Home › Glossary › Letter D

Directness

Concept
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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

A poetic quality characterized by unmediated expression, immediate emotional presence, and absence of rhetorical distance or artifice.

Detailed Definition
Directness in poetry refers to unadorned, plainspoken language that communicates emotion or observation without metaphorical mediation, favoring clarity, honesty, and immediacy to forge a strong, unmediated connection between speaker and reader.
Example
Example in poetry:
William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just to Say” states plainly: “I have eaten / the plums”; Charles Bukowski’s “so you want to be a writer?” declares: “if it doesn’t come bursting out of you”; Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” opens with direct address: “You do not have to be good”; Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” begins plainly: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”
Additional Notes
Directness values plain language, clear syntax, and unadorned expression; championed by William Carlos Williams and the Objectivists—ask: “What is essential?” and cut everything else.
Also Known As
Plain speech unadorned utterance stark clarity unembellished voice Immediacy
Skip to main content