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mybukz · 6 years ago

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Poetry Review: May All Beings Rock by Lawrence Pettener

Title: May All Beings Rock Author : Lawrence Pettener Publisher : Lulu Genre: Poetry Format: Paperback, 76 pages Price: USD 9.19 Released:November 2017 Reviewer: Leon Wing

“Poetry never has reason to rhyme though not many things are true all the time.”

The poet of this resounding collection of poems is such a tease, with those first lines of “A Couplet or Two on Duality”. As a reader who has grown past reading rhyming poems, I find poetry only has reason to rhyme when it wants to make connections. Which is what that second line is all about.

Yet another tease comes in the way of the poetic lamentation to Ted Hughes, “The Suppression of Poetry”, in which Lawrence howls his sorrow over the death of the man who IS poetry personified.

The despair is such that he writes:

“Poetry is dead – long live poetry! As drama and fiction move in on its territory, poets lay down pens and start barking —far too few poets to pacify me. Poetry is dead – long live poetry!”

But fear not, reader of this review, as far as this reviewer is concerned, poetry is alive and kicking in the form of this exceptional collection of poems.

In “The Heart of Sadness and the Start of Hardness”, even though “we tear up and trample the invitation”, don’t trample Lawrence’s invitation to read this rollicking verse, which repeats lines to create parallelisms of sounds and rhythms, because in each stanza, “each moment a tremendous celebration”.

You might have heard or read about out of body experiences. Lawrence’s take on this is so visually, rhythmically and graphically accessible in “Losing a body”.

“Once, in Katmandu, your mouth flew open and a spirit entered. You woke with a gash above your eye, recalling nothing.”

The narrator only got back into corporeality, when “.. he flattened you with one good punch to give you back your body, and that kind cut.”

Lawrence has not only this knack of placing lines into formations of sounds, he sometimes manipulates the grammar of a line, by eliding an anticipated word, as in “Brightloaded”:

“You walk out alone, listening the park; lines of trees run right through you.”

The omission of the expected preposition after ‘listening’ is justified when you read the next stanza and experience the sensation of trees rushing right at you with the ‘r’ alliteration in three words, and into you, with the near rhymes of the ending two words.

In another instance of skewed grammar, he is not forging a deliberate error. In “So Much for Common Sense”, he overhears a young man on a phone say “There’s so much people.” But he is aware that “that young man on his mobile/had been completely correct”.

In “This Tap Behaviour”, even though the ‘psychotic neighbour’ is always banging at his taps, when that one time he isn’t, it is practically music to Lawrence’s poetic ear:

“…there was no noise coming through, just this plangent song of water, a plumbed release of pressure. A long, pining whine keened high through our shared pipes like sacred music.”

From his travels around the world, Lawrence writes not only about 'pipe’ music, but also exotic Mongolian punk bands, like “Yat Kha”, who covers rock classics using goat-hair violins. And, he hobnobs with some of the best poets, like John Burnside, in “Drinking John Burnside’s Beer”. And, he praises the ubiquitous British fast food, the chips, in “In Praise of Chips”.

I love the joke in “Subterfuge”, where dinner guests thought they’d witnessed evidence of a murder when a knuckle pokes out from a dish Lawrence copied from a TV chef. He writes again about food, in “News from Europe”, about untypical and unusual concoctions of European chocolates. Still more on chocolates in “Seventy Percent”, about “chocolate anthology” from a supermarket that are “bittersweet as good poetry. The taste/for bitterness comes later on in life.”

There are a couple of poems about music. His take on it can be irreverent but funny. In “We All Need Support”, Lawrence sort of pokes fun at the 'gravel drawl’ of a famous singer 'Bob’. Years later after coming out from his concert, he and his friends “.. found a busker sitting on the ground as in a festival field, playing clear, authentic versions of Bob’s songs. Not only that, he knew how to talk. We adored him. He spoiled it for one of my friends though, a lifelong Dylan fan, by looking up and smiling.”

The last lines make me laugh out loud.

In “Classic in Three Movements”, the poem is not so much about the music but about the movements, but not as what a musician would assume. The movements are physical ones seen or spied upon, not heard, at windows. In another piece, he writes about Deep Purple, but not as how a fan would have liked. He also writes about Bjork, in “Bjorkquake”, imagining how the Icelandic musician would have reacted if she “…had found the perfect bass-note, the earth-deep sound that Odin wrote”

Other subjects Lawrence touches on include crafty magpies with their eyes on his bike, meditation and cats, more poems about cats, their squealing love-making, cat flaps, a few poems about cycling, about locking heads with a driver, gate crashing wedding parties, about first love and the first kiss, about a specific part of a woman’s body, sensitive noses, about past loves, and about working in a mental ward,

In poems about his travels he shows us the vista of the world from his poetic point of view: a funny poem about wandering into a club thinking it was a cafe, an interaction in a launderette with a cleaner from Sarajevo; observing the Basilica of St Maria ad Martyres; eating in Rome, where an Italian word he overheard makes him think of Freud; about flamenco; tasting yoghurt at the Damascus Gate; and stomach pains while traveling in India.

His foray into haiku elicits some astounding revelations about how we communicate today, and about reincarnation.

In his pieces about meditation and other related matters, he ponders about “who you weren’t in all your past lives”. In one amusing piece, thieves broke into a Zen centre and got away with nothing. In “Sutra Neti”, he shows us a sort of yoga one would not imagine could be done: “through the closed left nostril,/pushing softly to penetrate/the swollen lip at the nasal root”.

He has a wry sense of humour. In “Wild Life, April, England” he tells a beggar, “Change? Yes please, love,/I’ll change into a butterfly.” Meeting friends in “Hope & Anchor”, he says, “I hate endings,/putting off the moment when one will kill/the others off with glib goodbyes”.

When he gets serious, he writes with a poignancy which makes you gulp at the sensitivity of the lines. Like in “Doing Tai Chi with My Father”: “My father is horizontal, his cheeks/massive and sagging. The coffin lid stands up/against the wall. It is a small jolt/to see my own name, something we shared”. Especially when that first stanza runs on down to the the next, with its line, “on the coffin lid..” In “Kreuzberger”, we see Lawrence and his brother Ged outside a fast food place, looking at a drunken old man. You’d think the pathos is all about people like the drunk. No, it is not; not until you read up to the very last two lines in the poem. The last line has only two words, but the pathos hits you full on as the wide-sounding vowels in the first syllables of the two words thin to shorter 'e’ sounds, and the “f” sound thickens with the 'v’.

