

Genres and Subjects

Friday, December 13, 2024

Is money the opposite of poetry?

Post Production

Revival

Next: The Meaning of Meaning

The Outerview Series

Thursday, December 5, 2024

Enactments and Narrations.

Next: Attracting and Impressing

The Outerview Series

Saturday, September 7, 2024

Other Venues and Embedded Poetry

The Outerview Series

Thursday, August 15, 2024

Length

Strength

Connection

Next: Productions

The Outerview Series

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Distance

Form

Imperfect Rhymes

Next: Sonics

The Outerview Series

Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Next: Scan Poems Backward

The Outerview Series

Sunday, June 30, 2024

Next: What is rhythm?

The Outerview Series