ABSTRACT
Sound is one of the most alluring and pleasing elements of poetry, and it also does its work in prose. Tracing iterative patterns of sound is far from straightforward, but it is easier in a short poem than in a longer poem, where there are likely to be more of them. Poetry makes use of repeated sound patterns, that is, it exaggerates and elaborates the natural limitations of language, namely that there are so many sounds that can be understood in any particular tongue. It makes use of – and exploits to its own ends – another aspect of language: rhythm. Because language itself is necessarily iterative, even poetry that doesn't have a frame metre – so-called free verse – will have some kind of rhythmic pattern. Rhythm as an aspect of the iterative context, can be part a key part of the close reading of a poem which, on the surface, appears not to have any specific iterative qualities.
