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exhalation segment

Sound
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

A segment of verse shaped by the natural limits of a single exhaled breath, influencing line length, phrasing, and rhythmic pacing in performance.

Detailed Definition
An exhalation segment is a phrase or line structured to mimic the natural rhythm of breath—often short, unpunctuated, or flowing—to create intimacy, vulnerability, or organic cadence; this technique aligns poetic form with bodily experience, as in whispered confessions or meditative utterances that feel spoken rather than written.
Example
Example in poetry:
Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”: “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world”—the “yawp” as exhalation segment; Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel”: “And I / Am the arrow”—the dash as breathless exhalation; Emily Dickinson’s dashes create exhalation segments; Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You” uses line breaks as conversational exhalation; Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” uses lineation to mimic breath; contemporary breath-based poets like CAConrad use exhalation segments in ritual verse.
Additional Notes
A segment of the line or phrase that can be comfortably spoken in a single breath; a concept relevant to projective verse and the idea that the poet's natural rhythm dictates the line breaks.
Also Known As
Breath segment Exhaled unit Outbreath rhythm Breath unit
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