Alliteration, Consonance,

SOUND & STRUCTURE NOTES Assonance, Anaphora,

Onomatopoeia, Enjambment,
Caesura, Juxtaposition
©AP Lit & More: Literature & Writing Resources, 2019
ALLITERATION & CONSONANCE
Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds.
•Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary – “The Raven,”
Edgar Allan Poe
•Hot-hearted Beowulf was bent upon battle – Beowulf
•Fly o’er waste fens and windy fields – Sir Galahad by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
•Consonance is the repetition of final consonant sounds.
•Great, or good, or kind, or fair, I will ne’er the more despair “Shall I Wasting in
Despair” by George Wither
•He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake. – “Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening” by
Robert Frost

©AP Lit & More: Literature & Writing Resources, 2019

ASSONANCE
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. Do not confuse it with simple
vowel repetition, as each vowel has several different sounds.
•Hear the mellow wedding bells – “Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe
•Sudden crowings of laughter, monotonous drone of song – “The Feast of Famine” by
Robert Louis Stevenson
•“Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming” - ”Travel” by Edna St. Vincent
Millay

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 The Pool Players.
Seven At The Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
“WE REAL Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
COOL” BY Jazz June. We
GWENDOLYN Die soon.

BROOKS Identify the alliteration, assonance, and consonance in

this poem. How does it make the poem sound stronger,
even musical?
Discuss the unique form of the poem. Try reading it
with longer pauses at punctuation, then try by pausing
at the ends of lines. How does the meaning and tone
change?

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REPETITION
Repetition is a literary device that repeats the same words or phrases several
times to make an idea clearer and more emphatic.
 Note: Repetition is deliberate. The common repetition of simple words such as “the” and “a,” for example, are not considered
repetition since their overuse is unintentional.
 But I have promises to keep
and miles to go before I sleep,
and miles to go before I sleep.” - “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
 So I said yes to Thomas Clinton and later thought that I had said yes to God and later still realized I
had said yes only to Thomas Clinton. – The Patron Saint of Liars, Ann Patchett
 Let it wash you clean / Like a river / Going up stream / Like a river / Cutting through right / Like a
river / ‘Cause it never gives up / Like a river / So full of life / Like a river / Liquid like time / Like a
river / That’ll wash away / Like a river / The pain from yesterday – “Mighty River” by Mary J. Blige

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 ’T is so much joy! ’T is so much joy!
If I should fail, what poverty!
And yet, as poor as I
Have ventured all upon a throw;
Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so
This side the victory!
Life is but life, and death but death!
“‘T IS SO MUCH Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!
And if, indeed, I fail,
JOY” BY EMILY At least to know the worst is sweet.
Defeat means nothing but defeat,
No drearier can prevail!
DICKINSON And if I gain,—oh, gun at sea,
Oh, bells that in the steeples be,
At first repeat it slow!
For heaven is a different thing
Conjectured, and waked sudden in,
And might o’erwhelm me so!
Which stanzas use a lot of repetition and which do
not? What meaning or significance can you find in this?
©AP Lit & More: Literature & Writing Resources, 2019
ANAPHORA
Anaphora is a type of refrain device, where the first word or phrase is
repeated in a series of lines.
•Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to
Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern
cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. – “I Have a
Dream,” Martin Luther King, Jr.
•Some feel rain. Some feel the beetle startle
in its ghost-part when the bark
slips. Some feel musk. Asleep against
each other in the whiskey dark, scarcely there. – “Some Feel Rain,” Joanna Klink
•When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee? – “The Tyger,” William Blake

©AP Lit & More: Literature & Writing Resources, 2019

 I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth
them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to
them,
“I SING THE And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the
charge of the soul.

BODY ELECTRIC” Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own
bodies conceal themselves?
BY WALT And if those who defile the living are as bad as they
who defile the dead?
WHITMAN And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

How does anaphora drive home the theme of this

poem? How does the cadence or speed of this poem
change as it is read?

