Poetry week #003: How does that SOUND to you?

          Important tools in the toolkit of any poet are devices involving SOUND. There are many to choose from, but let’s focus on a few today. I’ll get some quick definitions out of the way, then demonstrate what I mean by them with a poem.

Alliteration–repeating of beginning sounds: “buckets of baseballs; killer choir; ten tiny tigers”

Assonance–repetition of vowel sounds: “cool blue shoes in a canoe”

Consonance–repeated consonant sounds after different vowel sounds: “flip flop; sleep slip”

Euphony–repeated soft sounds, like f, l, m, n, s, sh, v, z: “falling leaves”

Cacophony–repeated hard sounds, like b, d, k, p, t, g (as in “good,” not “George”): “black cat cancer”

          I’ll highlight an example of each of these in the following poem to show you what I mean:

SKYTRAIN SERENADE

I’ve learned to keep my faith in place, and sing of streets,

warm hands cupped around coffee, fresh memories

steaming to the surface, fleeing the past on straight

rails, staying steps ahead, riding the present train

of thought. Inside my mind, the blur of bedsheets

twisted, tightly gripped, is left far behind by slim

fingers that unfurled when sleep was given the slip,

fingers that now find themselves curled around comfort.

The blur that fills my dirty window—that’s life, I think—

bright pictures painted on a dirty canvas, a moving

painting, a moving painting that allows no past of regret,

of nostalgia, of sorrow, of anything that may lead

to thoughts of twisted sheets of shattered glass

in picture frames. Dark faces from past lives.

Here, now, are straight lines and smooth glass,

driving forward, ever onward, fingers reaching

for a known destination, a familiar face,

for a place I sing of that can safely hold my faith.

          When I wrote “Skytrain Serenade,” I wanted a blend of hard and soft images because of what inspired the poem. I was on the skytrain, heading downtown to the Winter Olympics, and everyone was squeezed in but happy and cheerful and having fun, yet there was this one guy, off to the side, who seemed to be staring at the window and having a miserable time. I started to think about what his story might be. The skytrain was moving smoothly, but his life was not, I decided.

          I decided to control the line lengths and make them look like rails, sort of. Then I really paid attention to how the words sounded. I worked and reworked lines to get them sounding the way I wanted them to when read aloud. In the end, the blend of hard and soft was just what I was looking for.

Try this:

First, find other examples, if they’re in there, in “Skytrain Serenade” of the devices we examined. Then…

Think of a situation where there is emotional conflict. You feel two different ways about the same situation–your enemy going over the cliff in your brand new sports car–that type of thing. Use hard and soft sounds (and some of the devices) to show the mix.

Coming tomorrow: Symbolism and Lorna Crozier’s “Crossing Willow Bridge”