sound poetry

Nonsense syllable art

Sound poetry is verse that emphasizes acoustic qualities—rhythm, tone, phonetic texture—over semantic meaning.

Words may be fragmented, invented, or abandoned entirely in favor of pure vocalization: grunts, chants, nonsense syllables.

The tradition ranges from Dadaist experiments to contemporary performance art.

The sound poet's recitation was all percussive consonants and elongated vowels, impossible to transcribe.

Opposites
semantic content

sound poetryconfessional poetry

Poetry of raw personal revelation

political poetry · protest poetry · essay · prose poetry · lyric poetry

structural organization

sound poetrytraditional verse

Poetry with meter, rhyme

sonnets · villanelle · classical poetry · iambic pentameter · epic poetry

communicative function

sound poetrypersuasive rhetoric

Convincing discourse technique

oratory · sermon · manifesto · reportage · journalistic writing

Family

sound, sounds, poetry, resound, unsound, ultrasound, soundness, soundproof, resounds

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