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construct

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

Construct means to build or form something by combining parts; in poetry, it can suggest the deliberate shaping of a poem’s structure or meaning.

Detailed Definition
Literally, construct refers to making something by planned assembly. In poetry, it is useful when discussing how meter, image, argument, and sound are organized into a coherent whole. It belongs to craft terms because it stresses artful design rather than spontaneous overflow.
Example
Example in poetry:
A sonnet is constructed in fourteen lines with a defined rhyme scheme and volta; A poet constructs an extended metaphor by developing a single image across multiple stanzas; Epic poems are constructed through invocation, catalogue, and escalating conflict; A poet may construct a poem's meaning through careful line breaks that control pacing and emphasis; Formal verse constructs meaning partly through the tension between natural speech and metrical constraint; A poet constructing a villanelle must carefully plan how the two refrains will shift meaning by the final stanza.
Additional Notes
Construct is one of the more explicitly architectural craft terms, emphasizing the deliberate, planned nature of poetic composition, and is often used in discussions of formal verse where the poem's structure is built according to predetermined rules of meter and rhyme; the term invites comparison with more organic craft terms like grow or bloom, highlighting a tension in poetic criticism between poems that feel deliberately built versus those that feel naturally emergent; instructors might use construct to discuss how formalist critics analyze a poem's architecture, examining how individual lines function as structural elements within a larger designed whole.
Also Known As
build erect fabricate assemble create compose
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