In it’s most simple form personification is a poetic device where animals, plants or even inanimate objects, are given human qualities. I said simple because, in it’s basic form, if we imagine a rabbit hunting with a 4-10 shotgun that is personification, and that is a fairly simple idea.
Now, let us think about the words “the lightning danced across the sky,” they too are personification. So, too, is the idea that “the moon played hide and go seek throughout the night; the clouds shed tears of joy as they helped the moon.” As you can see there is metaphor within personification and it can be used to make metaphors deeper with skill.
William Wordsworth is famous for his use of this poetic device. Through out his poetry you will find examples of personification. In the poem, “As I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud” by Wordsworth he employees the same technique as the concept of the moon playing hide and go seek, except with the flowers and the breeze. He also is not quite so forward in his description, giving us these lines:
“When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees. Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.“
The above excerpt comes from a very loved poem within the English language and to me I don’t think it would be the same without personification, especially these lines. Imagine a universe where he had instead said:
“When at once I saw golden daffodils, beside the lake, beneath the trees blowing in the mornings cold breeze”
Even though I have gone to a little length to make it so the lines are more poetic than simply chopping out the personification, these still seem less worthy. Even if I continued and rhymed something to daffodils in the next line, they just would not be the same. So, long story short if nature cannot describe itself with its vast amount of images, go ahead and related it back to human things and give it personality because sometimes it works.
In thumping thuds of far off drowsy drums I hear the restless distant call of questions, beckoning me closer to feel their boom and beat within my body louder the taunt, the reverberation, of needed answers and the eternal feel of standing naked staring silently at a sea of stars and thinking, if gravity is a force my thumping heart’s within it’s orbital pull. So, too, my mind is gravitational and bound to the electric force of Earth, as listless wanderer of drums and beats that hammer their sound in to my loud mind when in the midst of sluggish eye or dream.
I am a big fan of how homophones can provide a multiplicity of meaning to a word in a poem. It is a poetic device that I use myself and one I think worth exploring.
Homophone
Each of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling.
before the battle’s even begun, but still the heart beats it’s thump and a Moi stands as hope’s guard against the coming force of knight and crown against the thunderous thump—
When you consider slang and common meanings that increases the options available to a writer of poetry. While. there might not be much too say about it as it is a simple concept, the implications of it’s use are large. As I cannot remember good examples I will add them to this page as I located them, but as all other things use your imagination and I am sure you will see some as you are writing.
There are so many languages to love,
but only one English to prize
and take into ones arms with such fondness
as to spark flames of passion high
as angels might fancy to fly, my dear.
Around her I was Icarus
with wings alight and burnt to nubs,
now glowing as embers and garnets
as I slowly descend into the adjust
of knowing there is no longer an us
and longing to submit to the plunge.
While poems relying heavily on patterned end rhymes have fallen out of favor in contemporary poetry I think it is still useful to understand rhymes, as they are still very often used internally where they are not on the end of the line. Remember there are no rules to poetry and everything talked about in this section is just to help in an understanding of what is possible. So, if you are writing something and feel and end rhyme is right, then by all means go ahead. Really obvious end rhymes are still used a lot in children poetry. The predictable pattern is something children enjoy, so if you are interested in writing that then please keep this in mind. Now, lets look at the types of rhyme.
Types of Rhyme
Perfect Rhyme
Masculine. Rhyme in which the stress is on the final syllable of the words (rhyme, sublime)
Feminine. Rhyme between two sets of one or more unstressed syllables. (hammer, carpenter)
Dactylic. Rhyme in which the stress is on the antepenultimate (third from last) syllable (cacophonies, Aristophanes)\
General Rhyme
Syllabic. A rhyme in which the last syllable of each word sounds the same but does not necessarily contain stressed vowels. (cleaver, silver, or pitter, patter; the final syllable of the words bottle and fiddle is /l/, a liquid consonant
Imperfect. A rhyme between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. (wing, caring)
Unaccented/weak. A rhyme between two sets of one or more unstressed syllables. (hammer, carpenter)
Semirhyme. A rhyme with an extra syllable on one word. (bend, ending)
Forced/oblique. A rhyme with an imperfect match in sound. (green, fiend; one, thumb)
Half Rhyme. Matching final consonants. (Harry, cherry)
Pararhyme. All consonants match. (tick, tock)
Assonance, consonance. Often referred to as slant rhymes these two devices are also a form of rhyming within a poem.
Alliteration. Also known as head rhyme alliteration is the matching of initial consonants.
Identical Rhymes
Identical rhymes are considered less than perfect in English poetry; but are valued more highly in other literature such as, for example, rime riche in French poetry.