His departing poem is the longest piece. In “Nine Cemetery Contemplations”, he mulls over the death of a kitten, the death of birds in the hands, or rather, paws, of a cat, teenage fascination with a French teacher, having an accident, someone dying in the tsunami, more reflections about his brother’s passing, visiting his father for the last time, buying a Buddhist book for his dying father, and finally the last and the ninth piece, which is so worth quoting in full, here:

“When you were birthed you cried, and your whole world was overjoyed. When you die, we mourn while you may find the great liberation – or just be glad to be reborn.”

Lawrence Pettener works full-time as copy-editor, proofreader and writer, with recent and forthcoming book reviews and artist interviews in The Star (Malaysia) and Juliet.com. As Kwailo Lumpur, he writes comic material about Malaysian life, food especially. Three original poetry books are due out in 2019.

Link to the book’s website: www.lawrencepettener.com/mayallbeingsrock Link to stores: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/lawrencepettener https://www.booktopia.com.au/search.ep?keywords=may+all+beings+rock&productType=917504

#poems #poetry #poetry review #May All Beings Rock #Lawrence Pettener

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iphoenixrising · 7 years ago

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Writing choices

My lame ones:

1. I use formatting... a lot. Emphasis and voice, things I can kind of hear or imagine how it should sound? Something like that. The Joker has some thoughts on separate lines. Italics, ALL THE ITALICS. So I write mostly in Word or Google Docs and edit more in Word. I also ignore the suggestions more than I probably should (oops).

2. Cursing, which I use so much. I love using things like utter fuckery. Just, yes. If I was an ass-kicking late teen-ish to thirty, then I’ve earned the right to say any and all bad words. BUT! I use it in voice normally, like character is thinking/narrating kind of thing. I like the complex plots and plans with banter and funny stuff between. Like a plot-character development sandwich.

3. Punctuation abuse. Yup. Guilty. I like doing the whole What. The. Great. Fuck? I also like doing the side thoughts in ( ) just because thought boxes. Tim has some of the most epic thought boxes EVER. I do a thing that is just an ellipses in a thought box. It’s BRILLIANT.

4. Alliteration, Assonance, and Consonance: All of these are simply the repetition of sounds in some form or fashion. So a daring, dashing vigilante. The sweet and slow stealth of soundless boots over the grimy pavement. Yup. I like how it rolls off the tongue. The repetition of vowel sounds is assonance, general recurring sounds alliteration, so yeah.

5. Long fricking sentences. Seriously. I regret nothing, but. Action has shorter, pointed sentences. Feelings and emotions have just so many modifying phrases with commas and recurring phrases (so like thoughts kind of?). Example: And this? Is a real offer from Ra’s al Ghul. It’s more than a bid for his time, his skill, his steal, his damn tendency for contingencies. It’s a bid to keep him because he’s capable, to keep him because he’s loyal, to keep him because he’s dangerous on the other side.

6. Character voice. This. All of this. I like Dick being the guy to say ‘dammit’ as his worst cuss word and reserve ‘fuck’ for when shit has just hit every fan imaginable. I like each character having some kind of defining quirk or to build an identity out of mundane things since the characters themselves are pretty extraodinary. Jason Todd always has you feel me? And B is the one that brings it all together, Dick has the ultimate sixth (or seventh? Twelfth?) sense and can find a hurt anyone anywhere (really, he found B in space). Alfred is always going to shake his head at the antics of boys and Dami thinks all of them are dumb asses (but he would defend any of them with his last breath). Just, yeah. The little things.

7. Unbelievable smut. The smut I write about would probably never happen in real life. There’s things like frictions burns and just, yup. But, it reads well, yeah?

8. Cover both sides of the story. Ah, I write a lot of emotional things, and action-y things, so I like to have a round perspective if you want to think of it that way. I like to move from once character to another, to find some connection between them to make the change seamless. It could be the characters as standing in the same room, could be next to one another, could be seeing the same thing with different view points. Example: It starts with the explosion in Tony’s lab, directly triggering the aggravated Avenger’s alarm in Stark Tower. It moves smoothly into Captain America slamming out from his floor to take to the stairwell, still in his pjs and not a pause in his stride. He hits two floors down when Clint is the next one out, bow ready, quiver strapped along his bare back, and in a seamless move, steps up on Steve’s knees and then shoulder as the super soldier passes, vaulting over the edge of the railing and down into the depths; he hits a lucky move when Nat is already leaning over on her own floor, hand out. The grip is solid as her body loosens, pulls easily by the archer’s grip so they’re falling together, moving faster over the side, passing Bruce as he takes the steps two-at-a-time down. The inevitable thwhip is the line firing, catching on the upper railing to stop them in time to hit the secret entrance to the workshop.

#writing #because these are just things to throw out there #you should add yours #because that would be interesting

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williamlwolf89 · 4 years ago

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57 Literary Devices That’ll Elevate Your Writing (+ Examples)

Where were you when your fourth-grade teacher first introduced you to literary devices?

(Did you learn about the mighty metaphor? Or maybe its simpering cousin, the simile?)

Perhaps you were daydreaming about cheese pizza and wondering what your mom packed you for lunch.

Years later, you’re starting to realize that maybe you should’ve taken better notes back then.

Because you’re a writer now, or trying to be, and it’s kind of embarrassing when your friends (or worse, your kids) come to you and ask: “What’s an onomatopoeia?”

And all you have to say is: “An onomatopoeia? Uh, well, you know it’s a species of a…a…achoo! Darn my dratted allergies!”

Never again.

Not with this handy-dandy list of 57 (count ‘em!) literary devices that will help your writing soar above the clouds… pull ahead of the teeming hordes… shine beyond the most brilliant — uh, you get the idea.

But let’s back up. You probably need a quick refresher first, right? Let’s do a quick Q&A.

Starting with…

What are Literary Devices?

