Contents
Introduction
Meter
Sound
Works Cited
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Introduction to Sound and Meter
When most people think of poetry, the first things they think of are
sound and meter. For thousands of years, poetic form has been defined
by its cadence, its sing-song rhythms, and its sound effects. Contrary
to what many readers of contemporary poetry believe, free verse is not
mostly a random display of words and phrases; that couldn’t be any
further from the truth.
While it is true that free verse poetry does not subscribe to the set
meters and forms that defined earlier forms of verse, it must still deal
with these elements. If form in a poem relies almost entirely on two major
aspects: the visual and aural elements of a poem— then the poet who
seeks to shape a poem has little choice but to learn the elements of sound.
While on the surface it may seem that free verse has pulled the poet away
from the sound elements in a poem, in reality it has made the poet’s
task more complex. Since the poet is now free to irregularly change the
rhythms and sounds throughout a poem, he/she has many more choices to
make with every word put on the page. T. S. Eliot said in his essay"The
Music of Poetry" in 1942 that "no verse is free for the man
who wants to do a good job", and, although written 60 years ago,
it still holds true. The early 20th century changed forever the way we
look at poetic form.
When dealing with the aural aspects of a poem, two words always come
up: sound and meter.
These words are difficult to define and have many different aspects. Because
of these difficulties, perhaps it is useful to think of these terms in
the language of metaphor. If you think of the aural elements of a poem
in terms of musical notation, you could think of meter as the rhythm created
by the words (the horizontal movement of a piece of music, cutting up
time into bigger or smaller increments) and sound as the notes of the
piece of music (or the vertical movement, repeating sounds and syllables
to create a "melody.") Each of these two elements are complex
and require an in-depth definition. First, let’s start with meter.
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Handout written by Sean M. Conrey
HTML Markup by Erin Karper
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"No verse can be free, it must
be governed by some measure, but not by the old measure."
From "On Measure— Statement
for Cid Corman," by William Carlos Williams
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