“Poetry is the kind of thing poets write.” --Robert Frost
“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” --G.K. Chesterton
Sound Devices:
1. Alliteration: Repeated consonant sounds at the beginning of words placed near
each other--usually on the same or adjacent lines.
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Ex: “Out of lemon flowers/loosed/on the moonlight, love’s/lashed and insatiable/! essences...”
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From “A Lemon” by Pablo Neruda
2. Assonance: Repeated vowel sounds in words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent
lines. Accented syllable.
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Ex: “...You talking high and mighty./Talk on--till you get through.” From “Ballad of the
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Landlord” by Langston Hughes
3. Consonance: Repeated consonant sounds at the ending of words placed near each other, usually on
the same or adjacent lines. Accented or stressed syllables. Creates a “near rhyme”
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Ex: “boats into the past” or “cool soul”
4. Cacophony: A discordant series of harsh, unpleasant sounds helps to convey disorder. Often difficult to
pronounce together, reflecting the difficult situation presented.
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Ex: My stick fingers click with a snicker/And, chuckling, they knuckle the keys;/
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Light-footed, my steel feelers flicker/And pluck from these keys melodies.” From ! “Player !Piano”
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by John Updike
5. Euphony: A series of musically pleasant sounds, conveying a sense of harmony and beauty to the
language.
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Ex: Than Oars divide the Ocean,/Too silver for a scam--/Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon/Leap,
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plashless as they swim.” From “A Bird Came Down the Walk” by Emily ! Dickenson
6. Onomatopoeia: Words that sound like their meanings. Ex: Tick, boom, buzz, crackle, snap, gurgle,
hiss, etc.
7. Repetition: The purposeful re-use of words and phrases for an effect. Sometimes, especially with
longer phrases that contain a different key word each time; this is called parallelism.
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Ex: “An odor/that lives/like a tree,/a visible odor./ As if cordwood pulsed like a tree.” From
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“A Smell of Cordwood” by Pablo Neruda
8. Rhyme: A variety of types of rhyme: Typical: time, slime, mime.
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*Double rhymes: include final two syllables: revival, arrival, survival
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*Triple rhymes: include three syllables: greenery, machinery, scenery
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*Slant rhymes or half rhyme: If only the final consonant sounds are the same: EX: soul, oil, foul;
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taut, sat, knit. When this appears in the middle of lines rather than at the end, ! it is called
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consonance.
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*Near rhymes: If the vowel sound is the same, but the final consonant sounds are slightly
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different, the the rhyme is called a near rhyme. EX: fine, rhyme; poem, goin’
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*Less effective but sometimes used are sight rhymes (eye rhymes). The words are spelled the
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same but pronounced differently. Example: enough, cough, through, bough