Defining Prosody: Sound, Structure & Meaning

Table of Contents P rosody is the disciplined study of how poems sound when spoken or read aloud, and of how that sound interacts with structure and meaning to produce an experience that is greater than the sum of its literal statements. It is not a decorative afterthought applied once the “real” content of a poem has been decided. It is one of the primary means by which poetry achieves its distinctive power. In everyday conversation we rarely notice the rhythmic and sonic properties of our speech. We focus on information, intention, and social effect. Poetry reverses that ordinary priority. In a poem the physical qualities of language (stress, duration, pitch contour, the clustering of consonants and vowels) become deliberate instruments. The poet organizes these qualities into patterns, and those patterns in turn shape, reinforce, complicate, or even contradict the semantic content. Prosody is the name we give to both the study of those patterns and the practical craft of controlling t…