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Overview
The Poet Laureate's clear and entertaining account of how poetry works.
"Poetry is a vocal, which is to say a bodily, art," Robert Pinsky declares in The Sounds of Poetry. "The medium of poetry is the human body: the column of air inside the chest, shaped into signifying sounds in the larynx and the mouth. In this sense, poetry is as physical or bodily an art as dancing."
As Poet Laureate, Pinsky is one of America's best spokesmen for poetry. In this fascinating book, he explains how poets use the "technology" of poetry--its sounds--to create works of art that are "performed" in us when we read them aloud.
He devotes brief, informative chapters to accent and duration, syntax and line, like and unlike sounds, blank and free verse. He cites examples from the work of fifty different poets--from Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert to W. C. Williams, Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, C. K. Williams, Louise Glück, and Frank Bidart.
This ideal introductory volume belongs in the library of every poet and student of poetry.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466878495 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 08/19/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 129 |
| Sales rank: | 996,484 |
| File size: | 217 KB |
About the Author
Robert Pinsky is Poet Laureate of the United States. FSG published The Inferno of Dante in 1994 and The Figured Wheel in 1996. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University and lives in Newton Corner, Massachusetts.
Robert Pinsky is the author of several books of poetry, including Gulf Music, Jersey Rain, The Want Bone, The Figured Wheel, and At the Foundling Hospital. His bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante sets a modern standard. He was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2000. Among his awards and honors are the William Carlos Williams Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Korean Manhae Prize, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the PEN American Center. He teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Boston University.
Read an Excerpt
The Sounds of Poetry
A Brief Guide
By Robert Pinsky
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 1998 Robert PinskyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7849-5
CHAPTER 1
ACCENT AND DURATION
What determines the stress or accent in English words and sentences? What precisely does it mean to say, for example, that we stress the first syllable in the word "rabbit" and the second syllable in the word "omit"? What exactly does the voice do to create that audible, distinct accent? (A term that for now I will use interchangeably with "stress.")
This is a more interesting question than might appear at first. Just considering the question can, in itself, help one to hear more about the sounds of the words we speak.
For instance, the answer that stress is produced by increased loudness or volume is not completely satisfactory, as a little experimentation will suggest. Consider what a speaker does to distinguish between, say, the first word and the last word of the following sentence:
Permit me to give you a permit.
Turning the volume down or up has some relation to what our voice does, but fails to explain the delicate but quite distinct difference that virtually all speakers can indicate and virtually all listeners can detect.
I'll focus more minutely for a moment. Here is an English sound:
it
In the nature of the English language, the sound, which happens also to be a one-syllable word, is neither stressed nor unstressed, by itself. It is neither short nor long, by itself.
The sound is conventionally stressed, relative to the syllables near it, when one says "bitter" or "reiterate" or "she had wit." It is conventionally unstressed when one says "italicize" or "rabbit" or "Pat had it."
These examples demonstrate a useful principle: the stress on a syllable in English is not inherent in the sound, but relative. A syllable is stressed or unstressed only in relation to the syllables around it. As a corollary, accent is a matter of degree. This knowledge is useful because if accent or stress is a matter of degree, we can hear interesting rhythms even in a line where the basic structure is the simple pattern of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. For example:
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be.
Each of these two lines is made of four pairs of syllables. Each pair of syllables is arranged so that the second one has more accent than the first: "is" sticks out just a bit more than "It" in the very light first pair; and "grow" sticks out more than "not" in the rather heavy second pair; and "like" sticks out quite a lot more than "-ing"; and "tree" definitely sticks out more than "a." In the final pair of the line ("a tree"), the difference between the unstressed first syllable and the stressed second syllable is greater than in the earlier pairs. We could analyze the second line similarly, noting that the considerable pause early in the line also varies the rhythm.
What is interesting is that within the simple system of four pairs, each pair ascending in accent from first syllable to second, the actual rhythm of the words is not singsong or repetitious, because so much varies. Unless you make the mistake of pronouncing the words in some special, chanting or "poetic" manner, you can hear both the pattern and the constant variation. The degree of accent varies and the degree of difference between the unstressed and stressed syllable also varies, from one pair to the next.
In fact, the syllable "not," unstressed within its pair, has about the same or even more stress than the syllable "is," which is stressed within its pair. Thus, the first four syllables in the line ("It is not grow") actually ascend in degree of accent. From such observations, we can conclude that the line is not simply a thump on every other syllable: a diagram of the line would not be a series of equal hills and valleys, sawtooth fashion, but a much more varying, precise graph, with the stressed syllable in one relatively light pair sometimes on a level with, or even below, the unstressed syllable of a relatively heavy pair. Here the graph might show stairs, or four ascending points. (Something like this happens in the second line, in the first four syllables of the following phrase: "doth make man better be.")
