You probably first read a poem to yourself, silently, but most poems also create sense through sounds, unlike concrete poetry, which generally operates visually. Sound brings attention to both individual words that are drawn together through their sound and to the overall feeling or experience. For example, when reading "The Raven", you hear the bird's lonely call, the wind in the trees, and finally, just before the end, the drop of blood from its wing.
Words that have similar sounds tend to be grouped together, so that when reading the poem out loud, it becomes clear what word fits with each sound. For example, "nest" and "rest" both begin with "n". "Nest" means a place where birds build their homes, while "rest" means a place where birds can stop for a break.
At the end of each line, there is a punctuation mark: an exclamation point for joy, a question mark for surprise, and a period for sadness. These marks help us connect the lines of verse and give the reader time to reflect on what has been read.
Sound is important in poetry because words are only signs for ideas, and no sign can stand alone.
As the previous answer illustrates, "music of poetry" generally refers to components of a poem other than the actual words; nevertheless, as you will see below, words also include melody. The melody of a poem is the way it sounds, and the simplest place to hear it is in the rhythm of a poem. A poem's rhythm is the pattern of stresses (high notes) and pauses (low notes). Rhythmic patterns can be regular or irregular.
Words are the only direct object of the music of a poem. Other items that contribute to its sound but are not direct objects include meter, rhyme, alliteration, and consonance. Meter is the regular repetition of lines, meters, or stanzas. There are many different kinds of meters used in poetry, such as iambic pentameter and trochaic tetrameter. Iambic pentameter has five feet: an iambus (a short syllable followed by a long one), a spondee (two long syllables followed by a short one), a dactyl (five short syllables), a monometer (one long syllable), and a periphrasis (a combination of different types of feet). Trochaic tetrameter has four feet: a spondee, an iambus, a dactyl, and a monometer. Music, language, and psychology all play a role in how we perceive meter.
The Sound of Sense approach employs specific sounds and tones to develop aural awareness of the subject. The sound of the words blends with the rhythm of the lines to convey the poem's message. In addition, the speaker's tone varies from gentle to assertive as they seek to understand what it means to be human.
Check out this video tutorial by Jennifer Michael Hecht on how to recite a poem:
Reciting Poetry: A Guide for Students
Here are some other resources for learning how to recite poetry:
Poetry, like other genres of literature, is written to communicate ideas, convey emotions, and generate imagery. Poets select words based on their meaning and acoustics, then arrange them to produce a meter. Some poems use rhyme systems with two or more lines that conclude in words that sound similar. This similarity creates a pattern that allows the reader to follow the poem's theme and get its message across.
A poem can be as simple as a few words written on a piece of paper or it can be a long narrative with characters, situations, and dialogue. The only requirement for something to be considered a poem is that it uses language and follows a structure that produces meaning.
Every poem is unique because it expresses an idea, a feeling, or a response from the poet. Some poems are inspired by events that have taken place or things that have been seen or heard. Other poems are created at random under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Still others are written according to a formula or scheme. No matter how a poem is created, it always has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The first thing you need to know about how poems work is that they contain images and ideas related to each other through connections called metaphors. These connections make sense when reading between the lines (or beyond them depending on how far you want to look), but may not be clear right away when reading over the top.
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