Literary devices are strategies writers use to strengthen ideas, add personality to prose, and ultimately communicate more effectively. Just as chefs use unique ingredients or techniques to create culinary masterpieces (flambéed crêpes, anyone?), skilled writers use literary devices to create life-changing works of art.

So who should care about literary devices?

You, of course. If you want to be a charismatic, powerful writer that readers want to follow (or clients want to hire), that is.

The right literary devices can make your ideas more memorable, your thoughts more clear, and your writing more powerful.

Your knowledge and skillful use of literary devices will catapult you above the hordes of wannabe writers, increasing your self-confidence, and endowing you with the kind of influence that will keep your audience salivating to consume your work.

How are Literary Devices Different From Rhetorical Devices?

Literary devices and rhetorical devices have a good bit of overlap. They’re very similar — so similar, you’ll find a lot of confusing, conflicting information online.

Google “alliteration” and you’ll see it on lists for both rhetorical and literary devices. The same is true with “personification”, “tmesis”, “litotes”, and numerous others.

So what’s the difference?

Here’s an oversimplified TL;DR:

Literary devices are a narrative technique. Rhetorical devices, also known as persuasive devices or stylistic devices, are a persuasion technique.

What are the 10 Most Common Literary Devices?

Alliteration

Anthropomorphism

Dramatic Irony

Euphemism

Flashback

Foreshadowing

Hyperbole

Onomatopoeia

Oxymoron

Point of View

(Yes, we were surprised “anthropomorphism” made the list too.)

Alright, enough questions. It’s time for the main event.

Our Huge List of Literary Devices

You will find some recognizable names in this list. You will also find a few party crashers that (unless you were an English major) you’ve probably never heard of (I’m looking at you, verisimilitude).

But whether it’s a familiar friend or an idiosyncratic interloper, each and every device comes with a lovingly hand-crafted definition and an enlightening example, carefully curated by yours truly.

(Don’t say you haven’t been warned.)

Here’s our list of the 57 must-know literary devices to get you started on the road to writerly stardom:

1. Alliteration

Some super sentences supply stunning samples of alliteration, such as this one. In other words, an alliteration is a literary device that features a series of words in swift succession, all starting with the same letter.

Graceful and clever use of alliteration (not, ahem, like the example above) can create a pleasant musicality to writing.

But note: Alliterations are a special kind of consonance, which means they must use words that start with consonant sounds. Repeated vowel sounds are known as assonance.

Example of Alliteration

Most people think of tongue twisters like “Peter Piper picked a pot of pickled peppers” when they think of alliteration. But did you know many famous writers throughout the ages have used alliteration in their titles?

Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Romance Readers and Ridiculous Rascals… wait. That last one is not actually a thing. But it is alliterative!

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t share this alliterative-filled introduction from V for Vendetta:

2. Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism is when a writer gives a non-human animal or object human-like qualities.

Example of Anthropomorphism

In Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Lumiere the candlestick, Cogsworth the clock, and the other enchanted residents of the Prince/Beast’s castle talk, walk, sing, and feel emotions just like people do. (Because they technically ARE people… fictional enchanted people, that is.)

3. Dramatic Irony

Audiences love dramatic irony, because they get to be “in the know.” That is, they know something that the characters IN the story do not. Hey, if you buy the book, you get privileges!

Example of Dramatic Irony

In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, two men attempt to escape their responsibilities using the same fake name: Ernest. Only the audience knows the two tricksters’ real names are Jack and Algie. (A far cry from Ernest, for sure!)

4. Euphemism

The prefix “eu-” means “good” or “well,” so it makes sense that a “euphemism” is a “good way to talk about a bad thing.” Or, a “word or expression substituted for something else that is too harsh…”

Like when you say your nephew “just needs a bit of practice” when he plays the violin like a tortured cat.

Example of Euphemism

Because of humanity’s understandable aversion to death, we have come up with quite a few creative ways to describe death and dying:

Pushing up daisies

Going the way of the dinosaur

Kicking the bucket

5. Flashback

Flashbacks are scenes which show an event that happened in a character’s past, providing clues to the present story.

Example of Flashback

In Alfred Hitchcock’s famous movie Vertigo, one key flashback scene was almost cut out of the picture entirely. (SPOILER ALERT: It’s the scene where we find out that the suicidal wife is actually an actress hired to hide the wife’s murder. The actress starts to write a confession letter, then rips it up.)

6. Foreshadowing

The writing on the wall…

A glimpse of a tombstone with your name on it…

Fingernail marks scratched in blood…

Not all foreshadowing is creepy, but they all warn or indicate something is coming in the future. You could say that foreshadowing is like the opposite of a flashback.

Example of Foreshadowing

In the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the author Harper Lee foreshadows the last twist in the story in the very first line of the book: “When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”

(Of course, by the time you get to the end of the book, you’ve probably forgotten all about the first line. But that’s why Lee is a genius and the rest of us can only wonder in awe.)

7. Hyperbole

A hyperbole is an exaggeration that a hearer or reader is not supposed to take seriously.

Example of Hyperbole

The great satirist Mark Twain wrote in Old Times on the Mississippi:

“I…could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.”

8. Onomatopoeia

An onomatopoeia is a word that comes from the sound it represents, such as “achoo!” or “arrgh.”

Example of Onomatopoeia

Young children’s books are the motherlode of onomatopoeia. For example, Doreen Cronin’s Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type has onomatopoeia right in the title. Same with Ross MacDonald’s Achoo! Bang! Crash! And Barry Gott’s Honk! Splat! Vroom!

9. Oxymoron

An oxymoron is a popular literary device where seemingly contradictory words are connected. Fun fact: the word “oxymoron” is itself oxymoronic — it comes from two ancient Greek words meaning “sharp and stupid.”

Example of Oxymoron

Simon and Garfunkel’s famous song “The Sounds of Silence” is a perfect oxymoron.

10. Point of View

Point of view is the perspective a writer chooses when writing. In fiction, you can have a first, second, or third person point of view.

First person uses pronouns like “me” or “I,” second person uses “you,” and third person uses “he/she” and looks at the character and story from the perspective of an outsider.

Note: Third person can be limited. The narrator can either only see inside the head of one character, or they can be omniscient — a Godlike narrator that can see everything that is going on.

