Sound poetry

Sound poetryis an artistic form bridgingliteraryandmusical composition,in which thephoneticaspects ofhuman speechare foregrounded instead of more conventionalsemanticandsyntacticvalues; "verse without words". By definition, sound poetry is intended primarily forperformance.

History and development

20th century

While it is sometimes argued that the roots of sound poetry are to be found inoral poetrytraditions, the writing of pure sound texts that downplay the roles of meaning and structure is a 20th-century phenomenon. TheFuturistandDadaistVanguards of the beginning of this century were the pioneers in creating the first sound poetry forms.Filippo Tommaso Marinettidiscovered that onomatopoeias were useful to describe a battle in Tripoli where he was a soldier, creating a sound text that became a sort of a spoken photograph of the battle. Dadaists were more involved in sound poetry and they invented different categories:

• Bruitist poemit is the phonetic poem, not so different from the futurist poem. Invented byRichard Huelsenbeck.
• Simultaneous poema poem read in different languages, with different rhythms, tonalities, and by different persons at the same time. Invented byTristan Tzara.
• Movement poemis the poem accompanied by primitive movements.

Later developments

Sound poetry evolved intovisual poetryandconcrete poetry,two forms based in visual arts issues although the sound images are always very compelling in them. Later on, with the development of the magnetictape recorder,sound poetry evolved thanks to the upcoming of theconcrete musicmovement at the end of the 1940s. Some sound poetics were used by later poetry movements like thebeat generationin the fifties or thespoken wordmovement in the 80's, and by other art and music movements that brought up new forms such as text sound artthat may be used for sound poems which more closely resemble "fiction or even essays, as traditionally defined, than poetry".

Early examples

Das Große Lalulá(1905) byChristian Morgenstern,in the collectionGalgenlieder.

Kroklokwafzi? Semememi!

Seiokrontro – prafriplo:

Bifzi, bafzi; hulalemi:

quasti basti bo...

Lalu lalu lalu lalu la!

Hontraruru miromente

zasku zes rü rü?

Entepente, leiolente

klekwapufzi lü?

Lalu lalu lalu lalu la!

Simarar kos malzipempu

silzuzankunkrei (;)!

Marjomar dos: Quempu Lempu

Siri Suri Sei [ ]!

Lalu lalu lalu lalu la!

Zang Tumb Tumb(1914) is a sound poem and concrete poem by Italian futuristF. T. Marinetti.

Hugo Ballperformeda pieceof sound poetry in a reading atCabaret Voltairein 1916:

"I created a new species of verse, 'verse without words,' or sound poems....I recited the following:

gadji beri bimba

glandridi lauli lonni cadori... "

(Albright, 2004)

Kurt Schwitters'Ursonate(1922–32, "Primal Sonata" ) is a particularly well known early example:

The first movementrondo's principalthemebeing a word, "fmsbwtözäu" pronouncedFümms bö wö tää zää Uu,from a 1918 poem byRaoul Hausmann,apparently also a sound poem. Schwitters also wrote a less well-known sound poem consisting of the sound of the letter W. (Albright, 2004)

Chilean Vicente Huidobro's explores phonetic mutations of words in his book "Altazor" (1931).

In his storyThe Poet at Home,William Saroyanrefers to a character who practices a form of pure poetry, composing verse of her own made-up words.

Female practitioners

It has been argued that "there is a paucity of information on women's involvement in sound poetry, whether as practitioners, theorists, or even simply as listeners".Among the earliest female practitioners are Berlin poetElse Lasker-Schüler,who experimented in what she called "Ursprache" (Ur-language), and the New York Dada poet and performerBaroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.The Baroness's poem "Klink-Hratzvenga (Death-wail)" was published inThe Little Reviewin March 1920 to great controversy. Written in response to her husband Leopold von Freytag-Loringhoven's suicide, the sound poem was "a mourning song in nonsense sounds that transcended national boundaries".The Baroness was also known for her sexually charged sound poetry, as seen in "Teke Heart (Beating of Heart)", only recently published.

Europe has produced sound poets in the persons of Greta Monach (Netherlands) andKatalin Ladik(Hungary), who released an EP of her work, "Phonopoetica", in 1976. In England, Paula Claire has been working with improvisational sound since the 1960s.Lily Greenham,born in Vienna in 1924 and later based in Denmark, Paris and London, developed a so-called neo-semantic approach during the 1970s. She coined the term 'Lingual Music' to describe herelectroacousticexperiments with tape recordings of her voice. During the 1950s she became involved with theWiener Gruppe(Vienna Group) and was an accomplished performer of sound & concrete poetry by many artists such asAlain Arias-Misson,Bob Cobbing,Gerhard Rühm,andErnst Jandl.This was due in part to her training as an operatic singer and the fact that she was fluent in eight languages.Lingual Music,a double CD collection of her work, was released posthumously in 2007 by Paradigm Discs in the UK. Her archive is now held at Goldsmiths, University of London.

