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Exterior

Constraint
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 poem that describes only external actions or settings, avoiding internal states.

Detailed Definition
Exterior constraint forbids psychological exposition, limiting the poem to observable phenomena—gestures, landscapes, objects; this technique aligns with imagism or objective correlative theory, forcing emotional subtext to emerge indirectly through concrete detail, and uses observational discipline to evoke feeling without explicit declaration, trusting reader inference within sensory boundaries.
Example
Example in poetry:
Exterior constraint applies external rules: writing only with words from a newspaper headline; using GPS coordinates to determine line breaks; poems based on weather data; constraint poets follow chess move sequences; exterior rules like “no words over two syllables”; Oulipo’s “prisoner’s constraint” (avoiding curved letters).
Additional Notes
Exterior constraint imports rules from outside poetry—e.g., chess moves, weather data, legal texts. It expands poetry’s boundaries. Students collaborate with other disciplines. It’s central to conceptual and documentary poetics.
Also Known As
Outer form external structure
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