Example of Point of View

In The Help, a novel about black maids in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, the story is told from the first-person point of view of three women, looking at similar events from their own perspectives.

11. Allegory

Take a metaphor, put it on steroids, throw in a dash of realism, and you have yourself an allegory: a figure of speech used to represent a large, complex (and often moral) message about real-world events or issues.

Example of Allegory

Nothing screams “hypocritical tyrant” quite like fictional pigs in human clothing, declaring: “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others!”

At least, that’s the message George Orwell hoped to convey in Animal Farm, a fictional mirror of communism. Orwell certainly had a way with (dystopian) allegories!

12. Allusion

An allusion is a device that the writer uses to refer, indirectly, to someone or something outside of the situation, such as a person, event, or thing in another (real or imagined) world.

Example of Allusion

In The Big Bang Theory, the names of main characters Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter allude to the real-life TV producer, Sheldon Leonard. (Let’s hope that he did not share his fictional counterparts’ personalities.)

13. Anachronism

Anachronism is the time machine of literary devices. Anachronisms pop up when a writer accidentally (or purposefully) makes an error in the chronology of the writing.

It’s most often seen when writing features slang or technology that should not appear in the timeline of the story.

Example of Anachronism

In the famous “He got me invested in some kind of fruit company” scene from Forrest Gump, Forrest Gump unfolds a thank-you letter sporting Steve Job’s Apple logo.

But the letter in the movie was sent in 1975, while Apple didn’t go public in the real world until 1980. So Forrest Gump couldn’t have invested in the computer company as the movie portrayed it. (We still love you, Forrest!)

14. Anaphora

The anaphora is a literary device that emphasizes a word, word group, or phrase by repeating it at the beginning of a series of clauses or sentences.

Example of Anaphora

One of the longest opening lines by Charles Dickens (which a high school English teacher once directed me to memorize) uses anaphora generously:

“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…”

(Thanks a lot, Dickens!)

15. Anastrophe

Anastrophe is a literary device that alters the normal order of English speech. In other words, instead of subject-verb-object (“I like cats”), the sentence order becomes subject-object-verb (“I cats like”).

Poets use anastrophe to make rhyming easier, and prose writers use it to sound… wiser?

Example of Anastrophe

Who can talk about anastrophe without mentioning our favorite intergalactic mentor? That’s right, Yoda’s iconic speeches are fantastic examples of anastrophe:

“Powerful you have become”

“Named must be your fear before banish it you can.”

“The greatest teacher, failure is.”

16. Aphorism

An aphorism is a short, witty saying that delivers wisdom with a punch. But in order for it to be an aphorism, it has to contain a universal truth, packed into a nutshell-sized statement.

Example of Aphorism

Benjamin Franklin was a master of aphorisms. Here is a prime selection from his treasure trove:

Little strokes fell great oaks

Strike while the iron is hot

Fish and visitors smell in three days

17. Archetype

An archetype is the original pattern, the prototype, the ideal model for a certain character or situation.

Example of Archetype

In the epic poem, Beowulf, Grendel is the archetypal monster, a “descendant of Cain,” “creature of darkness,” and “devourer of our human kind.” (Yikes. Would not want to meet him in a dark alley!)

18. Asyndeton

Sometimes, a writer leaves out conjunctions like and, but, or, for, and nor. This is not because s/he is forgetful. It’s because that’s what an asyndeton is: a group of phrases with the conjunctions left out, for rhythmic emphasis.

Example of Asyndeton

Here’s Abraham Lincoln beautifully demonstrating the power of the asyndeton:

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.”

(Notice the glaring omission of the word “and.”)

19. Chiasmus

The Latin word “chiasm” refers to a “crossing,” so it makes sense that a chiasmus is a literary device where words, grammar constructions, and/or concepts are “crossed,” aka reversed.

Example of Chiasmus

Apparently, early Greeks were quite fond of the chiasmus, or at least Socrates was:

“Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.”

20. Cliffhanger

Cliffhangers get their name from the effect they have on readers: making them feel as if a cruel, cruel writer has left them dangling off the edge of a lonely ledge.

We all know that feeling of reading WAY past our bedtime, because every chapter’s ending has us frantically flipping to find out what happens next. That’s a cliffhanger.

Example of Cliffhanger

Here’s a cliffhanger from Harry Potter:

“Harry crossed to his bedroom on tiptoe, slipped inside… and turned to collapse on his bed. The trouble was, there was already someone sitting on it.”

Want to know what happens next? You’ll have to read the book.

21. Colloquialism

The word “colloquialism” would probably never be a colloquialism itself. That’s because colloquialism is a word, phrase, or expression that is used in daily, informal conversations by common people. Colloquialisms vary, depending on where you live.

Example of Colloquialism

The briefly popular 2012 meme series, “Sh*t X say,” are packed with examples of colloquialisms, such as these, er, jewels (?) from Episode 1 of “Sh*t Girls Say”:

“Twinsies!”

“Shut UP!”

“Like, I’m not even joking right now.”

22. Cumulative Sentence

A cumulative sentence builds on a core idea (an independent clause, if you must know the technical term) by layering on chopped-up partial sentences (dependent clauses) and phrases, like a layer cake!

Example of Cumulative Sentence

“She finished the Game of Thrones marathon, exhausted yet exhilarated, full of grief that it was all over, itching to call her bestie to discuss her impressions, shocked that it was already nearly dawn.”

23. Diction

Diction is a fancy way of saying: “the words a writer chooses when talking to a specific audience.” Diction can be formal or informal, use jargon or regional slang, etc.

Example of Diction

Formal diction:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Informal diction:

Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain’t that a big enough majority in any town?Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn

24. Epigraph

An epigraph is a brief quote or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter that is put there to suggest the theme of said book or chapter.

Example of Epigraph

“For Beatrice — My love for you shall live forever. You, however, did not.”

“For Beatrice — When we first met, you were pretty, and I was lonely. Now I am pretty lonely.”

“For Beatrice — I cherished, you perished. The world’s been nightmarished.”

Technically, the poetic homage to the dead Beatrice in Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events is a dedication, not an epigraph. But since Beatrice is fictional (as is, in a sense, the author himself), and these darkly funny quotes set the tone for the Unfortunate Events quite well, one could make the case that these are, in fact, epigraphs.