The United States has produced accomplished sound poets as well:Tracie Morris,from Brooklyn, New York, began presenting sound poetry in the mid-1990s. Her live and installation sound poetry has been featured in numerous venues including the Whitney Biennial in 2002. Experimental vocalist and composerJoan La Barbarahas also successfully explored the realm of sound poetry. ComposerBeth Andersonhas been featured on several sound poetry anthologies such as "10+2: 12 American Text Sound Pieces" (1975) and the Italian 3vitre series. Other women practicing sound poetry in the US were, for instance, the Japanese artist Yoko Ono,Laurie Andersonand the Australian poetAda Verdun Howell.

The onlinemixtape"A Sound Poetry Mix Tape" (2021) features excerpts by over thirty female sound poets.

Other examples of sound poets

Later prominent sound poets includeHenri Chopin,Bob Cobbing,Ada Verdun Howell,bpNichol,Bill Bissett,Adeena Karasick,William S. Burroughs,Giovanni Fontana,Bernard Heidsieck,Enzo Minarelli,François Dufrene,Mathias Goeritz,Maurizio Nannucci,Andras Petocz,Joan La Barbara,Paul Dutton, multidisciplinary artistsJeremy Adler,Jean-Jacques Lebel,John Giorno,Henrik Aeshna,Steve Dalachinsky,Yoko OnoandJaap Blonk.

The poetEdith Sitwellcoined the termabstract poetryto describe some of her own poems which possessed more aural than literary qualities, rendering them essentially meaningless: "The poems inFaçadeareabstractpoems—that is, they are patterns of sound. They are...virtuoso exercises in technique of extreme difficulty, in the same sense as that in which certain studies by Liszt are studies in transcendental technique in music. "(Sitwell, 1949)

An early Dutch artist, Theo van Doesburg, was another prominent sound poet in the early 1900s.

The comedian and musicianReggie Wattsoften uses sound poetry as an improvisational technique in his performances, used with the intent to disorient his audience.

Theories

In their essay "Harpsichords Metallic Howl—", Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo review the theories of sound byCharles Bernstein,Gerald Bruns, Min-Quian Ma,Rachel Blau DuPlessis,Jeffrey McCaffery and others to argue that sonic poetry foregrounds its own corporality. Thus "the Baroness's sound poems let her body speak[;] through her expansive use of sound, the Baroness conveys the fluidity of gender as a constantly changing, polysemous signifier." In this way, somatic art becomes the poet's own "space-sound."

Of course, for many dadaists, such as Hugo Ball, sound poetry also presented a language of trauma, a cacophony used to protest the sound of the cannons of World War I. It was as T. J. Demos writes, "a telling stutter, a nervous echolalia."

See also

• Abstract artandasemic writing—equivalents in the visual arts
• Angel Exhaust
• Bob Cobbing
• Crosstalk: American Speech Music
• Electroacoustic music
• Jas H. Duke
• Magma (band)
• Line (music)
• Line (poetry)
• Phonaesthetics
• Scat singing
• Sound art
• Tracie Morris

Sources

• Albright, Daniel (2004).Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources.University of Chicago Press.ISBN0-226-01267-0.
• Sitwell, Edith (1949).The Canticle of the Rose Poems: 1917–1949,p.xii. New York: Vanguard Press.

External links

• UbuWeb
  • Sound Poetry - A SurveybySteve McCaffery
  • [2]
• 10 + 2 = 12 American Text-Sound PiecesThe first major recorded anthology of American sound poetry, edited byCharles Amirkhanianfor1750 Arch Records,released on LP in 1975, re-released for CD/download by Other Minds in 2003.
• Sound poetry—concrete, abstract, and postmodern.
• List of sound poets with links to audio files
• Sound poetry in French with audio files, Mitocarpe
• "AN ART BETWEEN SPEECH AND MUSIC"By PAUL KRESH; New York Times, April 3, 1983,
• Sound Poetry
• Sound Poetry on 57productions
• "Bring Da Noise: A Brief Survey of Sound Art Sound and The Literary Connection"by Kenneth GoldsmithNewMusicBox,March 1, 2004
• Poesy Planet, Eight Geese
• Messagio Galore