Tone
Stephen Dunn asserts, “Craft is an orchestration of words and desired effects.” Stephen Dunn continues,
“I once defined form this way: ‘Building a corral as you invent the horse.’ I added, “Craft is what nails the gate, helps formalize the space, and keeps the horseshit out of the picture. It leaves us with the necessary.’”
Ellen Bryant Voigt claims, “If the same image, in the same situational context, con command different emotional implications, then images are not a dependable source of tone in a poem. . . despite the importance of each of the elements contributing to the overall ‘tonality’ of a poem, I have come to believe that the best poems, even discursive poems of narrative or argument, build their tonal context primarily through their sounds.”
Stephen Dobyns: “Most simply tone is the emotional distance between the speaker and subject matter. It also indicates the writer’s emotional distance to the reader. This is not style but the greater umbrella of intention, which includes style, structure, all those elements that the writer wants to affect the reader. . . the manner of the telling is included in what is told. . .So tone is not only about the emotional value of key words but also of surrounding words. Often one can argue that the more aggressive the word’s denotative and connotative meanings, then the more neutral should be the tone. Conversely, the more neutral the word’s denotative and connotative meanings, then the more aggressive should be the tone.”
Stephen Dobyns:
“When we look just at the meaning of words, we find that tone has four governing aspects. Try to imagine the diagram of an atom. The subject matter is the nucleus. Swirling around it, let’s say on a north-south axis, is the entire range of possible emotion: love, hate and everything in between, scorn, envy, jealousy, adoration. We can imagine these graded, put side by side and forming a circle, just as colors are shaded from one hue to the next. We may call these the qualitative aspects of tone.
Now imagine another circle, this one swirling on an east-west axis. On this circle we have different types of voice: the ironic, the sincere, the cynical, the gullible and so on. These, too, can be arranged like colors, shade by shade.
Now imagine a third circle that cuts across the other two. Call it aspects of conditionality. I do feel sad; I should feel sad, I could feel sad, I might feel sad and so on.
The fourth aspect is intensity or distance. Are emotion, voice and conditionality weak or strong?
In our model this can be represented by how far from the nucleus these circles rotate. In a newspaper article they may be distant. In an editorial they come closer. In a restaurant menu they may seem absent.
In a descriptive menu (an enticing concoction of anchovies, capers and cream) our rotating circles come a little closer.
Emotion, voice, conditionality and intensity are the primary elements determining tone in the denotative and connotative meaning of words.”
Stephen Dobyns: “If the tone of the writing is strident or keeps changing unaccountably, we stop believing the writer. Credibility is based on trust. We trust what comes next will make sense and contribute to the whole.”
Stephen Dobyns: “So tone is more than establishing an emotional relationship with the material. It is also anticipating how that relationship will evolve, whether fearful, humorous, romantic and so on.”

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accusatory agitated, uncomfortable, awkward aggressive, belligerent, violent apathetic, indifferent awe, wondrous, solemn
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bitter, scornful, vehement callous, unfeeling, insensitive condescension, esoteric, haughty, mocking 8.
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confessional, emotional, intimate, familiar , secretive contemplative, thoughtful, reflective
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choleric, hot-tempered, angry, indignant
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contemptuous, ridiculing, satiric
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cynical, critical, judgmental, authoritative
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disdainful, scornful
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didactic, intellectual
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derisive, mocking
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earnest, intense, sincere
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erudite, learned, polished, scholarly
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forthright, directly, frank, sincere, genuine
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inquisitive, curious
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jovial, happy
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matter-of-fact,
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morose, sullen, surly, despondent, gloomy, dark
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malicious, hurtful
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nervous, unsettling
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objective, unbiased
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obsequious, polite
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pensive, thoughtful, reflective, nostalgic
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pessimistic, hopeless
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quizzical, odd, eccentric, amusing
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reserved, distant
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ribald, offensive
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reverent, awful
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sanguineous, optimistic, hopeful, cheerful
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sardonic sarcastic, sneering, caustic, stinging, biting
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self-aggrandizing, arrogant, confident, solipsistic
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solemn, earnest
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stagnant, still, tepid, dull
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unassuming
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vulgar, rude, unmannerly
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whimsical, odd, strange, fantastic