What’s up, everyone! Welcome back to the poetry course. Today, I will explain how to dive deeper into sound in poetry by exploring OH and AI vowels.
Many modern poets don’t realize that the absence of rhyme in free verse doesn’t mean that the great poets of the 20th century didn’t understand sound deeply.
By abandoning rhyme and meter, 20th-century poets transcended into a new level of sound that can only be accessed through direct knowledge. Subtle inner rhymes in your poems aren’t that knowledge. The correspondence between vowels and their meaning is an ancient art we will study in this series.
Assignment:
Write a poem using the interplay of the long vowels OH and AI. The "OH" vowel is in "Old, Alone and Know." The "AI" sound is in "Quietly, Finally, and Me (twice)". Have these vowels repeat and dance. Post a link to your poem below! Below is an example of a poem that uses the long OH and AI vowels to dance.
Robert Creely's Poem Discussed in the Video
Love comes quietly,
finally, drops
about me, on me,
in the old ways.
What did I know
thinking myself
able to go
alone all the way
Mystery of the Seven Vowels
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