Some aural/sound devices (from http://conorschild.deviantart.com/art/Aural-Devices-A-GuidePart-1-118321847
Plosives are a sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. This might
be confusing, so it would help to list the plosive sounds in English: P B T K D and G
(G is a sort of half-plosive, depending on the pronounciation--go vs. genie--but I
didn't want to bring the International Phonetic Alphabet into this.) More accurately,
the sounds are /puh/, /buh/, /tuh/, /kuh/, /duh/, and /guh/. If you make those sounds,
your lips should come together then expand out, with an explosion of air. And there
we go! Plosives are explosives. Simple! You may also feel your tongue move down
with force as you make the sound, but not necessarily.
It's a violent sound, and that's exactly where it's best used. Take Robert Browning's
Porphyria's Lover:
"...No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still..."
I've gone overboard with pointing out the plosives, and yet I've probably not got them
all. It should be no surprise then, that this poem is about the brutal murder of a young
woman by a psychopath, who then goes on to talk to the corpse. Note as well the l's
and n's used in this poem--while they aren't plosives in their own right, they become
so much more violent in the atmosphere created by Browning: this isn't even the
murder scene, and yet there's so much passion and energy behind it you can't help but
hear the narrator's thumping heart and racing pulse. It's almost unbelievable, the
ferocity created in those words--and of course, the nice thing about plosives is that the
violent sounds created are so universal that many of the words used for that
atmosphere are directly linked anyway--kill, stab, explode, thump, burst, death, gasp,
etc, etc.
Sibilance is the repeated use of sibilants in a poem. It's made by directing a jet of air
through a narrow channel in the vocal tract towards the sharp edge of the teeth. That
is, it's a hissing noise. The most common sibilant consonant is, of course, S, and also
Z, SH and ZH (as in 'azure' or 'measure'). Sibilance is pretty much the polar opposite
of plosive: it's silent, hushing and sensual. Here's three different examples of sibilance
in poetry:
"...I guess
How you miss the English spring, the way
A shower-cloud over a hillside spills
Between sunlight and sunlight, slowly..."
--Ted Walker, Letter to Barbados.
"...Streams will swell
and flow out,
raging rivers,
shower of thousand fires
will patter and come together
in a smooth and intense melody..."
--Catherine Galfetti, springtime melody.
"...The air-liner with shut-off engines
Glides over suburbs and the sleeves set trailing tall
To point the wind. Gently, broadly, she falls,
Scarcely disturbing charted currents of air..."
--Sir Stephen Spender, The Landscape near an Aerodrome.
Each of the poets use the sounds to emphasis a different feeling: the quiet loneliness
of abandonment, the sensuality of a lover, or the hushed refinement of an aeroplane
interior. Notice as well how the first two poets use a similar image of a shower,
linking the sounds and sight together--of course, an example of onomatopoiea.
Closely related to sibilants are fricatives; in fact, sibilants are a sub-group of
fricatives. The fricative consonants in English are F, V, TH (as in moTH) and H (as in
Heat). They are made when the airflow is restricted, but is not stopped while making a
sound. While they have a weak sound by themselves, when used in conjunction with
sibilants they will accentuate the mood created. They can also work well with
plosives, to create a hushed undertone to a violent mood.
The final group of consonant sounds--for our purposes--are approximants. These are
consonants that could be regarded as an intermediate between vowels and regular
consonants: the sounds /wuh/, /yuh/, /ruh/ and /luh/ (think of the words towel, yes,
furry and for l, two seperate sounds: Light or bottLe). Because of their close
association with vowels, they work especially well with them to create a long vowel
sound. Which gives us a good lead into the next topic!
Long and Short Vowel Sounds
Let's take another look at The Landscape Near an Aerodrome. The poem is about
man's destructive nature and our pillaging of the natural world. It describes the
descent of passengers on a plane, who in their lulled state compare the city they're
landing at to the relaxing lands that they're returning yo. They realise with horror the
destruction the city has caused to the landscape around it. I've highlighted the long
vowel sounds used, but your accent may vary them slightly.
