Poets and songwriters utilize aspects of language that are essential for prose writers to know. Take the slow, repeated vowels and consonants Joyce uses in “The Dead”: “…his soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe…” or the hasty sibilance alive in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Oh wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets!” Sound and rhythm help create sense and emotion, and by paying close and purposeful attention to the words we use—the beginnings of them, the interior sounds of them, the rhythm of them—we can evoke and ignite those senses and those emotions. In this Eleventh Hour you’ll hear (and practice) how techniques used in the sung and the spoken can help us create magic on the page.
