Contemporary Literature

During my time spent reading Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill, I was continuously captivated by Wah’s entirely unique style of “sound prose.” Sound prose (or sound poetry) is the merging of “literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values” (Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “Sound Poetry”). That is to say, the formatting of many of Wah’s entries in Diamond Grill is rather obscure; and in order to understand the semantics of these entries the phonetics and alliterative placement of the words must be thoroughly acknowledged and felt. As an example:

“… [P]ooled under the fifty-five-foot deep Quoi Ek Cutting railroaded and bouldered basket case against the Yellow Oath if I had any biased mind to invent lies, or to utter falsehood, the high Heaven, the true God, will punish me, sink me in the river and drown me in the deep sea, forfeit my future generations and cast my soul into hell for ever and ever…” (Wah 130-131).

The overall effect of Wah’s sound prose is such an exquisite intellectual treat and feat, as I feel that it appeals to the readers’ inherent senses as much as their academic, logical mind. In the aforementioned example, the reader may easily be able to detect anger within the passage due to the sporadic rhythm and harsh sounds of the words. The meaning and semantics of the phrase may seem abstract yet the importance behind these words lie within their structure and organic, free-flowing arrangement. The reason why I appreciate sound prose and poetry so deeply is because they require feeling and not just reason to be fully understood.

Further, in one of last week’s Contemporary Literature lectures we discussed the idea of how Wah intended for these particularly phonetic-oriented entries to imitate the sound/art of scatting in jazz music. I recently discovered that Fred Wah majored in both English Literature and Music here at UBC, which would be instrumental (haha…!) to his brilliance in showcasing his historiography by way of a musical and literary collaboration. In this following link, Wah recites from his collection of poems, Is A Door. Listen closely to the sound and conceptual shapes of his words:

(If Fred Wah’s voice doesn’t put you into a trance of relaxation, I don’t know what will.)

One other prominent Canadian writer who employs sound poetry is Earle Birney, whose poem “Vancouver Lights” (1941) greatly displays abstract shapes of verses and the (succinct) rhythm of words:

            On this mountain’s brutish forehead with terror of space


            I stir      of the changeless night and the stark ranges

           of nothing      pulsing down from beyond and between

           the fragile planets      We are a spark beleaguered

           by darkness      this twinkle we make in a corner of emptiness

           how shall we utter our fear that the black Experimentress

           will never in the range of her microscope find it

(Canadian Poetry Online, s.v. “Earle Birney: Poems”)

The artistic projections involved in creating a poetic or prosaic sound piece is genuinely intriguing. I feel the writing becomes more engaging, for it appears as an imaginative puzzle in need of being solved in an organic, musically- and visually-sensical manner that appeals to the readers’ sentiments. How did the formatting of this Earle Birney poem shape your perception of his semantic intentions? Does the concept of sound prose/poetry help or hinder your contextual understanding of the literary content? Is the sound or shape of words and verses even relevant to most readers?

Conclusively, just as Wah focuses on cultural and racial hybridity in Diamond Grill, he ultimately translates these notions into the structure of his bio-textual prose through musical and literary hybridization – Two passions combined into one text in order to recount a lifelong (and ongoing) political and personal experience.

Citations 

“Earle Birney: Poems.” Canadian Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries. n.d. Web. 25 Sept 2014. <http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/birney/poem1.htm>

“Sound Poetry.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 4 Sept 2014. Web. 25 Sept 2014. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_poetry>

Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2006. Print.