Though homophones and homonyms satisfy the first condition for rhyming—that is, that the stressed vowel sound is the same—they do not satisfy the second: that the preceding consonant be different. As stated above, in a perfect rhyme the last stressed vowel and all following sounds are identical in both words.
If the sound preceding the stressed vowel is also identical, the rhyme is sometimes considered to be inferior and not a perfect rhyme after all. An example of such a super-rhyme or “more than perfect rhyme” is the identical rhyme, in which not only the vowels but also the onsets of the rhyming syllables are identical, as in gun and begun. Punning rhymes, such as bare and bear are also identical rhymes. The rhyme may extend even farther back than the last stressed vowel. If it extends all the way to the beginning of the line, so that there are two lines that sound very similar or identical, it is called a holorhyme (“For I scream/For ice cream”).
In poetics these would be considered identity, rather than rhyme.
Eye Rhyme
An eye rhyme, also called a visual rhyme or a sight rhyme, is a rhyme in which two words are spelled similarly but pronounced differently. An example is the name of English actor Sean Bean, whose name based on its visual aspect looks like it should be pronounced “Seen Bean”, but when spoken, there is no rhyming quality; its pronunciation is “Shawn Bean”.
Many older English poems, particularly those written in Middle English, contain rhymes that were originally true or full rhymes, but as read by modern readers, they are now eye rhymes because of shifts in pronunciation, especially the Great Vowel Shift. These are called historic rhymes. Historic rhymes are used by linguists to reconstruct pronunciations of old languages, and are used particularly extensively in the reconstruction of Old Chinese, whose writing system does not allude directly to pronunciation.
Example One example of a historic rhyme (i.e. one which was a true rhyme which is now an eye rhyme), is the following:
The great man down, you mark his favourite flies; The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.
Player King, in William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act III, scene II
Mind Rhyme
Mind rhyme is the suggestion of a rhyme which is left unsaid and must be inferred by the listener. A rhyme may be subverted either by stopping short, or by replacing the expected word with another (which may have the same rhyme or not). Mind rhyme is a form of innuendo, where the unsaid word is taboo or completes a sentence indelicately.
As a point of interest, mind rhymes are not the only device like this in poetry. There are also phantom lines that only exist as an echo within the mind of the reader. Johnny Cash’s song – Born and raised in black and White. When he says that his fictional brother didn’t even try, there is an echo of the earlier line ‘to save my soul.’ I cannot think of another example at this time, but for me I feel this idea is awesome.
When replacing the word for the mind rhyme I would be more inclined to call it a subverted rhyme, as in cheerleaders chanting:
Raa Raa REE! Kick ’em in the knee! Raa Raa RASS! Kick ’em in the other knee
Where the audience would tend to want to go with the rhyme instead, ass.
As this is pretty basic, although valuable information, I have merely reworked wiki information and added some commentary when needed. I am sure I will add some things but this stands as a pretty solid piece on rhymes.
There are so many languages to love,
but only one English to prize
and take into ones arms with such fondness
as to spark flames of passion high
as angels might fancy to fly, my dear.
Around her I was Icarus
with wings alight and burnt to nubs,
now glowing as embers and garnets
as I slowly descend into the adjust
of knowing there is no longer an us
and longing to submit to the plunge.
I will not let my death bore my friends. Our lives can do enough of that, and if I am living do not ask me about reruns or the television. I’d rather be poisoned, consumed by rats in the ally behind the dumpster next to a restaurant that services men when dinner stops.
I do not want to simply fade away, taken to a nursing home for my golden age to wade in my misery and filth covered rags. I will not let my death bore my friends. I’d take the plunge, sooner than croak while reading The Times on the toilet seat, but at least there is humor in that one.
If I do get too old, I hope the kids will be sensible enough to plant me as roses in the yard to brighten up their walk from the car or the view from the porch. I will not let my death bore my friends, and if I cannot be one with the roses let’s hope I go out in a giant fiery explosion.
I met a hermit where a stream diverged, passing the hours and the minutes of day and honing his whit he stopped to stretch, and said— ‘young man, would you give me your hand,” at once, I noticed the nub of his wrist buried in a ring of flowers—pegged stem deep into his tattered jacket’s cuff, and in such colors as golden yellow and red to cause a moment in me to forget.
Opening gin, he spoke: ‘always the paradigms, always theory before the facts, always the constant shifting of an eye to this, and that, and to the other thing— paradigms, paradigms.
We sure took a climb with Albert Einstein, we are the children of the times! one day the earth is flat, one day we’re cast of clay, one day we’re kindred of the birds, the next we are two snakes entwined for millions and billions of years until two thumbs rose from the inanimate muck.
