Elements of Poetry: Sound Devices

8th Grade English/Language Arts – Poetry Unit: Sound Devices - Blume

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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 woodchuck could chuck wood? (almost ALL tongue twisters!)

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Alliteration examples

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“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

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Assonance

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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The Eagleby 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.

Assonance example

Consonance

Consonance is the repetition of two or more consonant sounds within a line.

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I dropped the locket in the thick mud.

Some mammals are clammy.

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Consonance example

He struck a streak of bad luck.

Buckets of big blue berries.

Slither and lather

Dawn goes down

Zealots by Fugees

Rap rejects my tape deck, ejects projectileWhether Jew or Gentile, I rank top percentile,Many styles, More powerful than gamma raysMy grammar pays, like Carlos Santana plays

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Consonance example

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Repetition

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 chiming of the bells!

Think of all the songs

you know where words

and lines are repeated –

often a lot !

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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!

Onomatopoeia is also considered a “poetic sound device”.