©AP Lit & More: Literature & Writing Resources, 2019

ONOMATOPOEIA
Onomatopoeia means the use of words which sound like they mean.
•A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings – “Piano,” D. H.
Lawrence
•I heard a fly buzz—when I died— Emily Dickinson
•Hark, hark!
Bow-wow
The watch-dogs bark!
Bow-wow.
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” – The Tempest, William Shakespeare

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 All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
“THE FORGE” BY Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
SEAMUS HEANEY He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

How does onomatopoeia further the atmosphere

created in this poem, and why is it a fitting poetic
element for the poem’s subject?
©AP Lit & More: Literature & Writing Resources, 2019
ENJAMBMENT & CAESURA
Enjambment occurs when a line does not stop at the end of the line, but
continues onto the next line without pause or punctuation.
•i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling) – “I Carry Your Heart With Me,”e. e. cummings
Caesura refers to a pause within a line of verse.
•To be or not to be, that is the question – Hamlet, William Shakespeare
•It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. – “A Noiseless, Patient Spider,”
Walt Whitman

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 in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee

“IN JUST—” and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and
BY E. E. piracies and it’s
spring

CUMMINGS when the world is puddle-wonderful…

E. E. Cummings made a creative use of space and line
arrangement. This is only the first third of his highly
confusing poem “In Just—,” but identify where caesura
and enjambment is used and why he may have
arranged this poem in this way.

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JUXTAPOSITION
Juxtaposition refers to the act of placing two or more things side by side to
compare or contrast something, or to create an interesting effect.
 Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. – “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost
 The image of two roads laid side by side is both literal and figurative juxtaposition, as
each one represents a different path or meaning.
 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was
the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it
was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it
was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way… - A
Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
 This passage shows several opposites juxtaposed in succession.

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 So the black walnut tree
Swings through another year

”THE BLACK Of sun and leaping winds

Of leaves and bounding fruit,
WALNUT TREE” And, month after month, the whip-
BY MARY Crack of the mortgage.

OLIVER
(EXCERPT) Compare the three bolded words (whip-crack is one
word stretched over two lines). Consider what Mary
Oliver is trying to accomplish by using these words.
What effect is made by juxtaposing the first two
against the last?

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CLOSED VS. OPEN FORMS OF
POETRY
Every poem falls into one of two categories: open or closed. The
way to determine its category is to study the poem’s form.
Closed form poetry fits into a previously established form, using
structure, rhyme and/or meter. It adheres to these rules, or
breaks them strategically to make a point. See the following
slide for examples of common forms of closed poetry.
Open form poetry does not yield to any rules. While open form
poetry may use some rhyme, rhythm or structure, it doesn’t
follow any previously established pattern.

©AP Lit & More: Literature & Writing Resources, 2019

EXAMPLES – WHAT ELEMENTS OF STRUCTURE, RHYTHM
AND RHYME CAN YOU FIND IN EACH? HOW DOES
CLOSED FORM USE PATTERNS AND RULES?
Closed Form Poem Open Form Poem

A Bird, came down the Walk - I buried my father

He did not know I saw - in the sky.
He bit an Angle Worm in halves Since then, the birds
And ate the fellow, raw… clean and comb him every morning
- A Bird, Came Down the Walk, by Emily and pull the blanket up to his chin
Dickinson
every night.
- Little Father, Li-Young Lee

©AP Lit & More: Literature & Writing Resources, 2019

COMMON CLOSED POETRY PATTERNS
The College Board released the Sonnet
following statement, “The AP Exam will
not require students to label or identify Villanelle
specific rhyme schemes, metrical
patterns, or forms of poetry.” However, Ballad
being able to identify a closed form
poem by its type is sometimes helpful. Haiku (unlikely to be on the AP
This is usually done by its rhyme scheme exam)
and/or meter.
Other types of closed form poems
Here are some common closed poetry are simply in rhyming or metered
types: stanzas.

©AP Lit & More: Literature & Writing Resources, 2019