And, have you heard the worlds a globe, and that the plates really don’t sub-duct? always, always the constant shift— paradigms, paradigms.
My boy, this hand of mine is better gone, because, as joyous twist to your distaste my flowered wrist has saved me twice once from the shifting eye of public mind, once from the collapse of worldly things, the loss of house, my car, my silly life, my beliefs, my paradigms.
My decent into the trees, not madness, or the lopping of my wrist, has saved me from cities collapsing as paradigms and brought me to these woods as unchanged as noble pines.’
Not wanting to be rude, I lowered my eyes and went along, I could not bear to tell the truth that all the cities had already burnt in nuclear explosions that pocked the earth. I just smiled and went about my way, knowing what his wrist had really saved.
On flaming ships in darkness, the pitch-black of inflating blindness grows boundless on every-side, with orbits giving over on stellar winds to oscillations vast, or some disturbance to the curvature, where confident and full of hope, she spreads her golden sails. Her crew, they split the ether as sailors before fathomed Atlantic and the depths in search of some foreign west.
There among the emptiness adrift, no one—save the speculation: not the pearl blue marble of land, not the safety of leaded ties, not the ebb and flow of conversation to bind and fix the mind from the endless horizon to the task at hand of building a lotus bridge amid the weightless spaces between dissimilar planets and voyagers vying for land.
The sciences build lotus bridges, filling the void— between ‘n explosion of unknown proportion and an inflating pearlescent ocean of stars.
The re-inspection of words, that were his, or his, is often entombed in the backlash of unknowing tongues telling stories of things which they know nothing of. Will I, once gone, be spoken this way of?
Spoken Word Version of the Poem – Backlash of Tongues
When among the trees will autumn come? What multitude of words will I have lost among the soft-dying of sweet summer poppies, if time, as victor to any chance of rest, should turn away your sweet-sad eyes from me; your dying flowers and weeping tree leaves, your tears of fall that pool below your feet, or your glad singing through the canopy all leaves me drifting and wholly changed as the reds of your hair have left this world and I can’t wait to see autumn again.
Spoken word version of the poem – Her Autumn
This is a recent piece of poetry about loss and the pain of loosing someone close to you. I is never easy, and always painful.
If you look for an answer as to “what is poetry” you are liable to find too many answers to be easily able to answer this question. For me though, there are a few things that define the difference between poetry and prose. One of those is a heightened attention to sound and rhythm. As in my last post we are going to explore further into how sound can contribute to meaning within poetry.
We are going to look at how one person, one poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson used sound to contribute to meaning within his poem Break, Break, Break.
Break, Break, Break – By Alfred Lord Tennyson
Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman’s boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.
The above poem is a vision of grief and longing spelled out in the sounds and words of the poet about events that transpired within his life.
To fully understand this poem we have to know some personal details. Alfred underwent the most formative thing in his early life in 1833, the loss of his dear friend Arthur Hallam. Alfred would write about Hallam stating, he was* “as near perfection as a mortal man could be.”
So, at the age of 22, Arthor Hallum would come down with a fever and die, leaving Alfred with a level of distraught pain that T.S. Eliot would later describe as “an abyss of sorrow.” This poem is a window into that pain.
Break, break, break,// To begin withthis line is the conjunction of three unstressed syllables without metrical pattern, but containing an alliteration of throbbing ‘B’ sounds contrasted against the sharp broken consonant “k” sounds.At this point there only the thudding repetitive beat of something breaking. On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!// In this line we are let into the fact that it is water breaking on a jagged rocky coast. The guttural sounds from the previous line continues, hinting at at a desolate scene. The long vowel sounds contained inside of the lines assonance mirror his desolate spirit. The three stressed words “cold grey stones” again repeating the atmosphere of the first line. And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.// these next two lines have him wishing he could vocalize his thoughts, and though we do not know what thoughts those are the images and sounds within the stanza suggest what those might be. Those of untold anguish.
O, well for the fisherman’s boy, // Now in this stanza the sound and the images start to change into a vision of childhood innocence, naivety, and joy. This exists as a contrast to the thoughts, sounds, and images within the first stanza. That he shouts with hissister at play! // The sound of the poetry changes to reflect this difference, with use of sibilance (strong stressed consonants), assonance, and alliteration giving the stanza more melody, musical quality than that of the lines in the first stanza and their abrupt, broken, and disjointed qualities. This musical quality also mirrors the sailor singing in his boat. O, well for the sailor lad, That he singsin hisboat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on // These lines have often been suggested to be a metaphor for Author’s death and his passing into the afterlife. The sibilance continues in (S)tately (S)ship(S) and the alliteration from the first stanza in (h)aven under the (h)ill. These sounds are a series of euphonic sounds, mirroring the atmosphere of stanza 2. To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!The peace and tranquility of the sounds and images within the 2nd and 3rd stanzas are not to last though, and act as a window away from the pain of his loss. The word “but” signals the return back to the broken, desolate world of hurt in the first stanza. “that vanished hand” and “voice that is still” points to the absence of his dearest friend.
