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, t©rmino means term. But term­no 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.