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Dada poem

Form
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

An anti-establishment poetic form from the early 20th-century Dada movement, embracing nonsense, chance operations, and rejection of logic or aesthetics.

Detailed Definition
A Dada poem rejects logic, aesthetics, and conventional syntax in favor of absurdity, chance operations, and anti-art gestures, emerging from the early 20th-century avant-garde movement that sought to dismantle bourgeois culture through nonsense, collage, and performative provocation.
Example
Example in poetry:
Tristan Tzara’s “To Make a Dadaist Poem” instructs cutting up newspaper words randomly; Hugo Ball’s sound poem “Karawane” uses invented phonemes in Dada rebellion; Mina Loy’s “Brancusi’s Golden Bird” fractures syntax in Dada style; Contemporary Dada poems appear in digital glitch poetry that subverts meaning through randomness.
Additional Notes
Dada poem embraces nonsense, chance, and anti-art principles. Related to Dadaism movement (WWI era). Rejects traditional meaning and coherence. Famous examples: Tristan Tzara's instruction poems, Hugo Ball's sound poems.
Also Known As
Nonsense poem anti-art verse absurdist poetry Dadaist verse
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