There's a variable ratio in words 
between consonants and vowels.  Robert 
Lowell I believe once described 
Delmore Schwartz's last name as a 
single vowel bedevilled by seven 
consonants.  Lowell's name, with its 
liquid self-modulation, seems 
something like the opposite (and in 
Life Studies he reports it as once 
having been disrespected into Lovell).

Poets seem to differ in the matter of 
such ratios, and the difference seems 
to be not merely phonic, but also, 
correlatively, lexicon-ical.

Browning (all chopped up):

Look now, I melt a gourd-fruit into 
mash,
Add honeycomb and pods, I have 
perceived,
Which bites like finches they bill and 
kiss,
Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink 
up all,
Quick, quick, till maggots scamper 
through my brain;
And throw me on my back i' the seeded 
thyme,
And wanting, wishing I were born a 
bird.
Put case, unable to be what I wish,
I yet...
... will [fashion myself as a bird 
from clay]...
Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the 
horns
Of grigs high up that make the merry 
din,
Saucy though their veined wings, and 
mind me not.
In which feat, if his leg snapped, 
brittle clay,
And he lay stupid-like,--why I should 
laugh;
          (Caliban Upon Setebos)

There's quite a contrast with Tennyson 
(all melded together):

Old age hath yet his honour and his 
toil;
Death closes all: but something ere 
the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be 
done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with 
Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the 
rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon 
climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices.
           (Ulysses)

-- Jim N.

On Sun, 3 Apr 2011 21:05:48 -0400
  David Wilson-Okamura 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Thanks, Anne. I'm still struggling 
>with one synthesizer! Will have to
> check out Rob's book, which I didn't 
>know about. An old book that you
> probably do know about, Richard 
>Foster Jones, Triumph of the English
> Language (1958) has more on the 
>manliness of English, but nothing 
>like
> so colorful as Urquhart!
> 
> Joel, there was something very 
>similar to your category of "smooth"
> consonants in Renaissance 
>linguistics. The Ren. term was 
>"sweet"
> (dulcis) but the opposite of sweet 
>(for letters like k) was "rough"
> (asper); see Ramos, El secreto 
>artificio (1992). I gave a talk on 
>this
> several years ago, but I wasn't very 
>musically aware, and if there was
> a reference to music in what I was 
>reading, I didn't register it.
> 
> -- 
> Dr. David Wilson-Okamura  
>  http://virgil.org          
>[log in to unmask]
> English Department             
> Virgil reception, discussion, 
>documents, &c
> East Carolina University        
>Sparsa et neglecta coegi. -- Claude 
>Fauchet

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James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121