L ooked down on like a rowdy boy, sound is the least-tamed, least open to analysis, poetic device; the one most often accused of excess, dismissed as “noise”, suspected of conning the reader into a false belief of meaning and apologized for when discovered. Sound seduces most because it enters the reader's consciousness well under the analytical radar, provides a backgound to the poem much as the music in a film provides background to the drama, lending a subtext that leads the reader one way, then another, sometimes in contrast to the overt “action” sometimes as complement or enrichment, all the way to the end of a poem. Try this: turn the sound down on your television and put on Vivaldi's “Winter” from The Four Seasons, see how it casts all the ongoing drama into a fateful and melancholy trajectory, even the news (especially the news!).

The power of sound, especially when wedded to a common purpose with all other devices in the poem, is undeniable. Yet, this poetic device is not much in evidence in contemporary poetry except in a self-conscious, self-mocking way in the post-language group, in a tip of the hat to Stein's soundplay. Fortunately, there are poets like this issue's featured poet, Martha Zwieg, who prove that sound is still poetry's secret weapon:

Wet cat, long-haired tail aloft & parted in fronds,
squeezes in doorwise out of the rain, & just so I was born,
slick, quick & slipped (once) through the twice-
in-a-lifetime only...