More unknowns: What is a poem? Is sound more valuable than speech?

1. Just as I found myself trying to define “noise” last week, this week I find myself trying to define “poem”. In my Literary Research class on Thursday, we took time to differentiate between prose and poetry, noting that poetry has rhythm, meter, sometimes rhyme, stanzas and incorporates meaning-dense language. However, for this class we are reading about sound poetry and other non-traditional types of creating poems, like the turtle poems and other visual poems, including photocopying and painting. Thus, for my first question (which I’ll leave unanswered in the blog) I ask: What does it take for something to constitute a poem?

2. Chopin makes chaos sound pretty good in “Why I am the Author of Sound Poetry and Free Poetry” by framing it as a way to make us more alive as opposed to the “all powerful Word” that deadens so many. When I read “Word” with the capital “W”, I automatically think of the Christian Bible. However, I think much of what Chopin has to say can also relate to our use of speech (words) in general. Given that and what Chopin has to say about the significance of sound, here is my question: Is it more important to listen to the sounds people make (tone/pitch/rate of speech) rather than what is being said (words/meaning)? Likewise, is it more important for us to be aware of our own sound when reading (and writing) in addition to focusing on meaning?

A lot could be said in reply to these questions, I think. It would be interesting to rate how much attention we place on sound vs. meaning when listening to others, and how much we take in of others’ nonverbal communication. I know that I take in many messages, verbal and nonverbal, at one time; however, I think I concentrate more on interpreting/comprehending the words being said. Perhaps communication would be more successful if more direct attention was focused on sound rather than word.

Chopin claims that children are “prisoners of the word,” prisoners of education, too, in a way. Often we are directed to focus on what is being said, not necessarily how it is being said. Communication in general may be better if we spent as much or more time thinking about sound and nonverbal elements because we feel emotions, and this transmittance sometimes conflicts with the words being voiced.

When I read Chopin’s statement that “we are slaves of rhetoric, prisoners of explanation that explains nothing,” I at first felt like I was losing job security, but the more I let these words settle, the more I believe teachers have the power to act as agents of change and influence how people tune their attention to or away from sound. People may need to learn how to pay at least as much attention to sound as they do to words. Chopin implies that we need to live. We need to listen to the transmittal of emotions. It would be interesting if we abandoned the use of words in our speech for a day and tried to only communicate with non-word sounds and nonverbal communication. I wonder how difficult or surprisingly successful that might be.