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Contributor: Emily Love. Lesson ID: 10894
Few art forms affect our emotions like songs and poems. Music and words set the tone for a piece, which is part of its message. Listen songs and poems before writing your own!
Watch the music video below.
Write down two adjectives describing both. Then, keep reading to discover how to read the tone of a poem.
The music sounds light and upbeat, and the video features bright colors and nicely dressed young men.
You may have come up with adjectives like happy, energetic, old-fashioned, or hopeful. However, if you paid close attention to the words, you would have noticed the song is describing a sad situation.
Consider this verse of the song.
The music is upbeat, but the message is far from happy.
Labeling the tone — the general feeling you get from the music itself — of this song would not be an accurate description of its message.
However, the songwriter can convey a deeper meaning by pairing an upbeat tone with sad lyrics. He explains that sometimes people need to put on a show or a happy face because other people will not understand their problems.
In this case, the songwriter says it is to camouflage his sadness and to shield his pride, but there are many reasons people might pretend to be OK on the outside when they are hurting on the inside. The song becomes more meaningful as a result of this contrast or juxtaposition.
In poetry, tone means the author's attitude towards the subject or the audience.
Poets have to convey tone through word choice, so readers must pay careful attention to the author's use of language to identify the tone correctly. You use adjectives to describe tone.
For instance, a tone could be sincere, sarcastic, humorous, tragic, cheerful, hopeful, or informal. Sometimes, poets shift the tone throughout the piece of writing to reflect a natural progression from one emotion to another.
Other poems include dramatic shifts to emphasize a particular theme. Just as you use transition words when writing, poets use transition words to create shifts in tone. When you read poetry, be on the lookout for words like but, however, or, although, etc.
Consider the tone of this short poem by the famous Robert Frost.
"Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost
Before you assess the tone of this poem, listen to a reading of it. Go to Fire and Ice and click on the red play button.
The reader draws even more attention to the shift in the poem's tone. The beginning of the poem has a somewhat straightforward tone, as the poet writes:
The shift happens after the transitional word But.
The poem's second half reflects a cold, pessimistic tone. The comparison between hatred and ice is harsh, and the poet describes it as great, or immense.
By shifting from one tone to another, the poet can communicate that while desire, or passion, is fiery and often leads to destruction, hatred is equally strong in its destructive power. Frost can warn his audience to consider the dangers of following desire and storing up hatred.
When you're ready, continue on to the Got It? section to listen to poems being read aloud.
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