Alliteration

Repetition of first, stressed, and consonant sounds in a series of words. It is the first consonant in a word, and it is on a stressed syllable.

In alliteration, all of the consonant sounds in a line of poetry do not have to be reused, as in the exaggerated example of “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” where nearly every word begins with a hard “p” sound. Usually alliteration in poetry is a bit more subtle and natural.

Alliteration

Examples: “We saw the sea sound sing, we heard the salt sheet tell”

Dylan Thomas

“And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain”

Edgar Allan Poe

The Labyrinth by Robert P. BairdTorn turned and tatteredBowed burned and batteredI took untensed time by the teethAnd bade it bear me bankingOut over the walled welter cities and the seaThrough the lightsmocked birdpocked cloudcocked skyTo leave me light on a lilting planetesimal.

The stone walls wailed and whimperedThe bold stars paled and dimpledGodgone time gathered to a grunt And bore me bled and breakingOn past parted palisades windrows and the treesOver a windcloaked nightsoaked starpoked seaTo drop me where? Deep in a decadent’s dream.

an example of alliteration in a cool poem

Symmetrical Alliteration

Sort of like a palindrome: racecar

But with a line of poetry:

“rust brown blazers rule” rbbr“purely and fundamentally for analytical purposes” paffap“black and white, white and black” bawwab

Palindrome

Word, phrase, sentence that reads the same backward and forward. Examples:

civichannahlevel“A man, a plan, a canal – Panama!”Elite Tile

Can be word for word instead of letter for letter:“fall leaves when leaves fall”

AssonanceRepetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants.Vowel Rhyme

He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound’s the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep.But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep Robert Frost

E: He, sweep, easy, downy, lovely, deep, keep, sleepI: gives, his, if, is, mistakenotice also the “o” and “a” sounds…

“Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is among the oldest of living things. So old it is that no man knows how and why the first poems came.”

Carl Sandburg assonance in “o”

OnomatopoeiaSounds Effects for your Poems!

A word which imitates the sound of a thing.

Examples:choo choo murmur driphiss whisper swooshbuzz gush neighboom poptinkle tootsplash rumblethump sizzle

“Sprung Rhythm”

Gerard Manley Hopkins created this form.Lines of the poem begin with stressed syllables.Each line has one to four beats.Number of beats varies from line to line.Tries to reflect common speech while still being structured.Influenced free verse.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:Praise him.

example of Sprung Rhythm by Hopkins

CadenceDescribes the rhythmic rise and fall of language. Cadence describes the natural order of beats in speech. Non-syllabic verse. No distinct meter.

“It is not the sunset Nor the pale green sky Shimmering through the curtain Of the silver birch, Nor the quietness; It is not the hopping Of the little birds Upon the lawn, Nor the darkness Stealing over all things That moves me…” London by F. S. Flint