Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices

Many poets get into a rut at some point in their lives, and begin to churn out the same old stuff, time after time. You know how it goes... You try to take a different route, but end up reverting to the same old beaten track you've been down so often. You want to write something unique, different, but it ends up just like all your other poetry. It can be very frustrating. How about doing something extraordinarily different to write your poems? Are you up for the challenge? Then read on...

Method 8: Overlapping Voices. Have you ever been at a party, a shopping mall or other social gathering where you stand there and try to listen to all the voices talking simultaneously? This cacophony of sound feels like a waterfall of noise - a sonic wallpaper - and its usual to consign it to the background and focus on your own conversation as you block it out. But what if you listened more closely and tried to discern the things people were discussing all around you? 

Now imagine trying to capture all those words on paper. Transcribing at this level is utterly impossible, but that's the point... If you want some new ideas or lines for your poetry, listen to what's going on around you and try to grab the words. The voices will overlap, the topics will be diverse and the noise will be difficult to penetrate. It will be an absolute mess, but from out of that chaos comes order!  

Another less conspicuous way of doing the same thing is to record the multiple conversations from a party or a visit to your local coffee shop, or listen to several recordings simultaneously (e.g. Radio or TV news) and try to grab the words you hear from the hubbub of voices. The idea behind this method is that you either hear words or phrases you can capture, or you will imagine you hear those words. Either way, it doesn't matter because you'll be creating a new piece, regardless. 

Steve Wheeler

Image from Flickr used under a Creative Commons Licence

Previous posts in this series:

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations

Poetic devices 16: Euphony

Euphony is the opposite to cacophony. In cacophony, harsh, jarring, dischordent sounds are made, usually to draw attention to something unpleasant or dangerous. A siren wails to warn of impending danger. A harsh cry tells us something alarming is happening. In Euphony, rhythmic and harmonious sounds are made to draw attention to something pleasant or appealing. In movies, you'll note that mellow instruments such as flutes, strings or harps dominate music that illustrates a soothing, romantic or reassuring scene. 

In poetry or prose, a combination of words or a sequence of rhythmic sounds can achieve euphony. If they enjoy the sound texture or harmony, readers are more likely to enjoy the text of the poem too. The rhythm and tempo of the words in the lines is important. So too is the rhyme, whether internal or end placed. But not all poetry has to rhyme, so consonance and assonance are also important in creating euphony. Finally, repetition or refrain can also be used to create euphony. All of these have been described in previous blog posts in this series. Just click on the blue hyperlinks in the words to read those articles. 

To Autumn, by John Keats, features many of these devices to create a great euphonic poem:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Notice how Keats uses regular repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables. There is also a very soothing end rhyme scheme in play. 

One of my all time favourite poems is Do Not Go Gentle by Dylan Thomas, which is presented in the form of a very pleasing, euphonic form known as a Villanelle. Here's the final stanza:

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Note that in a Villanelle, some lines naturally repeat, but it is the poet's use of soft consonants (sad, gentle, fierce) and long vowel sounds (pray, rage and good) that really gives this poem its soothing euphony. 

Previous posts in this series

1. Simile
2. Metaphor
3. Repetition and refrains
4. Alliteration
5. Assonance
6. End Rhymes
7. Internal Rhymes
8. Rhythm and Tempo
9. Enjambment

10. Allegory

11. Metonymy

12. Cacophony

13. Calligram

14. Personification

15. Paradox

Steve Wheeler

Image by Pickpik using Creative Commons

Poetic devices 12: Cacophony

Cacophony, which means 'bad sound', is the opposite of euphony (good sound) and occurs in speech where there is a mix of harsh and/or inharmonious sounds. 

In poetry, cacophony refers to the use of words with sharp, harsh, sibilant (hissing) and especially unharmonious sounds – usually in the consonants of words – the poet uses to create an effect, emotion or atmosphere. Cacophony should not be confused with onomatopoeia which Matt Elmore has already elaborated upon.  A classic example of cacophony in poetry is Jabberwocky by Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, even the title sounds discordant. 

Read the words out loud:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; 

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe. 

Beware the Jabberwock, my son! 

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! 

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun 

The frumious Bandersnatch!

Yes, they are largely nonsense words, but the brilliance lies in the mix of the sounds and the way they discordantly flow to create the narrative. The use of the coined or made-up words creates sounds (or phonics) that imbue meaning into the elements Carroll is describing. Slithy toves are not ordinary toves - they are very slithy, and that sounds unpleasant. The jubjub bird sounds like a very irritating bird, because its name denotes the repetitive noise it makes... and so on. 

The tragedy Macbeth, written by Stratford-on-Avon bard William Shakespeare, is full of cacophonous passages of dialogue to depict descent into madness, and of course, this famous soliloquy, spoken immediately after a brutal and bloody murder:

Out! Damn spot! Out I say! One, Two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.

The last line in particular is quite chilling not least because of the cacophonous nature of the preceding texts. But it is the explosive and discordant nature of the first sentence that truly sets up and darkens the entire speech. The Bells by dark romantic poet Edgar Allen Poe is another example of how words can be used explosively to create not only terrific alliteration, but a full cacophony effect:

Hear the loud alarum bells– 

Brazen bells! 

What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! 

In the startled ear of night 

How they scream out their affright! 

Too much horrified to speak, 

They can only shriek, shriek, 

Out of tune

Note the use of words such as scream and shriek - sibilant words that might put you on edge when you hear them! Poe depicts turbulence in so many ways in this one short passage of text. There are numerous other examples of cacophony in poetry, which I'm sure you will be on the look out for! 

Steve Wheeler

Previous posts in this series

1. Simile
2. Metaphor
3. Repetition and refrains
4. Alliteration
5. Assonance
6. End Rhymes
7. Internal Rhymes
8. Rhythm and Tempo
9. Enjambment

10. Allegory

11. Metonymy

Image from Pixabay