Sound and Mood

Let's return to one of those questions we asked about the opening poetry readings at the beginning of this lesson.

• What feeling did you get from the sounds as you listened to the poems?

I might listen to "S.W.I.M." by Nereo II and feel a kind of urgency and seriousness. I might feel unsettled.

• Where does this come from?

• What does it mean?

The imagery asks you to make some connections you might not have before, such as with the phrases "stage dive into a pool of cool human beings," or "Hard-driving at 120 words per minute." The reading is fast-paced, so the images come at you in an overlapping, and sometimes overwhelming way. It is the sound, however: fast, breathless, and punctuating, that contributes most to what you feel when you hear that poem. And what you feel when you hear a poem is equivalent to the mood of the poem.