Imaginary Friends of Substance

Author’s Note

                         Please consider the following words:     our    hour    aspire    while   every.

          For too many years, I have agonized over the syllabication of these words and other similar phonetically structured ones. Poetically, I count syllables, and have wavered between counting, “our” as having one or two syllables.

          My natural sensibilities, freed from academic pundits, push me to make my count of “our” as two syllables just as “ginger” is two. Thus, “aspire” is three, not two, syllables.

          It is the subtlety of pronunciation. “Ginger” according to my dictionary splits the two syllables into: ‘gin’ and ‘ger’. No problem given the rules taught to me and enforced by the Roman Catholic nuns of my elementary school. Here is the kick. The phonetic spelling of “ginger,” according to my dictionary, is ‘jinjer’ and is divided as ‘jin’ / ‘jer’. Unfortunately, I do not believe that is how the word is pronounced in the common tongue. My natural tendency is to say, ‘jinj’ / ‘er’ because ‘er’ is a substantial sound. Therefore, the word “our” has two equally strong sounds: ‘ou’ (as in the word “ow”) and ‘er’ as in “water” without the ‘t’. Then there are words like “while” and “table”. “Table” is easy for me to split into ‘ta’ and ‘ble’. Hence I am inclined to count “while” as phonetically being ‘whi’ and ‘le’.

          Needless to say, this is probably argumentative. However, I am hence forth counting “our” as two syllables and “aspire” as three, etcetera. 

          Then there is the word “every”which my dictionary divides this word as ‘eve ry’. This does not sit well with me. The word “ever” is divided as ‘ev er’ which presents no problem for me. However, “every,” according to my sound sense is ‘ev er y’: ‘ev er’ plus ‘y’. These are issues of articulation verses pronunciation. 

          Imaginary Friends of Substance is an extended poem that is more reliant upon articulation of sounds than on pronunciation and stanzas are roughly speaking alternating / 7, 7 /5, 7, 5 /  chained stanzas. In this sense, Imaginary Friends of Substance, is an exploration of sound sense infused into the structure of Japanese poetry rooted in a haiku tradition that I first encountered with the poetry of Basho. Imaginary Friends of Substance is not, however, a haiku and I am a citizen of a different culture/tradition. Hence, I am influenced by Japanese haiku, but, as a poet, my creativity develops its own form of self expression.