Why is a working knowledge of suprasegmentals important in poetry study?

Suprasegmental features are things such as stressed
syllables, tone, pitch, intonation. In poetry, the pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables gives you the rhythm and meter of the poem. In that case, a knowledge of
suprasegmentals (or prosody) helps in determining the structure and cadence of the poem.
Changing the stress on syllables can also change or alter the
meaning.

If the rhythm and meter is not obvious, especially
in cases with more modern poetry, the function of suprasegmentals is usually up to the
reader. In this respect, modern poetry lends itself to more interpretations than
classically structured poetry.

In linguistics, (this
includes poetry, prose and the spoken word or language in general), knowledge of
suprasegmentals can also help in determining meaning and context. For example, in some
languages there are words which are spelled the same but pronounced differently. “Read”
is the past tense of “read.” This is an obvious example of pronunciation. In Spanish,
término means “term.” But termíno means “I terminate.” So, different stresses and
accents can change meaning.

Tone, pitch and stress can
clearly affect the meaning of a statement in audible speech as well. “They
fooled me, Jerry!” The speaker is
upset that he was fooled. “They fooled
me, Jerry!” With the stress on “me,”
the speaker is more surprised that he was fooled, giving the indication that he has a
high opinion of himself and prides himself on not being fooled.