Break, break, break //and so we have come full-circle with the literal break of the musical melodies and the abandonment of peaceful joyful images and a return to the harsh cruel guttural sounds of the breaking waves in the K sounds and harsh C and G sounds. At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead //Ending on him feeling no peace and only pain, and the heavy D sounds giving a sense of doomhaving come full circle. Will never come back to me.
So, in this brief four stanza poem, we have a poem that speaks to the depth of pain caused by loss of a loved one, and the jarring reality that the world is not as it was before, and the choices of sounds within the poem, the structuring of them all help progress the poem forward in the way the poet intended, even after almost 200 years.
Ever since the wolf was at the front door, we’ve build our lives with bricks, built houses of stacked stone to hold back the raging torrent of cold wind, and went about as if the stones were lead, impossible to lift, yet we had set them down without mortar to brace and bare against the painful weight of entropy and time.
Spoken Word Version of the poem – The Wold at the Door
Apparently, I am writing poetry that focused on metaphor today.
The heart is a hunter searching before the dead of winter has melted;
The heart is a poet writing about new born babies and mothers milk;
The heart is a child’s laughter, giggling it’s way to mothers precious fruit;
The heart is a new-born hunter searching for laughter and giggling as winter delivers its bundled love as small droplets of mom’s jubilant tears.
Spoken word version of the poem – The Nature of the Heart
I wrote this poem in an attempt to write a metaphor that rolled into another metaphor and so on each time modifying the poem and building on the metaphor before it.
The long and short of sounds within poetry, is that they can be used to slow or speed up the time of poetry. Long vowel sounds slow down a line of poetry, which can be used to make it sound more somber. The ‘oo’ sound in poetry can be quite gloomy sounding and short vowel sounds tend to be more springy.
If we were concerned with sounds alone this would be nothing more than interesting, and could possible be useful to some effect.
The thing is though, there is more to it. What makes assonance so special is that not only can it slow or speed up time, it also can be used in conjunction with the words actually written on the page to create a sonic mirror of an idea.
There are other ways poets use sound to create sonic mirrors of ideas, like D sounding consonants are used a lot to slow down things.
Below is a line from one of Jennifer Grotz’s poems where she does just that, uses “down the dulling of daylight” to slow the end of the line and the sun setting. What’s more is that sunset also mirrors late summer.
I am pretty sure this poem is in copyright, and as I do not have permission to post it, I can’t. It is available on poetry foundation. I do not support that website, but it is a source to read on.
“where your steps count down the dulling of daylight.” — Jennifer Grotz’s poem Late Summer
In the above line the poet uses D sounds to slow things down a mimic what she wants us to see in the world she is describing, but there is another use of sounds within the poem that does something different than speeding up of slowing down of time.
First, remember, short sounds speed up and long sounds slow down.
Then, there is more magic, in her poem she uses ‘S’ and ‘C’ sounds to mimic a circle:
Before the moths have even appeared to orbit around them,Jennifer Grotz’s poem – Late Summer
“along the ring of garden that circles the city center, where your steps” – Jennifer Grotz’s poem – Late Summer
“At your feet, a bee crawls in small circles like a toy unwinding” – Jennifer Grotz’s Poem – Late Summer
“Summer specializes in time, slows it down almost to dream” – Jennifer Grotz’s poem Late Summer
In the last line it becomes painfully obvious that the poet is aware of what we are taking about right now. For me this is the beautiful thing about words, there can be layers of meaning if wanted, they can mimic things in the world around us, and when it is done well it is something special and yet gets read over like it is not even there. There are also long and short syllables that have nothing to do with the two things talked about here but would do that same thing or assist in it.
I just wanted to inform anyone who might subscribe or visits that I have recently set up a second blog. Please check it out. Thanks. This new blog contains a lot more resources on poetry learning.
Old bearded men drifting
in the alleys of night
have died with the sunset
and as I have overlooked
their bodies beneath
green park benches and bridges
they too have overlooked my feet
passing quietly by
as the waitress slips silently
into her second or third
miserable job.
