The Prosody All Around Us

        The sound effects of poetry, which many persons besides English majors find baffling, technical, and least meaningful of the elements of literature, are often of paramount importance to poets -- attention to the acoustic properties of language is one of the defining qualities of a poet as opposed to other writers. Often poets have said that they revised a poem until it "sounded right," indicating this inclination. But the sound effects of poetry -- its prosody -- are only a subset of the sound effects of language in general, including prose (which has its own prosody), and all languages. All languages have their own sound, as students or appreciators of foreign languages know. For example, a basic element of the prosody of the French language may be indicated by comparing identical words, with identical meanings, in French and English:
 

Word in English	Word in French
silence [pronounced: SIGH-luns]	silence [pronounced: see-LAHNS]
justice [pronounced: JUHS-tiss]	justice [pronounced: jews-TEES]
doctor [pronounced: DAHK-tur]	docteur [pronounced: dowk-TOOR]

 

        Besides the difference in vowel sounds, the basic difference is in meter and rhythm, which are possessed by all accentual languages (most of the Indo-European languages). Some languages, especially Asian languages, are primarily tonal rather than accentual; but in the accentual languages, all two-syllable words and above have a usual accentual pattern learned by native speakers of the language and recorded as the pronunciation of the word in dictionaries of that language. English has many trochees (accented plus unaccented or less accented syllable) in its two-syllable words, while French has many iambs (unaccented or less accented plus accented syllable) in its two syllable words. Viewers of old movies who see the famous French actor Maurice Chevalier appear in American or British movies will hear how a native-French speaker often attempts to pronounce an English word with an iambic pattern rather than its actual trochaic pattern. Conversely, native English speakers will often make the opposite mistake while trying to vocalize French, pronouncing French words trochaically when these words should be pronounced iambically.

        Even within the same language, a regional or societal group within a country may have a distinct overall sound, including prosody. Thus the word insurance is pronounced differently by urban speakers not from the South differently from rural speakers and those from the South. For urbanites -- and collegiate dictionaries of English -- the word insurance is an automatic amphibrach ("ihn-SHUR-uns"; unaccented, accented, unaccented syllable), while for many rural speakers and native Southerners the same word is an automatic dactyl ("IHN-shur-uhns"; accented syllable, unaccented syllable, unaccented syllable). A similar difference can be heard in the pronunciation of the word police. For urbanites and many Caucasians (and collegiate dictionaries), the word is an automatic iamb ("puh-LEES"; unaccented syllable followed by accented syllable), but for many rural and African-American speakers the word is an automatic trochee ("POH-lees"; accented syllable followed by unaccented syllable). This second, trochaic pronunciation is drawn attention to in section 1 of William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun [Go Down]" when the black woman Nancy explains about her husband "'He quit me . . . . Done gone to Memphis, I reckon. Dodging them city po-lice for a while, I reckon'" (Collected Stories, p. 293).

        Something of this concern, as manifested in prose, may be found in John Galsworthy's novel The Man of Property (Book 1 of The Forsyte Saga) and Albert Camus' novel The Plague. In Ch. 1 of Part 1 of the Galsworthy novel ("'At Home at Old Jolyon's'") occurs a prosodic analysis of the surname, Bosinney, of the fiancé of June Forsyte, with reference to James Forsyte's pronunciation of the name: "he made the word a dactyl in opposition to general usage of a short o" (p.9). And repeatedly in Camus' novel occurs the reference to the several drafts of Joseph Grand's opening sentence of his novel ("One fine morning in the month of May an elegant young horsewoman might have been seen riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne"), to get the rhythm right: "'That's only a rough draft. Once I've succeeded in rendering perfectly the picture in my mind's eye, once my words have the exact tempo of this ride -- the horse is trotting, one-two-three, one-two-three, see what I mean? -- the rest will come more easily, and what's even more important, the illusion will be such that from the very first words it will be possible to say: 'Hats off!'" (p. 96). Later the would-be novelist says about the revised sentence ("'One fine morning in May a slim young horsewoman might have been seen riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne'"): "Don't you agree with me one sees her better that way? And I've put 'one fine morning in May' because 'in the Month of May' tended rather to drag out the trot, if you see what I mean" (pp. 123-27). Later in the novel, Grand is still at his revising: "One fine morning in May, a slim young horsewoman might have been seen riding a glossy sorel mare along the avenues of the Bois, among the flowers" (pp. 238-39), and near the novel's end, Grand exults that "he'd made a fresh start with his phrase. 'I've cut out all the adjectives'" (p. 276).  Indeed, the anapest (duh-duh-DUH) can suggest to the Anglo-American ear the canter or gallop of a horse, whether in prose or poetry.

