Write an essay in which you discuss a poem in the chapter “The Sounds of Poetry,” where sound seems to be a more important element than anything else, even the meaning of words. What is the point of reading and writing this kind of poetry? Can it achieve its effects through silent reading, or must it be experienced aloud?
The prestigious American artist Robert Pinsky is a prolific writer, literary critic, and translator. In his book, The Sounds of Poetry, Pinsky gives his analytical views in the sections to highlight the significance of like and unlike sounds in poetic verses by renowned poets. The Sounds of Poetry is divided into the sections of “accent and duration, syntax and line, technical terms and vocal realities, like and unlike sounds, blank verse, and free verse” (Pinsky). This essay intends to unveil the importance of sounds in Pinsky’s book, The Sounds of Poetry, by critically analyzing T. S. Eliot’s Little Gidding. Pinsky does not emphasize technical terms but artistic clarifications about sounds. Robert Pinsky states, “Verse is a vocal, or, in other words, a substantial, workmanship……. poetry is as physical or bodily an art as dancing” (Pinsky). He emphasizes the vocals in poetic diction. The sonnets are examined inside the ideal models of accent, stress, pitch, and duration in syllables to the significance of repeated sounds in blank/ free verse.
T. S. Eliot wrote the poem Little Gidding in his Four Quartets. Each poem in the Four Quartets, including Little Giddings, is perceived as a distinct musical image even though they share a similar presentation (Gordon). The crux of the poem relies on the importance of time and humanity’s place within the paradigm of time. According to an examination by Pinsky, the main focus is not on the significance of historical/ cultural context nor chronicled or social settings; however, it emphasizes upon the readers to analyze the sounds of the stanzas in Little Gidding. According to Lyndall Gordon, T.S. Eliot wrote the poems in Four Quartets by having Beethoven in mind while composing the lines of the poem. Pinsky focuses on rhyming patterns and accentuated syllables, which explicates the theme that commends human vision’s capacity to rise above the clear constraints of human mortality. Poems written in the form of a musical pattern have more significance and impact on the reader because the meter, stress pattern, rhyme, and the use of syllables propagate the main theme easily. This point of instance can be validated by the following excerpt by Little Gidding:
“Ash on an old man’s sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The walls, the wainscot, and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.” (Eliot)
The mentioned excerpt of the poem Little Gidding reflects rhyming patterns and metrical structures within the paradigms of music and poetry. While reading these lines, Pinsky’s point of view regarding the importance of sounds is pretty clear. The phonological stress pattern, musical grouping, and meter are organized in Little Gidding to give musical serenity to the reader. Loud reading of this stanza will give more meaning to the musical lyrics of the poem. Therefore, loud reading impacts the readers and listeners more in understanding the importance of musical patterns and rhyming lines. Pinsky’s interpretive views and Eliot’s poem signify the importance of sounds (phonics, rhyming patterns, diction, etc.) created by reading the poetic lines aloud.
In a nutshell, Pinsky stresses the meaning of sounds like the structure blocks of poetic style and stanzas. He refers to poems crafted by fifty unique writers such as “Frost, W. C. Williams, Elizabeth Bishop, Shakespeare, Herbert, C. K. Williams, Donne, etc.” Pinsky makes some incredible focuses on valuing the importance of sounds in poems. This book is truly focused on readers understanding the impact of sounds and phonic patterns while interpreting poems.
Works Cited
Eliot, Thomas S. “Four Quartets (1943).” New York: Harvest-Hartcourt (1971).
Eliot, Thomas Stearns. Little gidding. London: Faber & Faber, 1942.
Gordon, Lyndall. TS Eliot: An Imperfect Life. WW Norton & Company, 2000.
Pinsky, Robert. The sounds of poetry: A brief guide. Macmillan, 1999.
Cite This Work
To export a reference to this article please select a referencing stye below:
