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Sonic poetry

Genre
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

Poetry emphasizing sound texture, rhythm, and oral performance as main structural elements

Detailed Definition
Sonic poetry is a genre that prioritizes the phonetic and acoustic qualities of language over conventional semantics, often using invented words, vocalizations, and non-lexical utterances to explore the musicality of speech; emerging from Dadaist and Futurist movements, it treats the voice as an instrument and the poem as a performance, exemplified by Kurt Schwitters’ “Ursonate” or contemporary practitioners like Jaap Blonk who foreground sound as the primary poetic medium.
Example
Example in poetry:
Verse focused on sound over meaning: Kurt Schwitters’s "Ursonate"; bpNichol’s concrete sound poems; E. E. Cummings’s typographical experiments with phonetics; Dadaist vocal compositions using nonsense syllables
Additional Notes
Sonic poetry (or Sound Poetry) is a type of poetry, often experimental, where the acoustic quality of the human voice is paramount, sometimes using non-lexical sounds, abstract utterances, or phonetic arrangements instead of traditional language and meaning; related to Concrete Poetry.
Also Known As
Sound poetry phonetic poetry sonic verse Acoustic verse
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