"More beautiful and soft than any moth
With burring furred antennae feeling its huge path
Through dusk, the air-liner with shut-off engines
Glides over suburbs and the sleeves set trailing tall
To point the wind. Gently, broadly, she falls,
Scarcely disturbing charted currents of air...
"...Beyond the winking masthead light
And the landing-ground, they observe the outposts
Of work: chimneys like lank black fingers
Or figures frightening and mad: and squat buildings
With their strange air behind trees, like women's faces
Shattered by grief. Here where few houses
Moan with faint light behind their blinds,
They remark the unhomely sense of complaint, like a dog
Shut out and shivering at the foreign moon."
This extract comes from different verses, and the difference between them is obvious.
When the focus shifts to the town and it's industralised nature, there are far more
shorter vowel sounds than the ones used in the description of the plane. What the poet
has done here is an excellent example of Euphony and Cacophony.
Euphony is a "pleasant combination of sounds; smooth-flowing meter and sentence
rhythm give lines euphony; generally, lines with a high percentage of vowel sounds in
proportion to consonant sounds tend to be more melodious." Cacophony, in contrast,
is "'bad-sounding'; refers to the unpleasant discordant (cacophonous) effect of sounds
or words; sometimes used by writers to give their writing a special effect; dissonance
is the arrangement of cacophonous sounds in words or rhythmical patterns." By using
long and short vowel sounds, there is a direct contrast built up between the two
images of the poem, which lends itself well to the overall theme and message.
Generally, a long vowel sound is created by the use of two vowels in a row (feel), a
vowel follow by an approximant, especially double l's (tall, show), or two vowels
around an approximant or sibilant (abuse, owe). A short vowel sound is usually made
by a vowel followed by a plosive (hot), a single vowel after a fricative (felt, thigh), or
before most double consonants (attack, end). However, there are many acceptions to
each example--just sound out the words, and it'll all make sense. The vowels e and a
lend themselves well to long sounds; i, o and u moreso to shorter sounds.
Other than to create euphony and cacophony, the length of vowel sounds is a good
way of artificially increasing pace.
"...That are still courting-places
(But the lovers are all in school),
And their children, so intent on
Finding more unripe acorns,
Expect to be take home.
Their beauty has thickened.
Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives..."
--Phillip Larkin, Afternoons
In this poem, the poet starts off with masses of elongated vowel sounds ("Summer is
fading://The leaves fall in ones and twos") for a euphonic feeling. But by the final
verse, he begins to use shorter sounds, not just for their cacophonic effect but also to
quicken the pace. He matches it with pauses for a disjointed rhythm, but the main
effect is caused by the short vowel sounds--thickened, pushing, them--that hurtle the
reader towards the pathos of the final line: how parents become less of a focus in life
as their kids take over.
Something similar happens in Letter to Barbados
"...This morning I made
A first cut of the grass since autumn.
It smelt sweet in the sun, in the swathe
Where I left it to dry. I fetched my gun
And sought out a sickly dove and killed
It clean, and let it warm where it fell..."
In an otherwise tranquil and melodic poem, the quick and violent description of the
dove's death comes as a surprise to the reader. By utilising shorter vowel sounds and
hard consonants, this moment in the poem is almost hurried past--by both the narrator
and the reader.
It is also imporant to understand the different effects short and long vowel sounds will
have on the words around them. Generally speaking, a short vowel sound will
accentuate plosives; a longer vowel sound sibilants. For instance, 'spills' and 'spurts'
both begin with 'sp'--a sound that could be either a sibilant or a plosive. But in the first
case, the long vowel sound created by the double l hightens the sound of the s (both at
the start of the word and the end) to give the word a sibilant sound as a whole. In the
second case, the shorter vowel sound accentuates the p, giving it a consonant sound
overall, and making it more violent.
