Getting Used to Hearing Sound: an Exercise

One of the immense benefits of being a teacher is that I’m constantly making exercises to engage young people’s imaginations. Sometimes the goal of an exercise is the focus the senses, sometimes it’s to challenge the perception, sometimes it’s to distract their anxious minds long enough that the unconscious can speak suddenly.

Sometimes, when I’m looking at an old syllabus, I find these and think–“I need to do this.” My throat is thick with anxiety and fear, right now. Every day I wake up thinking–What can I say that will make a difference? Power isn’t interested in truth, so what’s an artist to do?

So, this is the kind of exercise I developed a few years ago because I realized students couldn’t hear sound effects in poems except rhyme. I wanted to give them a way into listening to and making subtler sounds as well.

Sound Exercise

Part 1)

Write five 10 syllable lines for each of these five long vowel sounds:

ay, ee, i, oh, oo

Write five 10 syllable lines for each of these five short vowel sounds:

ah, eh, ih, on, uh

Rules:
There should be at least three instances of each particular vowel sound per line.
Avoid direct rhyming.

So, for a line of “ay”, you might have this:

The pain of hating is halfway to ache.

For “eh”:

The wet bed stands silent, a memory.

The lines don’t have to make sense exactly, but it’s not a bad thing if they do.

Part 2)
When you’re done with the fifty “sound” lines, take some of the lines and use them to write a poem in which one of the vowel sounds plays a noticeable role.