Terminology linked to phonological devices

Alliteration The repetition of the same consonant sound. Alliteration is usually both pleasing and memorable; pleasing because readers enjoy the pattern of sounds, and memorable because repeated sounds impress themselves upon the mind. There is no point in just mentioning that alliteration occurs, unless you can go on to discuss its effect. To help you describe the effect of alliteration you can ask whether or not it produces a distinctive tone, and whether or not it is regularly spaced. The former effect is the more important, because alliteration, whether or not it is regularly spaced, is always capable of contributing to the tone of a poem. For instance, the alliteration of the 'f' sound is regular in one line from Owen's 'Exposure', - 'With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew' - and irregular in another - 'Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces' - yet both create a furtive tone. The flakes may seem delicate but they are sinister in the way they bring a deathly cold to the exposed soldiers. (See also Assonance and Consonance.)

Assonance The repetition of vowel sounds in adjoining words. The effect of assonance is similar to that of alliteration; that is to say, it helps to create tone. It is also worthwhile noting whether or not it is regularly spaced. Assonance is rarer than alliteration yet it can be very effective. In these four lines from Donne's 'Song', the repetition of the 'i' vowel creates a tone of lamentation and regret:

When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind,
    But sigh'st my soul away,
When thou weep'st, unkindly kind,
    My life's blood doth decay.
(See also Alliteration and Consonance.)

 

Blank Verse Poetry that is written in lines of unrhymed iambic pentameters. It is very common in English and can be used for telling a story or thinking about ideas and feel- ings. It is worthwhile noticing how regular and insistent its rhythms are.
Shakespeare uses blank verse in his plays. There is usually no point in drawing attention to this, unless there are very interesting variations in the rhythm of a line. Such variations are usually the expression of deep emotion. For instance, Hamlet's order to his mother, 'Look here upon this picture, and on this', could be scanned in the usual way, but that would not reflect its emotional quality. To do that justice, the line should be scanned:

Loók heŕe upoń thiś pićtuře, anď ŏn thís…

It is also important to notice when Shakespeare uses verse which is not blank verse. For instance, the witches in Macbeth and the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream speak in trochees rather than iambs. Trochees sound different, thus making the witches and fairies seem strange, non-human creatures. (See also Metre.)

 

Cadence The rise and fall in pitch the voice makes when at the end of a line, a sentence or caesura. The emotional impact of poetry is often created by cadences. There is no technical language to describe their effect, though they are often said to be 'rising', 'falling' or 'steady'. When you write about cadences, you should try to characterise the emotional effect they create. For instance, the close of the passage about skating from Book I of Wordsworth's The Prelude is effective because the steady cadence enacts the peace of untroubled sleep:

   and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

Caesura The break in a line of poetry. The convention for marking a caesura is ||. Caesuras are important because they mark changes in tone, in argument and emotion. They can also produce comic effects, particularly when what follows the caesura is very different from what preceded it. When writing about a caesura, you should never just point to its existence but try to describe the impact that it has. For instance, the caesura in the last line of Yeats's 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death' is effective because there is no break in the previous line (there are very few in the poem) and because it enacts the clear-sighted thoughtfulness of one who has come to a momentous decision:

A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life,  || this death.

 

Consonance    The repetition of the same consonant sounds in two or more words in which the vowel sounds are different. The effect is of interest when the words are related in meaning as well as in sound. In W. H. Auden's   ... "O where are you going?" said reader to rider' there is a line: 'Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly.' The consonance of 'swiftly' and 'softly' is interesting because both words are concerned with the stealthy and slightly sinister approach of the strange 'figure'. (See also Alliteration, Assonance and Half-rhyme.)

Consonants and Vowels    A consonant is a sound produced by stopping the breath, and a vowel by allowing the air to pass through the mouth without stoppage. Vowels are a, e, i, o, u and, in some cases, y; all other letters are consonants. The terms are useful when writing about the effects of sound in poetry.
It is often important to note whether a vowel is long or short. For instance, the long vowels of Herbert's 'Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright' create a meditative and tranquil effect, whereas the short 'i's in the following lines from T. S. Eliot's 'The Love- Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' are nervous and slightly irritable.

Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit.

Counterpoint    A word borrowed from music to indicate how some syllables in an otherwise regular line produce variations on the set rhythm. You should only use the term if you want to discuss the emotional or intellectual effect of the variation. The opening of Larkin's 'Church Going' is basically iambic until the last three emphatic words of the second line, which have the effect of enclosing the poet in the church, the poet's thoughts in his head, and the reader in the poem:

Onće Í am suŕe thĕre's nóthiňg góiňg oń
Ĭ stép iňsiďe, léttinģ thé doór thúd shuť.

The counterpointing of the rhythm fixes poet and reader in one place and prepares them both for the serious and sensitive meditations that are to come. (See also Metre and Scansion.)