        While poets are especially attuned to the sound effects of poetry -- its prosody (rhythm, meter) and other acoustic properties (e.g., consonance, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme) -- all of us, if we truly listen, can enjoy different worlds of sounds that emanate from the variety of human voices all around us every day in ordinary speech, in person or in various electronic media, not just the artistically rarefied realm of poetry.

        The artistry of a poet's use of sound contributes to the meaningfulness of the poem. Hence, when the technical aspects of prosody are studied, the ultimate goal for purposes of literary analysis is ascertaining, as with the other components of literature, how these elements are meaningful or significant, how they contribute to the themes and ideas and emotions expressed by the poem.
 

Norm's 3-Step Process for Ascertaining Rhythm and Meter

        Although almost all speakers of a language, including English, are proficient in pronunciation, many students have an initial difficulty with or even a block against ascertaining rhythm and meter in a line of poetry. The following three-step process, based on a native speaker's own knowledge of English should prove helpful, when applied to a line of poetry. (Accented syllables are indicated by a forward slash mark, / , called an "ictus," while unaccented or relatively unaccented syllables are indicated by a sort of capital "U," called a "breve." Occasionally a long horizontal mark, called a "macron," is used by some critics to indicate an accented syllable. Also, some analysts use a back slash mark, \ , to indicate a syllable that has secondary rather than primary stress. The forward slash mark and breve are used in the following remarks.) In a line of poetry:

1. Find all words of two syllables or more. Each of these words usually has its regular pronunciation in English. Thus the word aloud will be an automatic iamb ( U / ); the word common will be an automatic trochee ( / U ). The word artichoke will be an automatic amphimacer ( / U / ); the word arthritis will be an automatic amphibrach ( U / U ) ; and so on. A reader who isn't sure about the pronunciation of a word of two syllables or more can look the word up in a collegiate dictionary, where pronunciation of all syllables will be indicated.

2. Next find all function word plus content word combinations. A function word is defined in grammar or linguistics as an article, infinitive marker (the "to" in "to analyze"), preposition, conjunction, or occasionally an auxiliary verb (such a word indicates relation of one word to another rather than carrying its own content). A content word is defined as a noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, or adjective; such a word conveys content by pointing to qualities of the real world outside the sentence, which can be perceived by the senses, mind, or imagination (e.g., stone, she, walks, quickly, blue). Usually, in the combination of function word plus content word, the function word is unaccented or relatively unaccented, while the content word is accented or relatively more accented. In the first line of Emily Dickinson's poem "To Hear an Oriole Sing" -- "To hear an Oriole sing" (line 1) -- function word plus content word combinations occur in "to hear" and "an Oriole," and the infinitive marker, "to," and article, "an" are unaccented or relatively unaccented syllables, in contrast to the content word "hear" (verb) and "Oriole" (noun), which carry referential meaning to something in the real world. The scansion -- prosodic analysis -- of the first four words of the second line of Dickinson's poem ("to hear an Oriole") would thus be the following: U / U / U / (according to our ear, as well as our collegiate dictionary, the three-syllable word Oriole is an automatic amphimacer: / U / or possibly / U \ ).

