Tone

Tone

For sometime now I have been wondering about the “essence” of a good poem.  What is the fundamental vehicle that the poem rides on?  I think this question came up while I was trying to discover the origin of a poem.  What was the impetus for the poem?  Usually for me it has been brewing for a while.  So what is it that finally surfaces from that brewing process?  I am coming to realize that more than anything else, the thing that really inspires a poem is tone.  It is my discovery about my innermost attitude toward a subject.
How do I feel about it.  I think the poem rides on the tone established by the writer.  This notion may be valuable because the poet who creates a tone and carries it through the entire poem may be successful.  The tone is the river that carries the poem along.  Tone can hardly be defined by a single word (i.e. melancholy, sad, happy, introspective, fearful, anxious, etc.) but more often it is more complicated than that and requires a sentence or paragraph or a few pages to describe.  Nevertheless, it can be useful to try to characterize tone with only a word or short sentence.  This will help the poet stay focused.  Someone said, “If you begin purple, then end purple.”  Maybe that is what I’m talking about.  However, (thankfully) I do not see this as a rigorous academic exercise.  It is more of a discovery of what makes a good poem work.  It is the act of going back and discovering tone in a poem.  It is there even though not by intention.  More than anything else, it is there because I was feeling that way when I wrote the poem.  That in itself is comforting to discover.  Nevertheless, a word that does not sustain the tone does not belong in the poem.  Perhaps that is the benefit of this discovery.  When the tone is well established the reader connects with the poem and the reader resonates with the tone of the poem. The poem conveys an emotional response to the reader even though he/she may not comprehend the poem entirely.  Fundamentally, tone (more than any other vehicle) transfers feeling from the poet directly to the reader.  If that does not happen, what is the point?