Elements of Poetry: Sound Devices

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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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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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Consonance

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

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
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Zealots by Fugees
Consonance example

• Rap rejects my tape deck, ejects projectile
• Whether Jew or Gentile, I rank top percentile,
• Many styles, More powerful than gamma rays
• My grammar pays, like Carlos Santana plays

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Repetition
Think of all the songs you know where words 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 Poes 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!

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and...
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Onomatopoeia
Review...
Onomatopoeia is also considered a poetic sound
device.
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!