To the Lighthouse: Sound and Rhythm

(The following is excerpted from Thirteen Ways of Reading Haiku, which was first published in The Mamba, 5, March 2018 and reprinted here by kind permission of the author, NeverEnding Story contributor Michael Dylan Welch )

Sound and Rhythm

It also helps to think of sound in haiku—not sound as a subject, but how the words themselves sound. Haiku can be just as lyrical as a longer poem. Try saying each poem aloud when you encounter it, or at least try hearing it in your head. Rhyme is typically too overpowering in a poem as short as haiku, but assonance, consonance, slant rhymes, and other sound techniques may enhance the poem. Don’t let the poem’s sounds pass you by. And pay attention to the rhythm of each line. Are the line breaks natural and unobtrusive, or is a useful effect produced by an unexpected line break? Look for the poem’s music and let it sing in you.

                          Listening . . .

                After a while,

                     I take up my axe again

                                —Rod Willmot

                Muttering thunder . . .

                     the bottom of the river

                          scattered with clams

                                —Robert Spiess

The first of these two poems is about sound, but the point here is to think about the sounds of the words themselves. In Willmot’s poem, a strong moment of silence occurs after the first line. We don’t know what the poet is listening to, perhaps the call of a far-off bird, but it is enough to attract his attention, and we dwell in that appreciation for a moment of listening before he takes up his axe again. And we surely also hear the poet’s next swing of the axe—that thwack of steel into cedar. Spiess’s poem, meanwhile, is also about sound (the rolling of thunder, contrasted with clams that seem silent at the river’s bottom—and notice how the river is rolling too). But the poem uses sound as well, as with the similar “tt” sounds of “mutter” and “scatter,” repeated again in “bottom.” Additional sounds repeat in the last syllables of “mutter,” “thunder,” “river,” and “scatter,” and recurring “m,” “r,” and “s” sounds add to the poem’s sonorous tightness. The poem’s pleasing rhythm also contributes to its music. And although the word “clams” finds no sound connection with any other words, this difference gives the word emphasis, sharpening our focus.