Some words I thought of:

phosphorescent, lyrical, helter skelter, whimsical, dandelion, zoo, languid, poof, timpani, hullabaloo, chunk, sour, Brett, write/right, outside, car, irksome, pissant.

Why did I think of these words? I was preparing to lead a discussion in one of my classes about beautiful-sounding and ugly-sounding words. I wanted to brainstorm my list of “most beautiful” and “ugliest.”

Funny thing is: I’m not sure if any of these words sound ugly. I tried to think of some, but it was a struggle. I don’t love the name “Brett,” but is it really ugly? “Car” is a weird word, especially if you say it over and over again. It’s like there’s something stuck in the back of your mouth. But is it ugly? “Sour” also has a funny mouth-feel; it’s hard for me to say, to get the diphthong just right. But it’s not really ugly, just weird. In a lot of ways, saying the ugly-sounding words out loud can be almost as fun as saying the beautiful-sounding words.

The only truly ugly-sounding words I can think of are hateful pejoratives, but that raises the question: Do I find them ugly because they SOUND ugly, or because I know what they mean and I can’t ignore their hateful meanings? Is their ugly sound a result of the baggage and connotations they carry with them, or do the actual sounds offend my ears and lips?

I’m in love with language not just for its communicative powers, but also for its sounds. I like feeling words come through my lips and off my tongue. I like enunciating. I like hearing words strung together in beautiful and interesting ways. This is one of the reasons modernist and avant-garde poetry has never bugged me; I don’t care what the dang thing means, I just like the sound of it.

Maybe the lesson isn’t that words are “beautiful” or “ugly” sounding, but simply that language is more than just meaning. It’s also sound. It’s also speech. We can’t remove meaning entirely — nor would I want to — but there can be a lot of fun in playing around with the sounds of language. That’s one of the joys of nursery rhymes, in fact. “Higgledy-piggledy, my black hen,”‘ and all that. It’s nonsense, but it’s also not. There’s a sense in the sounds, and those sounds can be pleasurable, playful, and powerful. (See what I did there? ;D)

 

A sound poem:

The phosphorescent shelter held a languid hullabaloo in the zoo.

Brett, wet and sour, bent to hear the lyrical dandelion timpani,

When right outside, the car went on an irksome helter skelter,

Crying out a whimsical chunk of nothing: a pissant and a poof.