3. Finally, in the syllables remaining after steps 1 and 2, try to hear which syllable receives less stress or accent than the syllable that immediately precedes or immediately follows it. In the sixth line of Emily Dickinson's poem "To Hear an Oriole Sing" -- "As unto Crowd" (line 6) -- the two-syllable word "unto" is automatically a trochee ( / U ), while the function-word plus content-word combination "unto Crowd" indicates an accent on the word "Crowd." All that remains is to determine the accentual status of the word "As"; does this word, as a reader hears the line spoken aloud or in the mind, receive more or less accent than the accented first syllable of the word "unto"? Most readers will hear "As" receiving somewhat or perhaps slightly less stress than the accented "un" in "unto," and thus "As" may be marked with a "U" or breve. The scansion of "As unto crowd" would thus be the following: U / U / .
 

N & Q on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Poem "The Sound of the Sea"

1. Vocabulary: cataract (line 8), wooded steep (line 8), inaccessible (line 10), solitudes (line 10), solitudes of being (line 10), deem (line 12)

2. (A) How does the poem have the form of an Italian sonnet? How does the octave (lines 1-8) constitute a thought unit, and how does the sestet (lines 9-14) constitute a thought unit? (B) What religious or philosophical or psychological issues are dealt with by the poem?

3. (A) What figure of speech is used in lines 1, 5, 8, and 11? (B) How does the figure of speech used in line 1 help connect the subject matter of the octave with the subject matter of the sestet? (C) Besides visual imagery, what two other kinds of imagery predominate in the first four lines of the poem (as elsewhere in the poem)? Why are these two kinds of imagery appropriate to the subject matter of the poem?

4. How does the title of the poem suggest an inevitable concentration in the poem on the materials of Ch. 19 of R&J?

5. (A) How is the beginning two-syllable poetic foot (see the section on two-syllable feet in "The Major Metrical Feet" in Ch. 19) of line 4 different from all the other lines in the poem? (B)How are rhythmical and metrical effects appropriate to the subject matter or content of the octave and sestet of the poem, respectively?

6. How does the typographical, visual appearance of line groups of the poem in any way or ways help communicate the contents of the poem?
 

N & Q on Gwendolyn Brooks' Poem "We Real Cool"

1. Despite its short length, short lines, and short words, this poem has some difficulties in two of the three problem areas of reading comprehension -- meanings of words, grammar of clauses, and figurative language -- that can cause problems in reading comprehension. (A) First is the problem of meanings of words in "Jazz June." The slang meaning (as indicated in collegiate and unabridged dictionaries) of the word "jazz" as "copulation" is unfamiliar or surprising to most readers, though its use in this sense can be found in William Faulkner's early novel Sanctuary (1931) and has been traced by the OED to as far back as 1924. A lexical -- word meaning -- problem also arises for "June"; what are the two main possibilities for what this word may mean? Which one is more likely, given the meaning of "jazz" in the line? (B) What do the speakers mean both literally and figuratively when they exult "We/ Strike straight" (lines 3-4)? To what crime might they be alluding? How would lurking late (line 3), which has a contextual bearing on "strike straight," connect with this crime? (C) What is the meaning of the speakers' metaphor that they "Sing sin" (line 5)? (D) What crime are the speakers alluding to when they state that they "thin gin" (line 6)?

2. (A) R & J give a big hint about the prosody of this poem in their second study question on the poem. How do line length, word length, rhyme, and alliteration contribute to the particular meter or rhythmic pattern of the poem (hinted by R & J)? (B) How are the rhythm and meter and alliteration of the poem appropriate in expressing the nature of the speakers or speakers' lives? How is the prosody of the poem -- including word length and line length -- appropriate in expressing the nature of the speakers or speakers' lives?

3. (A) Most readers would have composed this poem by placing all the first person plural pronouns at the beginning of each line, rather than at the end of the lines (1-7); what ideas or values are implied by the speakers' placement of "we" as the last or ultimate word in all the lines except the last? (B) What ideas might be suggested by the omission of the first person plural pronoun in the poem's last line?

4. What might be the meanings of the name of the pool hall where the speakers congregate (the symbolism of setting), as specified by Brooks as a sort of epigraph to the title of the poem?

5. One Chicago school board banned this poem from being used in its school system because the board felt that the poem advocated gang membership. How was this school board wrong in interpreting the poem's main meanings or themes?