Using Aural Devices in Poetry I: Sound Units

What are Aural Devices, and why should I use them?

Aural devices (also known as sound devices, aural imagery or prosodic devices) are "a writer's strategic use of language...to evoke images and create sounds within his or her work." It's descriptive language that appeals to the senses--in this case, obviously sound--to re-create a sensory experience that the poet felt when composing their poem, or in the scene or emotions they're conveying, as well as being a powerful rhetoric device to let your words resonate with the reader.  

The best-known example is rhyme. While this is not always used to create a sensory experience, it is a powerful tool that can be used to express strong feelings and the meaning and impact of your poetry. However, it is also one of the most hated--in particular, end rhymes are becoming more and more detested by the day. People will say, "I don't want to be held back by rhyme! I want to be able to write whatever I want, without being limited with word choice!" or something else less far less dramatic.

In many cases, this leads them down a darkened path of poetic dislightenment that ends up with the careless scattering of sentence fragments and the abandonment of clauses upon a page, while a helpless 'i' looks on, unable to make sense of a narrative-less mess of words. Okay, okay; I'm being hyperbolic--poems, of course, don't have to rhyme. But without properly utilising or understanding aural devices, many poets will just churn out bland stanza after bland stanza, with not a care in the world of how the poem sounds. So why should you care how a poem sounds?

Well, for starters, if you're going to ignore aural devices, you might as well just call it prose. And then I'll have a go at you for writing rubbish prose. What I'm saying here is, I'm a bit of an arsehole. But moreover, aural devices are single-handily the most important part of poetry. It's what seperates it from just normal writing, it's what transcends it beyond mere words, it's what forms the heart and soul of every good verse. Just read John Donne's Death be not proud:

"...Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppies or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swellst thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die!"

All he's saying here is: "Death doesn't act by itself, but relies on outside forces. It's just like sleeping, which I've done already, except when I wake up I'll be in heaven. It's no big deal."

Why isn't my sentence part of one of the greatest sonnets of all time? Because (other than lacking the fantastic imagery of Donne's sonnet) I haven't done anything with sound in it. Read the last line of that quote out loud, again and again. Those four thumping stressed syllables at the end: DEATH, THOU SHALT DIE. That's John Donne right up in Death's face, showing how little he fears it: DEATH, THOU SHALT DIE. That's the sound of the poem, resonating through your mind: DEATH, THOU SHALT DIE. And people want to ignore that for freedom of word choice? English has one of the most expansive vocabularies in the world, a veritable smorgusboard of synonyms, and unlimited ways to construct nearly every sentence. If you can't stick to a simple rhyme scheme and find the words for it, the problem is not with the rhyme; it's with you.

However--as I've said--not every poem has to have rhyme. It's only one part of using aural devices in poems, and actually, possibly the wekeast. Understanding the different aural devices available allows you to accentuate the atmosphere you want to create, form fanstastic imagery, and drive home the meaning and themes of your poetry. In these three guides, I'll outline the different aural devices in English poetry, and how you can use them to improve your writing. So, let's begin.

There are three types of aural devices: Rhyme, Sound Units and Meter.

I'll begin with the one that people probably know the least about, and yet, is the most important: Sound Units.

Sound Units are the different parts of words and languages that have different auditory effects.  They are also sometimes called Prosodic Devices, or, well, just plain ol' sound. In linguistics they're called 'articulatory phonetics' and it's all about how the human mouth can create different sounds based on the movement of the mouth and lips, which is probably really interesting, but no-one cares about that right now. Real linguists probably hate me right now for mangling the definition, but we will move swiftly on.

The first two sound units to tackle are plosives and sibilants. These are both consonant sound units, meaning they deal with the sounds that consonants from the alphabet produce. What's nice about this is that whoever named them was clever enough to add the sounds into the name. Well done him!

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}

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!

Key Words:
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.