SOUND & STRUCTURE Alliteration, Consonance,

Assonance, Anaphora,

NOTES Onomatopoeia,
Enjambment, Caesura,
Juxtaposition
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
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
 The Pool Players.
Seven At The Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We

“WE Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

REAL Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

COOL” BY Jazz June. We

Die soon.
GWENDO Identify the alliteration, assonance, and
LYN consonance in this poem. How does it make the
poem sound stronger, even musical?
BROOKS 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? Record your
discussion and thoughts in the AP Lit Skill
Spotlight (STR 3.C).
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
 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
 In this last example, consider how the repeated similes enhance the
message in this song. Record your discussion and thoughts in the AP Lit
Skill Spotlight (FIG 6.A).
 ’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;

“‘T IS SO
Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so
This side the victory!

MUCH Life is but life, and death but death!

Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!

JOY” BY And if, indeed, I fail,

At least to know the worst is sweet.
Defeat means nothing but defeat,
EMILY No drearier can prevail!

DICKINSO And if I gain,—oh, gun at sea,

Oh, bells that in the steeples be,

N
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?
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
 I sing the body electric,
“I SING The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth
them,

THE They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to
them,

BODY
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the
charge of the soul.

ELECTRIC Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies
conceal themselves?

” BY
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they
who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
WALT And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

WHITMA How does anaphora drive home the theme of this

N poem? How does the cadence or speed of this poem

change as it is read? Record your discussion and
thoughts in the AP Lit Skill Spotlight (FIG 5.B).
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
 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,
“THE Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
FORGE” Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,

BY 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
SEAMUS To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

HEANEY How does onomatopoeia further the atmosphere

created in this poem, and why is it a fitting
poetic element for the poem’s subject? How
does it enhance the characterization of the
blacksmith? Record your discussion and
thoughts in the AP Lit Skill Spotlight (CHR
1.A).
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
 in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

“IN JUST whistles far

and eddieandbill come
and wee

—” running from marbles and

piracies and it’s
BY E. E. spring

CUMMIN when the world is puddle-wonderful…

E. E. Cummings made a creative use of
GS 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. Record your
discussion and thoughts in the AP Lit Skill
Spotlight (STR 3.D).
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.
 So the black walnut tree
”THE Swings through another year

BLACK Of sun and leaping winds

WALNUT
Of leaves and bounding fruit,
And, month after month, the whip-

TREE” BY Crack of the mortgage.

MARY Compare the three bolded words (whip-crack is

OLIVER one word stretched over two lines). Consider
what Mary Oliver is trying to accomplish by using

(EXCERPT these words. What effect is made by juxtaposing

the first two against the last? Consider the role

)
figurative language plays in this juxtaposition as
well. Record your discussion and thoughts in the
AP Lit Skill Spotlight (FIG 6.B).
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.
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

in the sky.
He did not know I saw -
Since then, the birds
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
clean and comb him every morning
And ate the fellow, raw… and pull the blanket up to his chin
- A Bird, Came Down the Walk, every night.
by Emily Dickinson
- Little Father, Li-Young Lee
COMMON CLOSED POETRY
PATTERNS
The College Board released the Sonnet
following statement, “The AP
Exam will not require students Villanelle
to label or identify specific
rhyme schemes, metrical Ballad
patterns, or forms of poetry.”
However, being able to identify Haiku (unlikely to be on
a closed form poem by its type the AP exam)
is sometimes helpful. This is
usually done by its rhyme Other types of closed form
scheme and/or meter. poems are simply in rhyming
or metered stanzas.
Here are some common closed
poetry types: