More Poet's Place Poems

Noisy Korea Now My Home

Noisy Korea Now My Home

When I first came
To South Korea in 1979
To do my Peace Corps duty
In a rural country town,

I thought that the old name
Of Korea
“the land of the morning calm”
Was absurd.

Korea was a noisy place
From early morning on.

Cars, horns, radio TV blaring
People talking to crowds everywhere
At night people drink and dine.

And loudspeakers
Blasting you awake
At 6 a.m.

And during elections
Sound trucks everywhere.

Now 45 years later
It is my home
No longer a noisy
Chaotic exotic place
Just home.

We have already discussed how specific, concrete nouns and strong, active verbs are used to paint engaging word pictures. We have also examined the role that syllables in patterns of heavy stress and lighter stress play in the development of rhythm. Today, we are going to peel a deeper layer off the poetic onion and explore the inner sanctum where vowels and consonants reside.

Sonic texturing is another one of the filaments in the web of qualities integral to enhancing specific effect in poetry. We do not need to understand the words in order to perceive the joy in an infant's babbling. During a conversation, we can identify emotions through the inflections and tone of a speaker's voice, but the poet must make the reader hear a voice which is not audible.

Poetry is closely related to music in fundamental ways, because they both surround the performers and their audiences with vibrations from vocalizations, whether those be from human vocal apparatus or an instrumental extension of one. That shared medium of vibration provides another layer of engagement to the imagery and meaning projected in the composition, like the stroke of an artist's brush on the canvas.

Generally speaking, vowels provide the breath for emotion and music, while consonants supply the substance for reason and meaning. There are 21 consonants in the English alphabet (B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Y, Z) and 6 vowels (A, E, I, O, U, Y), with Y going both ways, depending upon usage. However, those 26 characters can generate hundreds, if not thousands, of different sounds, sometimes even within the same word, such as the "c" in "concept" or the "e" in "effect," not to mention the many, many combinations available. Those sounds have a texture which promotes, or distracts from, the impression the poet is striving to make, whether it be joy, sorrow, rage, or anticipation, just as the painter applies colors in broad strokes or little dabs. Consider the palpable difference between the words "hold" and "grasp," or the weight of "gate" and "threshold."

This is not a question of if texture exists, because it always does. The question is how much the texture contributes or detracts from the impression you are trying to achieve. Over time, poets can develop a sensitivity to the shape, weight, and texture of sounds through reading and writing with a sharper awareness. If a word or line does not feel quite right, it may be because the sonic texture is not contributing to the desired tone or image.

Your assignment: Compose a poem about some trip, factual or fictional, paying close attention to the effect the sounds of your words have on the impression you are trying to convey to your audience.
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