Organization Of Sound Patterns The Poet example essay topic

Tone is the reflective attitude the poet attempts to evoke in her reader. When a person speaks they are able to bring to mind both a literal meaning (denotation) as well as a connotative meaning. The connotation of a sentence spoken is noted by "body language, intonation, word choice and many other subtle nuances that allows the speaker to effect a desired reaction from her listener. The poet must use word choices, placement, hyperbole, metaphor, paradox, irony, and satire to place the reader into the mental mood that will give more credence to her chosen subject. I am a proud member of a group of poets who are as diverse as any one could meet in a world as diverse as the one we all share.

I have chosen to use the works of some of the poets to illustrate the use of those tools of tone a poet must master to allow the "feelings" she has to be projected to their readers. TONE The poet's or persona's attitude in style or expression toward the subject, e. g., loving, ironic, bitter, pitying, fanciful, solemn, etc. Tone can also refer to the overall mood of the poem itself, in the sense of a pervading atmosphere intended to influence the readers' emotional response and foster expectations of the conclusion. Sidelight: In spoken language we recognize tone by inflections of the voice and by the demeanor of the speaker; in poetry, tone is conveyed through the use of connotation, diction, figures of speech, rhythm and other elements of poetic construction. (Compare Content, Form, Motif, Style, Texture) CONSONANCE A pleasing combination of sounds; sounds in agreement with tone. Also, the close repetition of the same end consonants of stressed syllables with differing vowel sounds, such as boat and night, or the words drunk and milk in the final line of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan".

Sidelight: Consonance most often occurs within a line. When used at line ends in place of rhyme, as in the words, cool and soul, in the third stanza of Emily Dickinson's "He Fumbles at your Spirit", it is sometimes referred to as consonantal rhyme to differentiate it from perfect rhyme and other types of near rhyme. (See also Euphony, Modulation, Resonance, Sound Devices) DIDACTIC POETRY Poetry which is clearly intended for the purpose of instruction -- to impart theoretical, moral, or practical knowledge, or to explain the principles of some art or science, as Virgil's Georgics, or Pope's An Essay on Criticism. Sidelight: Didactic poetry can assume the manner and attributes of imaginative works by incorporating the knowledge in a variety of forms, such as dramatic poetry, satire, and parody, among others. Allegories, aphorisms, apologues, fables, gnomes, and proverbs are so closely related to didactic poetry that they may be considered specific types of that genre. FIGURE OF SPEECH A mode of expression in which words are used out of their literal meaning or out of their ordinary use in order to add beauty or emotional intensity or to transfer the poet's sense impressions by comparing or identifying one thing with another that has a meaning familiar to the reader.

Some important figures of speech are: simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole and symbol. Sidelight: Some rhetoricians have classified over 200 separate figures of speech, but many are so similar that differences of interpretation often make their classification an arbitrary judgement. How they are classified, or "labeled", however, is secondary to the importance of construing their effect correctly. Sidelight: Figures of speech are also a means of concentration; they enable the poet to convey an image with the connotative power of a few words, where a great many would otherwise be required. RHYTHM An essential of all poetry, the regular or progressive pattern of recurrent accents in the flow of a poem as determined by the arises and theses of the metrical feet, i. e., the rise and fall of stress. The measure of rhythmic quantity is the meter.

Sidelight: A rhythmic pattern in which the stress falls on the final syllable of each foot, as in the iamb or anapest, is called a rising or ascending rhythm; a rhythmic pattern with the stress occurring on the first syllable of each foot, as in the dactyl or trochee, is a falling or descending rhythm. Sidelight: From an easy lilt to the rough cadence of a primitive chant, rhythm is the organization of sound patterns the poet has created for pleasurable reading.