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Composition

Art
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

The arrangement of elements within a work of art. In poetry, composition concerns how images, sounds, lines, and ideas are organized.

Detailed Definition
Composition is the deliberate ordering of visual, verbal, and structural elements so that a work guides attention and produces meaning. In poetry, it includes stanza shape, sequence, pacing, repetition, white space, image placement, and shifts in voice. Discussing composition helps readers see that a poem's effect arises not only from what it says, but also from the relationships it creates among its parts across the page and through time.
Example
Example in poetry:
Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” composes its description by moving from the fish’s exterior details to the speaker’s emotional recognition; A poet can compose a sonnet so the turning point arrives when the visual perspective shifts from a painting’s foreground to its horizon; In “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” William Carlos Williams arranges attention around plowing, sailing, and spring, making Icarus’s fall deliberately small; A poem about a still life can use composition by placing a bright apple, a shadowed bottle, and an empty chair in an order that guides the reader’s eye
Additional Notes
Composition in poetry is the deliberate placement and sequencing of parts: stanza breaks, shifts in voice, recurring images, and turns in argument. Ask how the order affects meaning. A poem may compose experience chronologically, associatively, or through juxtaposition, much as a painting directs the eye.
Also Known As
Artistic Composition Pictorial Composition Typesetting Drafting
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