A technical name for the pattern I have been describing as a "pair" of syllables, with the first syllable less prominent than the second, is an "iambic foot" or "iamb." The stressed syllable is determined only in relation to the other syllables within the foot. Thus, a stressed syllable within one foot may be less stressed than the unstressed syllable in another. As the imaginary graph of a line like
It is not growing like a tree
indicates, not all iambic feet are alike. In fact, no two are the same.
It has taken me many words to describe only a little of what we hear when we hear the two lines spoken and perceive, in an instant, both the abstract pattern or system (four pairs of syllables per line, the second half of each pair accented) and the actual, living rhythm of the lines. The laborious process of description, compared to the lightning apprehension, dramatizes how efficient the form is, and how sensitive the ear.
To return to the original question: what does the ear so precisely and delicately hear the voice doing?
Volume or loudness does not satisfactorily explain what we do when we accent a syllable, because pitch — or, most precisely, change of pitch, ordinarily higher pitch — plays a major part in signaling the accent. Thus, it is not merely fanciful to say that in a way we sing all day to one another, when we speak:
"What was it? What was the question?"
"I'll tell you the question — it was, will you or won't you permit me to have a learner's permit? Is it permissible, idiot?"
"You sound so embittered."
* * *
The last word above, "embittered," illustrates another important distinction. I have said that the syllable "it," or any syllable in English, is accented or unaccented only relative to the syllables around it, not in itself. I added that the syllable is, in itself, neither short nor long — and this second statement is not a mere rephrasing of the first. Long-and-short, a matter of duration, is not the same as accent.
That fact is demonstrated by such words as "popcorn": the first syllable is stressed. But saying the word aloud a few times, and listening carefully, will indicate clearly that the second syllable is longer — the sound lasts slightly but distinctly longer. In the word "ocean," in contrast, the first syllable is both stressed and longer.
Thus, sometimes duration reinforces accent, and sometimes it contrasts with accent. In the word "embittered," the accented second syllable is much shorter than the rather long final syllable: duration contrasts with accent, with a certain audible effect. In the word "confounded," which has the same accent pattern as "embittered," the accented second syllable is much longer than the rather short final syllable: duration reinforces accent, with a quite different audible effect.
Duration (also called "quantity") is distinct from accent, and like accent it comes in relative degrees. Like accent, quantity is not an off-or-on-toggle. This can be demonstrated by taking the syllable,
it
and making it longer in duration by changing the vowel to a longer sound:
ought
or longer still by changing the consonant sound from the unvoiced "t," which does not use the larynx, to the voiced "d," which does use the larynx:
awed
This matter of long and short is a matter of sound, not spelling, as is demonstrated by the relatively short sound, spelled with many letters:
picked
as contrasted with the relatively longer sound
odd
The reader who cannot immediately hear the fine distinctions I am making should not panic: it is not a matter of some mysterious gift, but of habits, vocabulary and a kind of attention. It is as though I were trying to analyze the complex process of walking into the roles of the various muscles and bones in legs and feet.
The reader who wonders what difference these fine distinctions can possibly make to anyone — why care? — is invited to inspect some actual lines of poetry, with the distinctions in mind.
For example:
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Each line consists of three pairs of syllables (allowing the extra syllable in the rhyme "towers/hours"), and each pair of syllables falls — just as in the previous example — into the pattern of first syllable less stressed than the second.
But there is nothing monotonous or singsong, in a way nothing "regular," about the way these lines sound, if you don't pronounce them some special way that overemphasizes the less-stressed then more-stressed pattern of each pair. If you say the lines in a natural way, without thumping at the pattern, without pausing unnaturally at the ends of the lines, and without any hammy overexpressive "interpretation," you hear an attractive rhythm. I encourage the reader to say the lines aloud, letting the voice keep going, as the sentence does, with no stilted pause after the verb "enlarge" or the verb "discharge," and with no special emphasis on the accented syllables:
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
I think that if a reader understands that accent is relative, and that it comes in degrees, and understands, moreover, that accent is sometimes reinforced by quantity (a synonym for "duration"), and sometimes not, then the reader will better perceive the attractive, dance-like rhythm in these lines.
Here is a specific analysis to show what I mean. In the first line, the three pairs of syllables (the technical word for such a pair or unit is "foot," plural "feet") create a pleasing effect of crescendo: changes in degree of accent, changes in the difference between the unaccented and accented parts of each foot, changes in quantity, and the way the verb "enlarge" swells or reaches over the line ending toward its object "The number" — all of these elements contribute to the process of crescendo over the three feet, in three corresponding stages.
