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Becoming

Philosophy
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Becoming refers to the process of change, flux, or transformation, emphasizing that reality is dynamic rather than static or fixed.

Detailed Definition
In poetry, becoming symbolizes personal growth, impermanence, or cosmic evolution. Influenced by Heraclitus or Nietzsche, poets use this concept to depict life as ceaseless change—capturing moments of transition, metamorphosis, or the dissolution of fixed identity through fluid imagery and open forms.
Example
Example in poetry:
Heraclitus’s flux philosophy echoes in T.S. Eliot’s "Burnt Norton": "All shall be well, and / All manner of thing shall be well"—suggesting transformation through time; Rainer Maria Rilke’s "Archaic Torso of Apollo" ends with "You must change your life," implying ongoing becoming; Muriel Rukeyser’s "The Book of the Dead" documents industrial tragedy while showing workers’ identities in flux; Ocean Vuong’s "Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong" portrays selfhood as fluid and provisional; Heraclitus’s river—"you cannot step into the same river twice"—is reimagined in Anne Carson’s "The Glass Essay" as emotional and psychic transformation.
Additional Notes
Becoming, central to Heraclitus, Nietzsche, and Deleuze, opposes static identity in favor of process and flux; in poetry, it appears in open forms, fluid syntax, metamorphic imagery, and themes of transformation (e.g., Ovidian myths reimagined by Rich or Carson); useful for reading poems that resist closure or fixed meaning—where the self, nature, or language is always in motion, never fully “arrived.”
Also Known As
Process Flux Transformation
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