Enactment     This word stands for the way in which all aspects of words - their sounds, rhythms, and the shapes they make in lines and stanzas - contribute to the meaning of what is being said. You should use the word to avoid the idea that poetry is just made up of form and content. Enactment insists that words are not divisible into what they say and how they say it, and that how something is said shapes what is said, and vice versa. In Byron's 'So, we'll go no more a-roving', the repetition of the 'o' sound, the heavy stresses on 'go' and 'roving', the casual 'so' at the beginning of the line, and its repetition at the start of the second line enact the langour of one who is wearied by much experience:

So, we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

End-stopped and Run-on Lines.    An end-stopped line is one in which the grammatical unit, be it clause or sentence, is coterminous with the line. Thus, there is the satisfaction of finding the line and the sense ending together. A run-on line (sometimes called an enjambed line) is where the grammar, and thus the sense, is left unfinished at the end of the line. Run-on lines create pleasurable feelings of expectation, as the reader has to look further for the full sense of what is being said.

Half-rhyme    The effect that is created when the consonants of two words in a rhyming position have the same sounds but the vowels do not. In effect, it is consonance function- ing in the place of rhyme. The effect of half-rhyme (or para-rhyme, as it is sometimes called) is to make the ear expect a rhyme which is denied. The result is that the words often sound strangely out of tune with each other. In Owen's 'Futility' the feeling that death has distorted the natural progress of life is enacted in the half-rhymes. He is speaking of the sun:

Think how it wakes the seeds,
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?

Whenever you write about half-rhyme, you should try to bring out how it leads you to expect a rhyme which you do not get. (See also Consonance and Rhyme.)

Heroic Couplets   These are lines of iambic pentameters that rhyme in pairs. They are assertive and self-affirming and are consequently appropriate for argument. For instance, Pope in An Essay on Criticism neatly conveys the ideal of economy in verse in a heroic couplet which is itself economical:

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

They are, however, also used in narrative poems. Many people do not find them easy to read, because they seem repetitious. They should be read slowly, and it is often interesting to note whether the sentences of the poem are coterminous with the couplets. When they are not, and run-on lines occur, readers usually enjoy the variation. (See also Metre.)

Metre   The regular rhythms of poetic lines, created by a sequence of stressed or unstressed syllables. A recurring unit of stressed and unstressed syllables is called a foot. Special names are given to these recurring feet, and also to the number of feet in a line. Common English metres are the following:

iambic: an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable
anapaestic: two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable
trochaic: a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable
dactylic: a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.

The names for the number of feet in a line are as follows:

monometer                  one foot                                           dimeter            two feet
trimeter                        three feet                                        tetrameter        four feet
pentameter                  five feet                                            hexameter       six feet
heptameter                  seven feet                                      octameter        eight feet
There is usually little point in merely labelling a metre. If you wish to discuss metre, you should try to characterise the effect it has by showing how it helps to enact the meaning of the poem. (See also Blank verse, counterpoint, Heroic couplets, Scansion and Stanza.)

Monosyllabic and Polysyllabic   Words of one syllable such as 'did', 'good', 'said' and ,would' are monosyllabic. In poetry and verse drama they are effective in making the lines feel emphatic, forceful and strong. Consider the force of the opening of Donne's 'Hymn to God the Father':

Wilt thou forgive my sin where I began
Which was my sin though it were done before.
The monosyllables enact the dark, serious strength of the poet's plea.

Words of more than one syllable are polysyllabic. When a number of polysyllabic words are used in a line the effect is likely to be flowing, lyrical and sometimes even majestic. Notice how the polysyllabic words in Hopkins's 'The Windhover' help to enact the flowing and majestic movements of the falcon in flight:

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon.

Onomatopoeia The effect that is created when the sounds of words mime or resemble the sounds of the object being described. Individual words such as 'crash' or 'buzz' are onomatopoeic, but the term is more generally used of an effect created by a number of words. Onomatopoeia is usually worth discussing when it creates atmosphere. In Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale' one stanza closes with this line: 'The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.' The onomatopoeic 'murmurous' combines with the long vowels and the alliteration on 'm' and 's' to produce an atmosphere of languid ease.

Rhyme       The identity in two or more words of the final vowel and any consonants that follow it. When the rhyming words are monosyllabic, the rhyme is said to be masculine, as in 'bold' and 'old', and when they are polysyllabic, they are said to be feminine, as in 'ending' and 'bending'. (You will also note that in the feminine rhymes the last syllable is unstressed.)
Whenever you write about rhyme, you should bring out the effect it creates. Rhyme creates harmony and also the pleasing effect of completing or resolving an idea. When words rhyme, they tend to be more noticeable and hence more important in the poem. When the words rhymed are important, the whole meaning of the poem can be focused. Rhymes, particularly feminine ones, can also be funny. (See also Half-rhyme.)

Scansion   The examination of metrical patterns in verse by noting the sequences of accented and unaccented syllables. If you wish to draw attention to a pattern, you should mark accented syllables with a ' and unaccented ones with a -. There is usually no point simply in labelling a line (see Metre) unless you can discuss any variations, or show that it effectively enacts the meaning of the line. (See also Blank verse, Counterpoint, Heroic couplets and Stanza.)