More minutely: in the first foot, the difference between the unstressed and stressed syllables is relatively slight, with the longer but unstressed syllable "Now" preceding the shorter but stressed vowel in the first syllable of "winter." The effect is a kind of acceleration from the long, unstressed syllable to the short, stressed one, with maybe some sense of tension in what might be called the "interference pattern" between quantity and accent. Then, in the second foot, the difference between the two halves is more distinct, with maybe a less strained or tense movement, because here the duration and accent are in less conflict, though the unstressed syllable of the foot (the "ter" of "winter") is pretty long in quantity. And in the final, third foot, which consists of the word "enlarge," the difference between the two halves is quite distinct: duration and accent both emphasize the second syllable of the word.
This little movement is from quick and tense toward increasingly slow and luxuriant.
It is worth pointing out that while the line moves from some tension to the fullness and resolution of its last foot, the running-over grammar from "enlarge" to "The number" represents not resolution or completion but an extending reach. And these sentences describe only some of the energies that course through the lines and make them feel alive:
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
No writer would think this way — muttering to oneself about short and long, stressed and unstressed — any more than a jazz musician would think that a series of dotted eighths and sixteenth notes might make a nice contrast to the triplets of a preceding bar, or a boxer would ponder whether to fake a right cross to make more room for the jab. The expert makes the moves without needing to think about them. But the more we notice and study, the more we can get from actual performance. And analysis of a fluid performance into its parts can lead to understanding, and perhaps eventually to the expert's level of insight and the expert's kind of joy.
What I have said about the opening lines of "Now winter nights enlarge," with their three iambic feet, applies equally to so-called free-verse poems that are not written in iambic feet. For instance:
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow,
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun, and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind
Here too, variations in degree of accent, variations in the difference between an unaccented syllable and an accented syllable, and a varying play between accent and duration all have a part in creating the rhythm.
More specifically, the relatively short vowel sound found in the word "it," somewhat lengthened in the word "winter," involves a contrast between pitch and accent. That is, the stressed syllable in the word is shorter than the unstressed syllable. The line
One must have a mind of winter
generates a lot of movement in its short space partly through other variations between pitch and quantity: the stressed first syllable followed by three increasingly more rapid, relatively lighter syllables before the slowing, full syllable "mind," which is both stressed and pretty clearly the longest syllable in the line. Then the shorter but stressed first syllable of "winter" speeds things up again, in a different way — so that the line moves from slow, to rapid, to slower, to another kind of speed.
(In the first line of Campion's "Now Winter Nights Enlarge," the same word is part of a quite different movement: the stressed syllable of the word, in Campion's line, is the first of three progressively longer stressed syllables.)
Free verse like that of "The Snow Man" moves partly by avoiding the unstressed-stressed pattern of iambic feet: thus, the cluster of three rapid syllables "must have a" functions to keep the rhythm from slipping into iambs. On the other hand, the poem does not fall into mere prose, either; achieving such intensity of rhythm is sometimes a matter of putting longer or stressed syllables next to one another, as in the third line:
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow,
where the three syllables "pine-trees crust" serve an intensity that is not iambic and that is not prose.
That intensity has a lot to do with quick, distinct variations in pace, an alert movement from fast to slow and back, in varying degrees, as in the line
The spruces rough in the distant glitter,
where after the iambic beginning of the line a light, rapid series of syllables ("in the distant glitter"), quick as a fish, breaks up the pattern. The reverse movement, from fast to slow, light to heavy, characterizes an earlier line,
And have been cold a long time
But it may be time to stop concentrating on syllables and separate lines, before such concentration gets monotonous, and proceed to larger units. The passage I have quoted is part of a poem that happens to consist of a single sentence. Here is the entire poem (by Wallace Stevens):
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow,
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun, and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
I invite the reader to say this poem aloud, without undue pauses at the ends of lines, trying to listen for variations in accent and duration, respecting such variations and their effect on pace, rather than relying on expressive interpretation.
But accent and duration, and the variation in each, and their varying relation to one another, are only part of a poem's bodily, vocal presence. The larger flow of syntax inside and across lines, as in the single sentence of "The Snow Man," also deserves attention.
CHAPTER 2SYNTAX AND LINE
What is a line of poetry?
To put the question more precisely, what vocal reality underlies the typographical convention of stopping at the right margin and returning to the left margin? (Versus in Latin, from which the word "verse" derives, signifies the ploughman at the end of a furrow turning about to begin again, so that "verse" and "reverse" are closely related.)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky. Copyright © 1998 Robert Pinsky. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Epigraph,
Introduction,
Theory,
I / ACCENT AND DURATION,
II / SYNTAX AND LINE,
III / TECHNICAL TERMS AND VOCAL REALITIES,
IV / LIKE AND UNLIKE SOUNDS,
V / BLANK VERSE AND FREE VERSE,
Recommendations for Further Study,
Index of Names and Terms,
Permissions,
By Robert Pinsky,
About the Author,
Copyright,
What People are Saying About This
A beautiful and compelling memoir . . . destined to become a classic.