Something created. The etymological origin of the word
poem
is curiously, pleasantly, vague. A poem, as distinguished from
prose
, is
not
straightforward discourse. There are many variations around the definition of what poetry is, but they all address an intention to convey emotion, ideas, or experiences, in a creative way that involves both word choice and elements of song, rhythm, meter, or beat.
In researching sound devices in poetry, the term
prosody
pops up all over the place. My inner word-root-hunter could not get over the relation I saw between the words
prosody
and
prose
. But the context-clue-sleuth in me quickly understood that prosody
seemed to embody traits specific to poetry and not prose. There was also this issue of pronunciation; although it seems obvious that
prosody
should be pronounced with a long "oh" sound like
prose
, I kept hearing it said with a short o "ah" sound followed by an "s" instead of a "z" sound.
American early modernist poet Ezra Pound called prosody "the articulation of the total sound of a poem (3)." An online query results in definitions stating that prosody refers to the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry, as well as the rules that govern their usage; that prosody is the rules for writing poetry; the grammar of meter and rhythm of poetry; the patterns of stress and intonation in a language; the study of poetic meter and the art of versification; the study of sound effects (4). Incidentally, although discussions of prose writing do indeed refer to these elements of rhythm and sound, the term
prosody
is reserved for the realm of poetry. In fact, the closest English word-relative to
prosody
is actually the word
ode
, a lyric poem or a poem meant to be sung. So it is the
ODE
in
pros-OD-y
that connects us to the rules of sound in poetry.
In exploring the meaning of the term
prosody
, I am struck by the tension between noticing, studying, and appreciating the artistic sound of poetry, and a more formulaic approach which dictates rules and structures for poetry's sound. As I researched the concept of prosody in French poetry, this tension was tipped to the side of order and form. In this unit, we will not focus on the peculiarities of the classical rules of French poetry, as that will take us further from our goals at this stage, and would likely stifle rather than foster the creativity and open exploration being pursued. Instead, we will concentrate on noticing common sounds and making connections to vocabulary thematically, using poetic forms with which students will be at least somewhat familiar.
