Poetic Rhythm: Sound and Rhyme

Abstract

Abstract Like metrical rhythms, sound rhythms of poetry are at once the most natural and the most technical of poetic features; mechanical to study and yet a compelling and even defining element of poetry. As with meter, sound patterns can be identified, but in a different sense their effects resist discussion. And, as with meter, the sound structures and patterns that make a poem can’t be appreciated outside the many overlaying patterns of language in a text. Yet they do not merely correspond to some other feature, such as a “meaning” (which may be in any case only part of what the poem is about) which they in some way illustrate or imitate. Sounds exist first at a level of pure sense enjoyment, of appreciation of words for their own sake, as rhythmic play that may also include multiple relationships through etymology and pun (paranomasia). Language in poetry is, to an exceptional degree, material. Poetry celebrates the materiality of language: the shape, sound, body of words, as they embody, and structure, linguistic experience.