Last time, I wrote a bit about sound poetry with links to a bunch of examples. This post, I thought I would write a bit about how thinking about sound this way plays into my relatively abstract style (at least, sometimes.)

I often start writing with a phrase that feels rhythmically interesting and also has a combination of sounds that I like together. For example, a line I began a recent poem with is: “Rice paddy portion control.” When I hear this, it has a bounce to it. In formal music terms, I hear it as a quarter note followed by 2 eighth notes, followed by a set of eighth note triplets, followed by another quarter note. Rice / Padd-y / Por-tion-Con / Trol. If this doesn’t mean anything to you, that is NO problem! I don’t normally worry about the formal rhythm, and I only include it here in case it helps other musicians reading this hear what I’m getting at.

Then, we’ve got a collection of vowel sounds and consonants, plus the alliteration of the 2 Ps, and then also the 2 Ns in the last 2 words.

So, I might write the next line by picking some of those sounds and seeing what words come to me including similar sounds. Maybe that is the A in paddy and the Ps, so the words at, apt. If we include the C or T then act, attack, aptitude, etc.

Once I read the first line back quickly, the word correlation jumps out at me due to the matching hard C, the oh, and the -tion. So, I end up with:

Rice paddy portion control
Correlation attack
Aptitude particular
In advance of the ocean

The third line is calling back many of the same sounds from the initial line. Now I need to start adding some variety, so the 4th line still has the ad from paddy in advance as well as the oh from control in ocean, and some Ns. But, now I’ve introduced the V, so maybe I’ll keep that in mind as I continue.

Rice paddy portion control
Correlation attack
Aptitude particular
In advance of the ocean

The very collision of it smacks
Senile momentary –
Over/under conundrum

It’s a tough thing to slow down and analyze as I go, but in the second stanza I started with that new V in mind, but I still brought back the oh here and there, and smacks has the hard C and the same A sound to tie the sound of it all together while using words like momentary that has the oh again plus the M that links up with the M in smacks.

As things continue, I start to use the newly introduced sounds as seeds for new words, but here and there I’ll call back the older ones. I try to let the sounds relate with the prominent sounds changing as the lines unfold.

Rice paddy portion control
Correlation attack
Aptitude particular
In advance of the ocean

The very collision of it smacks
Senile momentary –
Over/under conundrum

Divisive in its lines,
Its corrosive vernacular,
And measuring wild
For fits of the oratory vein

So, hopefully by now you can see how the word-sounds in the 3rd stanza relate to the previous ones, while again introducing new sounds again. If I were to continue this poem, I would draw on those newly introduced sounds foremost while still winding the previous ones back in here and there in a way that flows.

Again, it is tough to slow this process down and explain it as I go because it kills the flow a bit, but I wanted to give an example of how I approach sound relationships in abstract writing. Beyond that, there is a lot of subconscious attention put into the feel of the rhythm of it all. I may have one or two words come to me for the next line as I write it, but then it is a matter of fitting the right words around those to make it bounce, roll, flutter, or whatever rhythm feels right at the time.

I am a very visual thinker, and I tend to imagine this sort of sound-forward writing as a tree. Branches of different sounds keep spreading out in different ways from one another, all stemming from a central trunk that I began with. Sometimes a branch has run its course and it is time to complete start over with a new branch, but they are all connected to the same tree.

Hopefully that provides a little insight into the basics of how I think about the inter-relationship of sounds when I do abstract writing.

Jay Mollerskov, ArtRoot Writer-in-Residence –3/17/26