25. Epistrophe

Not to be confused with alliteration, the epistrophe is the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of a series of clauses or sentences to add rhythm and/or emphasis.

Example of Epistrophe

‘Cause if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it

If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it

Don’t be mad once you see that he want it

If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it Beyonce, Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

(My apologies for the ear worm.)

26. Extended Metaphor

An extended metaphor is a metaphor that is extended. Just like I’m about to extend this definition: a metaphor developed in high detail and spread over a large passage of writing, from several lines, to a paragraph, to an entire work. (Done! Whew.)

Example of Extended Metaphor

In 2003, Will Ferrell told graduating Harvard-ians about his alma mater, the “University of Life” where he studied in the “School of Hard Knocks” the school colors were “black and blue,” he had office hours with the “Dean of Bloody Noses” and had to borrow his class notes from “Professor Knuckle Sandwich.”

27. Exposition

An exposition is a literary device used to introduce background information about the story in a matter-of-fact way.

Example of Exposition

Because of the famous fiction writing rule, “show don’t tell,” many authors use dialogue and other tricks to convey need-to-know information. But some very successful writers continue to use plain old straightforward exposition like:

The hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of the Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected.J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

28. Frame Story

A frame story is exactly what it sounds like: A story that frames another story. In other words, it’s a story that introduces another smaller story inside, or the story outside the story within the story… oh, never mind. Just see the example below.

Example of a Frame Story

The best example of a frame story is The Princess Bride, which author William Goldman claims to have “translated” from an old “Florinese” story his father told him.

The movie version also uses a frame story: A grandfather reads his grandson a bedtime story (The Princess Bride, of course!).

29. Humor

If I have to explain what humor is to you, I’m afraid you might need something a bit stronger than 57 literary devices to… Oh, what’s that? (My editor says I still have to give you a definition. Contractual obligations, and all that.)

Fine, fine. Here it is: humor is a literary tool that amuses readers and makes them laugh. (There, happy?)

Example of Humor

I mean, technically this whole entire article is just one big ball of fun, but… what’s that? Okay, alright. Official examples, here we go:

“It’s just a flesh wound!” — The Black Knight, after getting both arms chopped off in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

“‘Greater good?’ I am your wife! I’m the greatest good you’re ever gonna get!” — Frozone’s wife’s in response to Frozone’s desire to bail on dinner to save the world in The Incredibles

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” — Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

30. Hypophora

No, it’s not a fancy name for a Greek hippo. Rather, a hypophora is a literary device where a writer asks a question and then immediately answers it.

Example of Hypophora

Here’s a philosophical example from the timeless children’s novel Charlotte’s Web:

“After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die.”

31. Imagery

Imagery is descriptive or figurative language used to evoke near-physical sensations in a reader’s mind. Well-written imagery helps readers almost see, hear, taste, touch, and feel what is going on in the story.

Example of Imagery

Here’s an excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s Preludes, which uses multiple senses:

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o’clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet.

32. Irony

Irony is one of the trickiest literary devices to define, best grasped through absorbing examples. But a workable definition goes something like this:

Irony is using a word or phrase that usually signifies the opposite of what the speaker intends to say, for comedic or emphatic purposes. Irony can also be an event that works out contrary to the expected, and can often be funny.

So enough with dry definitions, let’s see if the examples can explain better:

Example of Irony

There are three kinds of irony, one of which (dramatic irony) we discussed earlier:

Dramatic irony: In Romeo and Juliet, the audience knows that Juliet isn’t dead, but asleep. Romeo, who doesn’t know, kills himself.

Situational irony: In the animated film Ratatouille, it’s ironic that a rat (which most people don’t like to see in kitchens) ends up being the master chef in a kitchen.

Verbal irony: When Beauty and the Beast’s Belle is trying to get away from an odious suitor’s proposal, she says, “I just don’t deserve you!”

33. Isocolon

Isocolon refers to a piece of writing that uses a series of clauses, phrases, or sentences that are grammatically equal in length, creating a parallel structure that gives it a sort of pleasant rhythm.

Examples of Isocolon

“Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered).” — Julius Caesar

“You’ve got a lot to live. Pepsi’s got a lot to give.” — Pepsi, circa 1969

“You win some, you lose some.” — Unknown

34. Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition is a literary device writers use to place two highly contrasting things together to emphasize the difference.

Example of Juxtaposition

In Pixar’s Up, Carl Fredricksen is an old, curmudgeonly widower, while his unwanted sidekick Russell is a young, naively energetic schoolboy. That’s what makes the movie so much fun: the contrast (read: juxtaposition) between old, jaded Carl and young, innocent Russell.

35. Litotes

Litotes, from a Greek word meaning “simple,” refers to an affirmation where you say something by negating the contrary.

Example of Litotes

In A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift prefaces his proposal to cure poverty by eating poor people’s children with a litotes:

“I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

Having been assured by a very knowing American…that a young healthy child well nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food…I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragoust.”

36. Malapropism

A malapropism is when a character (unintentionally and hilariously) mistakes a word in place of a similar-sounding word. The concept comes from a character (Mrs. Malaprop) who liked to use big words incorrectly in a comedic play by English playwright Richard Sheridan.

Example of a Malapropism

The beloved children’s series Amelia Bedelia describes a maid who takes her bosses’ instructions a bit too literally. For example: sketching her bosses’ drapes when asked to “draw the drapes.”

37. Metaphor

Ah, the metaphor! A favorite tool of writers everywhere. The metaphor is a literary device where something is compared to a dissimilar thing without using a comparison word such as “like” or “as.”

Example of a Metaphor

In Pixar’s Inside Out, the emotions Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness live and work in Headquarters, an obvious metaphor comparing the brain to a technological control center.

38. Metonymy

Metonymy is the practice of using part of a thing to represent something related to it. In other words, it’s the use of one word as a stand in for another, bigger concept.

Example of Metonymy

Mark Twain uses metonymy in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:

“He said he reckoned a body could reform the ole man with a shotgun.”

Here, a “body” refers not to a corpse, but to a person. A corpse, after all, would probably have a hard time wielding a shotgun.

