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bind

Craft Terms
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

Bind means to tie, fasten, or hold things together; in poetry, it can suggest connection, constraint, or the linking of separate parts into a whole.

Detailed Definition
Literally, bind is the act of securing one thing to another. In poetry, it may describe the way rhyme, repetition, or metaphor holds a poem together, or how emotion and memory are tied into the text. The word is common in craft-based poetic language because it implies both joining and tension.
Example
Example in poetry:
A refrain can bind stanzas together, creating cohesion across a long poem, as in ballads; Rhyme schemes bind lines into couplets or quatrains, reinforcing the poem's structure; A shared central metaphor can bind an otherwise loosely structured free verse poem; In a sonnet sequence, recurring images bind individual poems into a unified narrative; A poet may bind two contrasting ideas together through a single extended metaphor, as metaphysical poets often did; Alliteration and assonance can bind words together sonically even without formal rhyme.
Additional Notes
Bind carries connotations of both connection and constraint, making it a productively ambiguous craft term for discussing poems about relationships, obligation, or formal structure; in prosody, binding often refers to how rhyme and meter tie lines together into a cohesive unit, while thematically it can describe emotional or familial ties that both support and restrict; students should consider the etymological link to "bond," which shares this double sense of connection and limitation, and instructors might use this term to explore how formal constraints in a poem can mirror thematic content about restriction or commitment.
Also Known As
tie secure fasten lace tie together Knot
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