Why use them at all?
When you repeat something, you are calling attention to it, marking it through sound.
What Is Consonance?
Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds, often at the beginning of words. Tongue twisters are the most obvious use of consonance, as in 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.' American writer Edgar Allan Poe used consonance to great effect in his gothic poem, 'The Raven' (1845). Listen for the repeated sounds:
'And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.'
The first line of this excerpt contains four repeated 's' sounds, from the s's in 'silken,' 'sad' and 'rustling,' and the soft 'c' in 'uncertain.' The phrase 'silken, sad, uncertain' sounds a lot like the sound made by rustling curtains. In the second line, the repetition of the 'f' sound in the words 'filled,' 'fantastic,' 'felt' and 'before' is similar to a cartoon character stuttering in f-f-f-fear. Both sets of repeated sounds add to the spooky vibe Poe is known for.
What Is Assonance?
Assonance is a literary device using repeated vowel sounds. Because repeated vowel sounds can create rhymes, assonance is often found in poetry. Take, for example, this stanza from 'Travel,' a poem by American Edna St. Vincent Millay:
'The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.'
The long 'a' sound is repeated in 'railroad,' 'away,' 'day, 'train' and 'day' (again) and makes an end rhyme at the end of the first and third lines with 'away' and 'day.' Along with giving the poem that familiar singsong quality rhyming poems have, the repeated sounds have a cadence much like the sound of a railroad train chugging along. The rhyming ends up mirroring the content of the poem.
The king of clever rhymes, Dr. Seuss, uses consonance and assonance to create rhyming couplets - two lines of verse, one right after the other, that have rhyming end sounds. Take, for example, the rhyming couplet at the beginning of 'West Beast East Beast.'
'Upon an island hard to reach,
The East Beast sits upon his beach.'
The two lines contains four words with the long 'e' sound, 'reach,' 'east,' 'beast' and 'beach,' making them upbeat and fun to read aloud - to kids and to adults!
What is Alliteration?
Alliteration is the repetition of sounds through more than one word or syllable. For example: Take the (extreme use of) the "L" sound that repeats in the following phrase: "The lurid letters of Lucy Lewis are luscious, lucid and libidinous."
All of these aural elements are mostly found within the lines of a poem rather than at the end. Sometimes they carry from one line to the next or over several lines. These are often used when a line or two seems to lack cohesion (the repeated sounds create pattern, thus structure) or to create a repeated set of sounds that will either A) stand apart from the words around them (because they are aurally different) or B) will make a pattern with their own sounds that can then be varied for emphasis. Take the use of alliteration as an example. The (rather simple) line above can easily illustrate two possibilities.
If the line came on the heels of something like:
The video clips taken by Frank in Louisville are dull but
the lurid letters of Lucy Lewis are luscious, lucid and libidinous.
Surely we haven't seen anything like them in years.
The alliteration in the second line makes it stand out from the others that surround it. Conversely, if we added a variance from the alliteration and made it:
The lurid letters of Lucy Lewis are luscious, crude and libidinous.
The emphasis is obviously on the word "crude," as it now stands apart from all the "L" sounds around it.
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It is important to remember when implementing any of these techniques that the goal of structure in a poem is to contain the poem, to allow order and chaos to co-exist. If the structure becomes too apparent (to the point that it detracts from the experience of the poem, as in the "Lucy Lewis" example above), it is doing its job poorly.
It is important to remember when implementing any of these techniques that the goal of structure in a poem is to contain the poem, to allow order and chaos to co-exist. If the structure becomes too apparent (to the point that it detracts from the experience of the poem, as in the "Lucy Lewis" example above), it is doing its job poorly.
To help you with your work today, using these three techniques, here are two websites you might try out:
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