39. Mood

Mood is the feeling an audience gets from consuming a piece of writing. The words a writer chooses creates an atmosphere that evokes powerful emotions from the reader.

Example of Mood

Children’s writer Roald Dahl is a master of creating whimsical, funny, child-friendly moods in his books via extraordinary situations (a boy wins a golden ticket to a magical chocolate factory) and a silly invented vocabulary:

“Don’t gobblefunk around with words” — The BFG

40. Motif

A motif is a sound, action, figure, image, or other element or symbol that recurs throughout a literary work to help develop the theme.

Example of Motif

The book/movie Ready Player One is stuffed with pop motifs from the 1980s. The entire plot revolves around a virtual 1980s world, which contrasts with the main character’s bleak real-life.

41. Paradox

A paradox seems to make two mutually contradictory things true at the same time.

Example of Paradox

In the tragic revenge story, Hamlet, the title character says something that sounds paradoxical:

“I must be cruel to be kind.”

Meaning, he must kill his stepfather (cruel) in order to avenge his father’s murder (kind).

42. Personification

Personification: giving humanlike characteristics to nonhuman animals or objects. Don’t confuse it with anthropomorphism, which goes farther, making the nonhuman character act and appear human.

Example of Personification

Pixar is a master at using personification. For example, in their 2006 movie Cars, the main characters are all, well, cars — cars who talk, race, date, do community service, and win trophies.

43. Polysyndeton

Polysyndeton is a literary device that uses conjunctions quickly, one right after the other, often without punctuation, in order to play with the rhythm of the writing.

Example of Polysyndeton

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou uses polysyndeton when she writes:

“Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets…”

44. Repetition

Repetition is the grandaddy of many other devices on this list, such as anaphora, epistrophe, and polysyndeton above.

In other words, repetition is the reiteration of something (word, phrase, sentence, etc.) that has already been said (for emphasis).

Example of Repetition

Repetition is frequently used in song lyrics, such as the iconic Beatles song, Let It Be:

“When I find myself in times of trouble

Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be

There will be an answer, let it be…”

45. Satire

Satire uses humor, ridicule, irony, and exaggeration to expose and criticize something ridiculous, stupid, or bad. Satire can be light and funny, or dark and judgmental.

There are three types of satire: Juvenalian (viciously attacking a single target), Menippean (equally harsh, but more general), and Horatian (softer, more humorous).

Example of Satire

The funny-offensive show South Park is a modern-day example of biting satire, riffing on all kinds of sensitive topics in a politically incorrect fashion, from politics to religion to Hollywood.

46. Simile

A simile is like a metaphor, except that it compares dissimilar objects using the words “like” or “as” (whereas metaphors compare directly, without any helping words).

A choice simile can be funny, memorable, surprising, or all three!

Example of Simile

Sometimes the most memorable similes are the strangest ones, like this collection of similes from Song of Solomon in the Bible:

“Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from Mount Gilead. Your teeth are a flock of sheep just shorn…your lips are like a scarlet ribbon…”

47. Soliloquy

A soliloquy is a speech given by a character in the absence of hearers. Soliloquies are particularly popular in plays, which don’t usually have the luxury of omniscient narration to reveal characters’ inner thoughts.

Example of Soliloquy

Who can talk about soliloquies without mentioning the Bard’s epic romantic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet?

“Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo!” says Juliet, speaking (or so she thinks) to herself.

48. Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock. Lee Child. Steven King. All are storytellers who create suspense, a feeling of heightened anxiety, uncertainty, and excitement.

Example of Suspense

The famous (or should I say infamous?) shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho kept watchers curling their toes for 45 seconds while the innocent-and-soon-to-be-dead Marion takes a shower with a killer lurking in the background.

49. Symbolism

Symbolism. A favorite device of literature teachers everywhere. Symbolism is, of course, when writers use symbols (images, objects, etc.) to represent bigger, deeper ideas, qualities, and so on.

Example of Symbolism

Harry Potter’s lightning scar, the Ring of Doom from the eponymous Lord of the Rings, the mockingjay from Hunger Games… there are examples of symbolism everywhere you look!

50. Synecdoche

A synecdoche is a literary device where a part stands in for the whole, or vice versa. It is not to be confused with metonymy, which is when something represents a related concept. (See the earlier example for metonymy.)

Example of Synecdoche

In Julius Caesar, Mark Antony asks his “Friends, Romans, countrymen” to “lend [him] their ears.” Thankfully, his audience recognized this metonymy and did not interpret Antony’s words literally. Otherwise, we would have a very different play on our hands.

51. Tautology

A tautology is a literary device often used by accident. It involves saying the same thing twice, but phrasing it differently the second time.

A tautology is something a child might say: “I want it because I want it!”

Example of Tautology

In Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, “gently rapping” and “faintly tapping” are redundant:

“But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door”

52. Tmesis

From the Greek word meaning “to cut,” tmesis is a literary device that cuts a word or phrase into two parts by inserting a word in between them.

Example of Tmesis

Here are two silly samples from Pygmalion’s Eliza Doolittle:

“Fan-bloody-tastic!”

“Abso-blooming-lutely”

53. Tone

Tone can be tricky to define. Officially, in writing, tone is the attitude a writer has toward the subject or the audience. It’s the writer’s viewpoint, conveyed through his or her word choice.

Example of Tone

Notice how the choice of emotional words, pacing, and use of other literary elements in this excerpt from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart create a guilty, anxious tone:

“I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not…I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations, but the noise steadily increased. Why WOULD they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro…O God! What COULD I do? I foamed — I raved — I swore!”

54. Tragicomedy

A tragicomedy is exactly what it sounds like: a story (play or novel) that is both tragic and comedic.

Example of Tragicomedy

Having mastered both tragedy and comedy, is it such a stretch for Shakespeare to have mastered tragicomedy as well? Think: The Merchant of Venice, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, which all blend humor and suffering in a reflection of real life.

55. Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude is a fancy-schmancy word for saying something fake looks real. Example: writing about a fictitious person, thing, or event, that seems almost true, even if it’s far-fetched.