All of the sound units I've talked about (plosives, sibilants, long and short vowel
sounds) will only work with repetition. Repetition, in fact, is the most important tool
than any poet can use--not just in sound, but also rhetorically, and for themes and
images. There are two words to describe the repetition of sound units: consonance,
and assonance. Consonance describes the repetition of consonant sounds within a
group of lines; assonance the repetition of vowel sounds. For example:
"...Blown bubble-film of blue, the sky wraps round
Weeds of warm light whose every root and rod
Splutters with soapy green, and all the world
Sweats with the bead of summer in its bud..."
--Laurie Lee, April Rise
Terminology of Aural Devices to look at once again:
Sound Unit: Different parts of words that have a different auridotary effect. Also
called a prosodic unit.
Plosive: a consonant sound produced by stopping the flow of air at some point and
suddenly releasing it; "his stop consonants are too aspirated." Examples of sounds
include /buh/, /tuh/, /puh/, /duh/, /kuh/ and /guh/.
Sibilant: a consonant characterized by a hissing sound (like s, sh or z). The repetition
of this sound to create an effect is know as sibilance.
Fricative: speech sounds produced by forcing air through a constricted passage (as 'f',
's', 'z', or 'th' in both 'thin' and 'then').
Approximant: a consonant sound made by slightly narrowing the vocal tract, while
still allowing a smooth flow of air. Can be regarded as 'semi-vowels.' Include /wuh/,
/yuh/, /ruh/ and /luh/.
Vowel: A sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the
oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable; A letter representing the sound
of vowel; in English, the vowels are a, e, i, o and u, and sometimes y. A long vowel
sound is often about 1 and a half times the length of a short vowel sound.
Euphony: pleasant combination of sounds; smooth-flowing meter and sentence
rhythm give lines euphony; generally, lines with a high percentage of vowel sounds in
proportion to consonant sounds tend to be more melodious, or "euphonic".
Cacophony: "bad-sounding"; refers to the unpleasant discordant (cacophonous) effect
of sounds or words; sometimes used by writers to give their writing a special effect;
dissonance is the arrangement of cacophonous sounds in words or rhythmical
patterns.
Assonance: the similarity or repetition of similar vowel sounds in word groups;
examples include right-hive and pane-make; lake and stake rhyme, while lake and fate
contain assonance.
Consonance: the repetition of inner or end consonant sounds in word groups, without
a similar correspondence of vowel sounds; similar to alliteration, except consonance
does not limit the repeated sound to the first syllable.
Onomatopoiea: the use of a word that suggests the sound it makes; creates clear sound
images and helps a writer draw attention to certain words; examples include buzz, pop, hiss,
moo, hum, murmur, crackle, crunch, and gurgle.
Notice how consonance and assonance are concerned with familar sounds, not letters. For
instance, "wraps round" is an example of consonance, and "swEArs with the bEAd" is an
example of assonance. Notice also the alliteration of 'root and rod'. Technically speaking,
alliteration is only the repetition of consonant sounds at the start of a word--not vowel sounds,
or the same letter. However, many people will say that both of those count too. Assonance
and consonance can often be used to create half-rhyme, para-rhyme, or if used within a line,
internal rhyme. However, that is for the next guide. Until then, good luck writing!
Meter: The rhythm of lines and of poetry. It is often counted as the repetition of certain units
of rhythm, such as iambs, trochees, etc…
Iambs: Unstressed to stress. Iambic pentameter is the typical mode of expression in
Shakespearean plays, particularly during speeches, or addresses from nobles.
Trochees: Stress to unstressed.
Tyger tyger burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Can frame thy fearful symmetry
Spondees: Two stressed, or two longs. This is often used to indicate passion, anger, stress,
intensity. Note the use of spondees to break up the iambic lines of Hamlet’s soliloquy:
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!