Euphony
Playing with your sound palette in poems
In many aspects of my life, I can find groups of things I appreciate:
genres of music (heavy metal, indie pop, alt rock, NIN - yes, Trent gets his own category)
types of cuisine (Mediterranean, Thai, Mexican, Midwestern meat and potatoes)
types of fiction (literary, suspense, historical)
collectibles (Funko Pops, travel mementos, Star Wars ornaments, rocks)
I like to think about families of sound, words that somehow resonate together. A recent sonnet that appeared in the current Poet Lore (below) got a lot of comments from readers about how they enjoyed the sounds of the poem. Some said they wanted to keep reading it aloud, and that’s a compliment that makes me smile.
I worked hard on the sonics of this poem—not just the traditional end rhymes for its sonnet form, but other diction choices as well. The s’s in the first half are deliberate - swirl, sweet, sticky, supple, snow, same, chrysalis—creating a euphony of images to describe the softness of youth. The poem then shifts to harder sounds - drunken, buzz, leaping, wreck, fuck, grit—using those sounds to imply aggression or recklessness. Then both of those things combine in the final image —something smooth and lovely that disguises grit.
Not every poem needs to be a tour de force of sonics, but if the sonics are off in one of my poems, no matter how strong the image or the narrative may be, I usually consider it not finished.
Sometimes, when I’m looking for something to spark my writing, I make sonic word bank. It can be as simple as picking up the nearest book and making lists—words that use a long i sound, words that begin with p, action verbs. (Poetry books are great for this - the vocabulary is often more varied than in prose texts.) I then use those banks to draft, sometimes just going with what the words spark, and sometimes imposing rules on myself, such as to use the words in the order in which I wrote them down.
One of my favorite ways to create words that work well together in a poem is to take one of the longest words in a draft (usually at least seven letters) and to see how many other words I can make from it. (You can look lists on online Scrabble sites if the word is seven letters, but I prefer to always try it on my own first.) Once you have a word bank, write a poem that uses as many of those words as possible. There will be a natural sonic play in the poem that often offers great sounding lines and phrases that can be used elsewhere if your playful draft doesn’t work out.
PROMPT ONE: Ventriloquism and Other Long Words
Choose one of the following long words: ventriloquism, hasenpfeffer, or meritocracy.
Using the word you choose, create as many other words as you can using ONLY the letters from that word. For example, I could make quest from ventriloquism but not litter because there is only one t in the word.
If you don’t find pleasure in the puzzling like I do and don’t want to spend time doing this on your own, you can use something like this to help:
Take 5-10 minutes to make as many words as you can.
Use as many words from your list as you can in the poem. This creates a built-in soundscape that is limited but unique. If you are extra delusional, you could use the source word in your title or as the topic for your draft.
PROMPT TWO: Hard and Soft Sounds
Soft Sounds: soft c, f, soft g, h, j, l, m, n, r, s, th, w, y
Hard Sounds: b hard c, d, hard g, k, p, q, t,
v, z - could be either depending on the remaining consonants in the word
Choose a single-word topic. It could be an abstraction (love, anger, fear) or something concrete (cheese, fork, snowflake).
Brainstorm a list of words associated with that topic that feature soft sounds. Then do the same for hard sounds.
Draft a two stanza poem about your topic, one using soft sounds and one using hard sounds. Think about which stanza will start - moving from soft to hard sounds can give a different feeling than moving from hard sounds to soft.