Example of Verisimilitude

Fantasy stories are the best fodder for finding verisimilitude. For example, prolific fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson often creates convoluted magic systems based on things like color, strict rules, constraints, and consequences that almost makes them seem possible.

56. Vignette

A vignette is a short scene or episode — a moment-in-the-life description. Unlike a short story, it doesn’t have a narrative arc or all the elements of a plot.

Example of Vignette

In 2009, Pixar put out a series of video vignettes to promote their movie, Wall-E:

“WALL-E meets a football”

“Wall-E cup shuffle”

“Wall-E meets a magnet”

Here, check them out:

57. Zoomorphism

Zoomorphism is when a writer gives animal-like characteristics to something (human, inanimate object, etc.) that is not an animal. It’s basically the animal form of personification.

Example of Zoomorphism

Want a terrific example of zoomorphism? Just check out Spider-Man, Catwoman, Black Panther, and dozens other comic book superheroes.

What to Do With Your Literary Device Knowledge

Whew! That was a doozy. Congratulations on making it through the entire list.

Now, I know what you’re thinking:

“Do I need to memorize all of these literary terms?”

No, no you don’t.

“Do I even have to know them by name?”

Not necessarily.

But tell you what…

Go through the list again and just let everything soak in. Then next time you’re reading a book, blog post, magazine article, or even a tabloid, try to spot any of the literary devices hiding inside.

I promise, they’re there.

And next time you write, see if you can weave in a common literary device or two, for emphasis, for art, or just for grins and giggles.

As you learn to notice and absorb these devices into your craft — the way a kung-fu master absorbs the basic foundations of his form — you will find yourself becoming a more versatile, expressive, skillful writer.

It’s a bit like having a variety of colors to choose from as a painter. Sure, you can draw a decent portrait with just a stick of charcoal, but imagine what you could do if you had an entire palette.

That’s what literary devices can do for you, if you take the time to pick them up.

So take another peek at this list now and then, and practice sneaking lit devices into your own work.

You’ll be amazed how much clearer, stronger, and addicting your writing will become.

Editors will grin and nod as they read through your work.

Bloggers will fight to snap up your guest posts.

Readers will mob you for your skills.

And you will smile like Mona Lisa, master of the secrets of the universe (or at least this list of literary devices).

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New Post has been published on Literary Techniques

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Assonance

Assonance Definition

Assonance refers to the repetition of identical stressed vowels in nearby syllables when they are followed by different consonants or consonant clusters. Even though sometimes omitted for brevity, the latter part of the definition is equally important as the first one, because If identical stressed vowels are followed by identical consonant sounds, then the literary device in question is not assonance, but rhyme.

Thus, the phrase “white knight” is an example of rhyme; however, the title of Dylan Thomas’ poem “In the White Giant’s Thigh” is an example of assonance. In both cases, the “long i” [aɪ] is repeated in all of the stressed syllables, but only in the first one the consonant behind it sounds identical as well (“waɪt naɪt” vs. “waɪt ˈʤaɪənts θaɪ”).

Assonance was frequently used as a substitute for rhyme in early Celtic, Spanish, and French poetry, which is why it is sometimes (somewhat unsuitably) still called “vowel rhyme,” “vocalic rhyme” or even “half rhyme.” When Augustan and Romantic English poets started using rhymes on an almost regular basis, they saw in assonance a great way to amplify the musical effects of their poems. However, at least since the second half of the 19th century, modern poets once again have started employing assonance in place of a rhyme for the exact opposite effect.

Some of literature’s most skillful users of assonance are Alexander Pope, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Dylan Thomas.

ExamplesQuizFlashcardsWorksheets

Assonance Examples

Assonance in a Sentence

Example #1: Idioms

For nearly a week afterwards, the domestics observed significantly to each other, that Miss Isabella was as ‘nice as pie!’

OED lists this 1855 Which: Right or Left? sentence as the earliest occurrence of the idiom “nice as pie.” As is obvious, the idiomatic expression—as many others (“a good look,” “a dead end,” “high time,” etc.)—is made memorable through the use of assonance, as both “nice” and “pie” contain the “long i” but not repeating consonants.

Example #2-3: Proverbs

Variety is the spice of life.

In the proverb above, all of the nouns contain the “long i” [aɪ]. Interestingly enough, according to a wide-ranging 2012 study, about a quarter of English proverbs assonate. In the example below, assonance of the “long o” [əʊ] is effectively resolved in the “short o” of the last word (“moss”):

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

Example #4: Nursery Rhymes

As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives, Each wife had seven sacks, Each sack had seven cats, Each cat had seven kits: Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were there going to St. Ives?

The nursery rhyme above is actually a riddle – so do try to solve it if you want a break from all this literary talk with a simple mathematical exercise. Highly assonant, this riddle employs effective assonance of both the “long i” (in “I,” “Ives” and “wives”) and the “short e” (in “met,” “man,” “seven,” “sacks,” “had,” “cats,” and “many”). In one instance (“sacks”/”cats”), assonance works as a nice substitute for rhyme.

Example #5: Advertising Slogans

Finger lickin’ good.

KFC’s famous slogan—“finger lickin’ good”—works so well because of the assonance of the “short i” repeated three times in the initial four syllables. However, it works even better when the first two words are paired up with KFC’s actual product—”finger lickin’ chicken”— which adds two more [ɪ]’s to the mix and spices the assonance with a dash of rhyme.

(Further Reading: 10 Examples of Assonance in a Sentence)

Assonance in Poetry

Example #1: Alexander Pope, First Satire of the Second Book of Horace 25-26 (1733)

Rend with tremendous Sound your ears asunder, With Gun, Drum, Trumpet, Blunderbuss and Thunder.

Alexander Pope was a deft user of many rhetorical devices, and assonance was certainly not an exception. In the second verse from the couplet above, he manages to achieve an almost onomatopoetic effect, combining the assonance of the “short u” vowel [ʌ] with bilabial consonants (“b,” “p,” and “m”) to create the effect promised in the first verse: “tremendous sound” which rends the ears asunder.

