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Poetic Devices Explained

This document defines and provides examples of various poetic devices including: assonance, consonance, alliteration, enjambment, internal rhyme, juxtaposition, metaphor, simile, and personification. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds, consonance the repetition of consonant sounds, and alliteration the repetition of initial sounds. An allusion indirectly references something known. Enjambment runs sentences between lines. Internal rhyme has rhyming middle and end words within lines. Juxtaposition places contrasting words near each other. A metaphor compares two unlike things, a simile uses "like" or "as", and personification attributes human traits to non-human things.

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86 views2 pages

Poetic Devices Explained

This document defines and provides examples of various poetic devices including: assonance, consonance, alliteration, enjambment, internal rhyme, juxtaposition, metaphor, simile, and personification. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds, consonance the repetition of consonant sounds, and alliteration the repetition of initial sounds. An allusion indirectly references something known. Enjambment runs sentences between lines. Internal rhyme has rhyming middle and end words within lines. Juxtaposition places contrasting words near each other. A metaphor compares two unlike things, a simile uses "like" or "as", and personification attributes human traits to non-human things.

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The Poetic Devices

Assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound in non-rhyming words. To qualify as assonance, the
words must be close enough for the repetition of the sound to be noticeable.
Example:
Honesty is the best policy.
Let the cat out of the bag.

Consonance is the repetition of a consonant sound in non-rhyming words.


Example:
The early bird gets the worm.
All’s well that ends well.

Alliteration is the repetition of the same first letter or sound in a group of words. It is a type of
consonance.
Example: “Double double toil and trouble
Cauldron burn and cauldron bubble.”

An allusion is an indirect reference to something, usually Biblical or mythological.


Example:
“To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all —”

Dissonance is the use of impolite, harsh-sounding, and unusual words in poetry. In other words, it is
a deliberate use of inharmonious words, phrases, or syllables intended to create harsh sounding
effects.
Example: “The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling.”

Enjambment: The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without
punctuation.
Example: “When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.”

Internal Rhyme is a poetic device that can be defined as metrical lines in which its middle words
and its end words rhyme with one another. It is also called “middle rhyme,” since it comes in the
middle of lines.

Example: “Double double toil and trouble


Cauldron burn and cauldron bubble.”

Juxtaposition is when two (sometimes completely opposite) words are placed near one another,
creating a comparison/contrast effect.
Example: “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 metaphor is when a word or phrase for one thing is used in place of another in order to make a
comparison between two unlike things and suggest a similarity.

Example: Hope is the thing with feathers


That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all...

A simile is a figure of speech using "like" or "as" to compare one thing to another thing of a different
kind.

“O my Luve’s like a red, red rose


That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.”

Personification: Attributing human characteristics to an inanimate object, animal, or abstract idea.

Example: “The days crept by slowly, sorrowfully.”

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