In the chapter about Sound in Mary Oliver’s “A Poetry Handbook,” she discusses the different types of sound and their different uses throughout poetry. She begins by talking about vowels and consonants as the general category. “A vowel forms a perfect sound when uttered alone. A consonant cannot be perfectly uttered till joined to a vowel.” (Pg. 21) The different levels of vowels and consonants surprised me because I have never even heard of that. Oliver’s description of these topics increases our understanding of the material, encouraging us to try it. The alphabet is very important, considering that it is our working material for writing poetry, and we have to start with it.
Something that I enjoyed reading was under what circumstances we use certain phrases, and how the mutes have a lot to do with it. The author uses the poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening as an example of our types of vowels and consonants. “Line 2 of the last stanza both begins and ends with a mute, and there is the heavy p in “promises” in the center of the line.” The extent of your language varies from person to person, but poets don’t typically plan out how many vowels and consonants they are going to use in a poem, it just happens naturally with practice. Many technical devices assisted the poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The first one, however, is sound.
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