Example #2: John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” 1-2 (1820)

Thou still unravished bride of quietness, Thou foster child of silence and slow time…

There are not many verses more beautiful than the two which open John Keats’ great “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” However, it often goes unjustly unnoted that a large portion of this beauty the verses owe to the assonance of the “long i” which Keats masterfully uses in all five nouns present in the excerpt: “bride,” “quietness,” “child,” “silence,” and “time.” And to make the verses even more sweet-sounding, this grand assonance is nicely prepared by the humble introductory assonant pair “still unravished,” tightly linked through the repeated use of the “short i.”

Example #3: Algernon Charles Swinburne, “August” (1866)

The colour of the leaves was more Like stems of yellow corn that grow Through all the gold June meadow’s floor

Even detractors of Algernon Charles Swinburne hail him a musical genius; and, indeed, his mastery of the phonetic literary devices is, to say the least, impressive. Even though published in his debut poetry collection, “August” already exemplifies this brilliantly. The repeated “o” sounds—whether short or long—permeate the excerpt, appearing in almost every second word: “colour,” “more,” “yellow,” “corn,” “grow,” “gold,” “meadow,” and “floor.” This produces a highly euphonious effect, which Swinburne strikingly manages to sustain throughout the whole poem.

Example #4: Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland I.7.1-4 (1875)

It dates from day Of his going in Galilee; Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey; Manger, maiden’s knee;

Considered by many to be perhaps his greatest masterpiece, the 35-stanza Christian ode “The Wreck of the Deutschland” demonstrates wholly Gerard Manley Hopkins’ masterful use of not only his unique contributions to prosody (instress and sprung rhythm) but also of some much more common literary devices such as assonance and alliteration. The “long a” hauntingly dominates the four verses excerpted above, appearing no less than seven times, twice in combination with the alliterative “d” and “m” (“dates”/”day” and “manger”/”maiden”).

Example #5: Dylan Thomas, “Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait” 49-52 (1941)

Whales in the wake like capes and Alps Quaked the sick sea and snouted deep, Deep the great bushed bait with raining lips Slipped the fins of those humpbacked tons.

Not many modern poets—if anyone—have managed to replicate Dylan Thomas’ verbally dense and rhythmically resonant verses. In the thirteenth quatrain of his “Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait,” he demonstrates how exceptionally skillful he is in using assonance to produce enduringly evocative imagery. And it’s fascinating to think that even though seven words in the stanza use the “long a”— and six of them are monosyllabic—none of them rhyme with each other: “whales,” “wake,” “capes,” “quaked,” “great,” “bait” and “raining”. “This symphony of vowels and consonants proves Thomas a master,” notes William York Tindall in A Reader’s Guide to Dylan Thomas. “Not Hopkins himself could put sweeter sounds together.”

(Further Reading: 10 Examples of Assonance Poems)

Assonance in Literature

Example #1: William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1 III.3.48 (1591)

When Death doth close his tender dying eyes.

In Shakespeare on Theatre, Robert Cohen provides a list of all 136 different adjectives that William Shakespeare uses in his plays to vividly describe the human eyes. As in the example above (“dying eyes”), many of them are quite melodious, assonant adjective + noun sets. Can you find where the Bard uses three other assonant pairings of this kind: “admiring eyes,” “desiring eyes,” and “fiery eyes”?

Example #2: Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee” 38-39 (1849)

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride…

Much like Swinburne, Edgar Allan Poe was a skilled user of assonance, mainly for its musical effects. To some—like the French symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire—this made him the designer of verses “carved like diamonds”; to others—such as Aldous Huxley—Poe’s use of phonetic literary devices seemed analogous to a sensitive man wearing “a diamond ring on every finger.” You can understand both sides of the argument if you try reading the above couplet out loud. As you can already see, here, in merely two verses, Poe uses the “long i” no less than eleven times! However, it is difficult to deny how melodious and memorable this makes the ending of “Annabel Lee,” Poe’s last complete poem.

Example #3: Robert A. Harris, Writing with Clarity and Style (2003)

So flows the river, going past the town, its whole load of toxins, fish, and sediment pouring evermore into the sea.

The example above is borrowed from Robert Harris’ celebrated “Guide to Rhetorical Devices for Contemporary Writers.” It’s only fitting to borrow the analysis of this highly assonant sentence as well. “The repeated ‘long o’ sounds in the [highlighted] words,” explains Harris, “create a drawn-out sonorousness, suggesting both flow and inevitability of movement.”

Songs with Assonance

Example #1: Alan Jay Lerner, The Rain in Spain

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain

In My Fair Lady, the 1956 musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle is a Cockney flower girl incapable of breaking her dialect speech patterns even after hundreds and hundreds of elocution exercises with Professor Henry Higgins. For example, instead of saying “reɪn” and “Speɪn” she says something along the lines of “raɪn” and “Spaɪn.” She finally gets it while singing the above verse in which five words (three of which rhyme) contain “the long a” [ei]: “rain,” “Spain,” “stays,” “mainly,” “plain.”

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Example #2: The Doors, Light My Fire

You know that it would be untrue You know that I would be a liar If I was to say to you Girl, we couldn’t get much higher

Come on baby, light my fire Come on baby, light my fire Try to set the night on fire

Widely considered one of the greatest songs ever written—reaching #35 on Rolling Stone’s list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time—The Doors’ “Light My Fire” offers an exquisite example of the sonorous power of one-vowel assonance. In addition to the rhymes—which necessarily all contain the “long i” [aɪ] (“liar,” “higher,” “fire”)—the lyrics also add many other words which include the same vowel sound and, thus, serve to build and/or keep up the momentum: “I,” “light,” “try,” “night.” And this goes on in the second verse as well, which adds few more assonant words: “time,” “mire,” “try,” “funeral pyre”!

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Example #3: Radiohead, Exit Music (for a Film)

We hope that you choke…

Radiohead often use assonance in place of rhyme in their songs. As you can hear in this all but a textbook example, it is this literary device which has helped them pen some of the most hauntingly beautiful and yet chillingly disturbing verses. Rhyme may be at times too complete and childlike to carry the burden of heavy thoughts; assonance is much more adult and generates a lingering effect. Fittingly, the verse above is not the only one in “Exit Music (for a Film)” which employs assonance. You can also hear it in “the long a” of “today/ we escape” and “the long i” in “breathe/ keep breathing.”

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(Further Reading: 5 Songs with Assonance)

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