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Elements of Poetry:: Sound Devices

The document defines and provides examples of several common sound devices and poetic techniques: Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. Repetition involves repeating words or phrases for emphasis, rhythm, or urgency. Rhythm refers to patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables, while meter is a regular pattern of stresses. Rhyme is the repetition of ending sounds, and rhyme schemes classify the pattern of rhymes. Onomatopoeia uses words that imitate their meanings.

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Jo Malaluan
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124 views17 pages

Elements of Poetry:: Sound Devices

The document defines and provides examples of several common sound devices and poetic techniques: Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. Repetition involves repeating words or phrases for emphasis, rhythm, or urgency. Rhythm refers to patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables, while meter is a regular pattern of stresses. Rhyme is the repetition of ending sounds, and rhyme schemes classify the pattern of rhymes. Onomatopoeia uses words that imitate their meanings.

Uploaded by

Jo Malaluan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Elements of Poetry:

Sound Devices
Alliteration
The repetition of initial consonant sounds, in two or
more neighboring words or syllables.

The wild and wooly walrus waits and wonders when we will walk
by.
Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees…
-- from Silver by Walter de la Mare

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a


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woodchuck could chuck wood?
Alliteration examples

3
“Hear the music of voices, the song of a
bird, the mighty strains of an
orchestra, as if you would be stricken
deaf tomorrow. Touch each object as if
tomorrow your tactile sense would fail.
Smell the perfume of flowers…”
- from “Three Days to See” by Helen Keller
Alliteration examples

4
This on
e i s us
NOT o ually

Assonance
n the C
but wh S T Test,
y no t kn o w
it?!

A repetition of vowel sounds within words or syllables.

Fleet feet sweep by sleeping geese.


Free and easy.
Make the grade.
The stony walls
enclosed the
holy space.
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Assonance examples

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, Early Moon

“…on a proud round cloud


in white high night…”
- E. E. Cummings

“I made my way to
the lake.”
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Assonance example
The Eagle
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;


Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;


He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
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Think of all the songs
you know where words
Repetition and lines are repeated
often a lot !
–

Words or phrases repeated in writings to give emphasis,


rhythm, and/or a sense of urgency.

Example: from Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Bells”

To the swinging and the ringing


of the bells, bells, bells –
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells
Bells, bells, bells –
To the rhyming and the
8 chiming of the bells!
Rhythm and Meter

 Rhythm is the sound pattern created by


stressed and unstressed syllables.
 The pattern can be regular or random.
 Meter is the regular patterns of
stresses found in many poems and
songs..
 Rhythm is often combined with rhyme,
alliteration, and other poetic devices to add a
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musical quality to the writing.
Rhythm and Meter continued…

Example:

I think that I shall never see


a poem lovely as a tree.

The purple words/syllables are


“stressed”, and they have a regular
pattern, so this poetic line has “meter”.
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Rhyme

 The repetition of end sounds in words


 End rhymes appear at the end of
two or more lines of poetry.
 Internal rhymes appear within a single
line of poetry.
Ring around the rosies,
A pocket full of posies,

Abednego was meek and mild; he softly spoke, he sweetly smiled.


He never ca1l1led his playmates names, and he was good in running games;
Rhyme Scheme
 The pattern of end rhymes (of lines) in a
poem.
 Letters are used to identify a poem’s rhyme
a.k.a
= scheme (a.k.a rhyme pattern).
“also n as”
know  The letter a is placed after the first line and
all lines that rhyme with the first line.
 The letter b identifies the next line
ending with a new sound, and all lines
that rhyme with it.
 Letters continue to be assigned in
sequence to lines containing new ending
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sounds.
This may seem confusing, but it isn’t. Really!
Rhyme Scheme continued…
Examples:
Twinkle, twinkle little star a
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the earth so a
high, Like a diamond in the
sky. b

Baa, baa, black sheep a


Have you any wool? b
13 Yes sir, yes sir, c
Rhyme Scheme continued…

What is the rhyme scheme of this stanza?

Whose woods these are I think I know.


His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

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From Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Did you get it right? aaba

Whose woods these are I think I know. a


His house is in the village though;
a He will not see me stopping here b
To watch his woods fill up with snow. a

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Onomatopoeia

Words that sound like their meaning ---


the “sound” they describe.

buzz… hiss… roar… meow… woof… rumble…


howl… snap… zip… zap… blip… whack …
crack… crash… flutter… flap… squeak… whirr..
pow… plop… crunch… splash… jingle… rattle…
clickety-clack… bam!

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On to Creating!

Please see the assignments that


follow this PowerPoint to
practice some of these
techniques!

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