The Sound Effects of Poetry 7: Pure Sound

What if your poem is just full of pure sound? That’s called onomatopoeia and this post will tell you all about it.

The Sound Effects of Poetry 7: Pure Sound

How To Turn Your Poem Into Pure Sound

Sound effects can do many things for poets: they create structure, rhythm, and meaning. They’re sensual, they engage the reader, and they simply make a poem more interesting. They’re like glittering sprinkles on a very yummy cake.

What if you could take this just one step further, and go all-out on sound? That’s called onomatopoeia and we’ll talk about it in this post.

This is a seven-part series on the sound effects of poetry. Please read the posts in their numerical order:

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 1 – The Basics

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 2 – Sound Creates Meaning

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 3 – How To Run Your Rhymes

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 4 – How To Make Rhyme Patterns Work

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 5 – How To Create Harmony Without Rhymes

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 6 – Rhythm in Poetry

The Sound Effects of Poetry 7 – Pure Sound

So…What Exactly Is Onomatopoeia?

Usually, you cannot tell what a word means just by hearing it. Not unless that word is onomatopoeic. That’s the magic of it all: the sound of a word imitates its meaning. You understand at once what someone else is saying.

The word’s origin tells us more: In classical Greek, ‘onomatopoeia’ comes from onoma, meaning ‘name, and poiein, meaning ‘to make.’ Making names for things – that’s like creating a new language!

Let’s look at an example. Look at a snake. What does it do? It hisses. Now that’s onomatopoeia! Because the word ‘hiss’ doesn’t mean anything else than the sound produced by the snake. We made a new name.

In this sense, onomatopoeia is a clever bypass of the existing language. Instead of making up a new word, we reproduce a sound connected to a thing. The question is: are we humans simply too lazy to come up with a word?

Maybe yes, maybe no. See, it’s rather smart. Onomatopoeia is a way to translate something intellectual (the meaning) into something sensual (the sound). An onomatopoeic word lets us feel meaning. It’s a great way of engaging readers. It’s the reason all poets are attracted to onomatopoeia. Let’s take a look where we can find these magical words.

Sources For Onomatopoeia

Human Sounds And Actions:

Many body functions go hand in hand with specific sounds. That sound is then translated into onomatopoeic words, like hiccup, belch, murmur, snore, growl.

Animal Kingdom:

Almost all animal sounds are onomatopoeic words! Snakes hiss, horses neigh or whinny, and leopards snarl. These verbs have no other meaning than their sound. If you’d like more examples, here’s a list of animal sounds.

Nature:

Apart from animals, nature itself makes a lot of sounds. Just think about water. It can splash, drip, drizzle, gush, or gurgle. The weather is another great source. Rain can pitter-patter against the windows, wind can howl, and thunder crashes.

Machinery:

We all use machines but only a few of us truly understand how they work. Onomatopoeia lets us talk about the machine and what it does. That’s how words like beep, honk, chug, zap, click, or hum were invented.

Colliding Objects:

When two objects collide, it’s hard to tell beforehand which sound they might make. A hand is very different from a wall. Neither of them makes sounds on its own. That’s why humans imitate the sound when two objects collide with words like bang, ker-plash, and wham.

Examples Of Onomatopoeia

As mentioned above, onomatopoeia is great for making readers feel what you mean. This fusion of meaning and feeling tends to be used heavily in some areas:

The language Of Comics:

Comics have always included these little words in their illustrations. These words weren’t part of the captions or the characters’ speech bubbles. No, they were integrated into the drawings to underline the action. But the occasional ‘Bang!’ soon became a verb of everyday speech. Of course, you can still say ‘He closed the door.’ But isn’t it much more sensual to say ‘He banged the door shut’?

Advertising:

Advertising aims to sell. Selling is easier if buyers not only know that they need an item but that they feel that need. Then the advert creates an irresistible urge to buy. Here are some examples from Wikipedia:

Rice Krispies, the cereal sold by Kellogg’s, was made popular with three characters named after the sound the cereal makes when in contact with milk, Snap, Crackle, and Pop.

Advertisements for road safety also use this sound effect, like the ‘click it or ticket’ slogan from the US Department of Transportation.

Literature:

Many writers have used onomatopoeia, in all kinds of genres, and all kinds of subjects.

Onomatopoeia is often used in children’s books because it is so easy to understand. Dorren Morin wrapped her whole story around this sound effect in her book Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type (2000).

In his famous work Ulysses, James Joyce wrote this sentence (I have bolded the onomatopoeic words):

‘Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.’

James Joyce, Ulysses (chapter 15)

Here’s another example by James Joyce, trying to tell a whole story in one long onomatopoeic word. Let’s see if you can tell what he means:

‘Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunnt-rovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk’

James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake (3^rd paragraph of the first page)

This word is supposed to stand for the thunderclap when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden apple. It includes the word ‘thunder’ in different languages.

Here’s an excerpt from Edgar Allen Poe and his poem The Bells. Not only does he repeat the word ‘bells’ often to make you hear them, but he also has many other words that create sounds (I have bolded them for you).

[…] Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!

What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling. […]

The Pros And Cons

Onomatopoeia is a great tool for showing. It enables the readers to feel what you’re talking about. It engages the reader. For the writer, it’s a wonderful playground. There’s hardly more creativity involved than when you invent your own language.

That’s where the danger lies. Sounds aren’t a universal language. They can be misunderstood, or misinterpreted. Ask two people to imitate a sound and you might get two different words. This gets even more complicated if these two people have different mother tongues.

Let me give you some examples, comparing English and German. A frog in the USA says ‘ribbitt’ but in Germany, it says ‘quak.’ In English, when people sneeze, they say ‘a-choo.’ In German, they say ‘hatschi.’ Now, who’s to say which language is right?

How To Use Onomatopoeia

As with all things, it’s the dosage that makes the poison. Use this effect in good measure!

If you write a complete text, poem, or story, in onomatopoeia, it’s going to stress your readers. They need to decode your sound language before they understand what it’s all about (just look at the example from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake again).

It is a wonderful sound effect to use. Use it strategically whenever you need more showing. Use it when you want to get under the reader’s skin. Or to drive home your message. Whenever you want your reader to feel what you mean. Or when you just want to have fun!

The Last Word

This post concludes our series on the sound effects of poetry. I hope you have discovered some new ways of writing, not just verse, but any kind of text. Remember, one of our jobs as writers is to entertain the readers. Whatever you want to say, sound effects make your message sound all the more interesting. These effects also make writing that message fun.

Happy writing!

By Susanne Bennett. Susanne is a German-American writer who is a journalist by trade and a writer by heart. After years of working at German public radio and an online news portal, she has decided to accept challenges by Deadlines for Writers. Currently she is writing her first novel with them. She is known for overweight purses and carrying a novel everywhere. Follow her on Facebook.

The Sound Effects of Poetry 7: Pure Sound