The lions roar is very loud–
He voices his power just like a god,
And none would ever doubt
The terror as it strikes them down,
But lions know little of courageous things.
Long, at last, The Vostok had pierced the darkness
and thrust Yuri into the firmament;
We leapt from spherical craft to the vault
of heaven, and waded ourselves in a bit
with legs new formed like a tadpole in morph.
Born backwards, blue, and dead I beat the dreaded embalmer and returned to this life again, as if t’was death who took pity and place me on my mother’s chest. Yet, that would not be my last turn taken with the reaper’s will, as baby my lungs were so wet I spent the better part of youth gasping for breath and hoping soon the reaper would remove his boot or take pity and remove me from the feel of helpless broken whoops. In exclamation, when I whooped that Gothic costume wearing oaf, I took up such habits as smoke and drink to make me think he might still be hovering above me waiting for that one perfect chance.
This is a poem about surviving though the odds. I hope you enjoy this and all of my poetry that you might happened to read. Comments are always welcome. If you enjoyed this and would consider it, remember to subscribe. I am now adding spoken word poetry recordings to all of my poems, so there is another way to experience my poetry. Thanks for stopping by.
Mother Teresa sent her message out in the bent and broken bodies writhing as fuel to fill her soul, the lamp and oil she sought to shine in hopes it’s cast of light would make plain the God she delights: To suffer brings closer the divine, millions poured in as dirty needles compliciant, pulled out and waiting for the glimmer of dying eyes and a truth that she’d never find.
The world is a gamble, In jest we place our bets and wink at destiny as hopeful players do in this the game of craps.
Life breeds the need to reach a hand into the ether’s net and toss our little dice down to the hope of seldom odds and the rolling sevens or elevens within our minds.
Under the figs I woke to fog and dew, white oaks, and mist gathered low as morning had crest, ‘neath the branches of April and the drop, drop of drips descending down to my little tent, when all of the trail ahead was amiss with the questions asked by the footsteps ahead, and smoke and mist that slides along the 4, 5 and 6 O’ clock wonderment.
And I began to overcome the weight of yesterday and unroll myself, as if some hobbit in escape from mystic depths of caverns deep,
The fiery orb above a lit a blaze of dizzy rays to stagger my weary feet.
Finally zipper had done its Job and finished the schism, divorcing me from nylon and goose down;
The great orator in the canopy above took oath, again, to greet the sun as I gathered my stuff brewing alchemy of brown crystals.
Each day I ‘rose to greet myself with change.
Each day I ‘rose to greet myself, each day the smoky fog on mountain peaks and the religious robin song let weep the pain of cities grown bearded and gray.
Cities of steel and glass entrapped in plastic, The smell of asphalt and oily toxins, mixed the stench of the daily regurgitation, and the wafting sickness of fast food and Mc coffee and individually packaged cream.
Each day a reminder of that old alchemy— when bird and hobbit and kettle made an ordinary brown liquid into the palace of dreams, and not just another sad, sad walk though the streets.
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak andweary, Over manyaquaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While Inodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gentlyrapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.”
Alliteration is the repetition of an initial letter or sound within a lines of poetry, such as the red highlights above.
Assonance is the repetition of matching vowels or vowel sounds in lines of poetry, as in Blue highlights above.
Consonance is the repetition of matching consonants, as in the orange highlights above,
As a note, I have marked more that some would, as it is often held that these things are to be taken line by line. I myself think this idea is nonsense, because the next line is just as close as the line itself, and to go 4 or 5 lines is entirely reasonable because if rhyme is easy to memorize than surely the brain picks up of these things a few lines away.
I just wanted to inform anyone who might subscribe or visits that I have recently set up a second blog. Please check it out. Thanks. This new blog contains a lot more resources on poetry learning.
Old bearded men drifting
in the alleys of night
have died with the sunset
and as I have overlooked
their bodies beneath
green park benches and bridges
they too have overlooked my feet
passing quietly by
as the waitress slips silently
into her second or third
miserable job.
The lions roar is very loud–
He voices his power just like a god,
And none would ever doubt
The terror as it strikes them down,
But lions know little of courageous things.
Long, at last, The Vostok had pierced the darkness
and thrust Yuri into the firmament;
We leapt from spherical craft to the vault
of heaven, and waded ourselves in a bit
with legs new formed like a tadpole in morph.
Sounds are the basis of poetry, not the pursuit of some glorious combination of them, but sounds as just a reality. The fact that it is an inexplicable reality should make us want to learn about sounds, because not wanting to is like being a blindfolded painter. A blind painter would be more respected, than someone who has no desire to lift an ear to poetry fully conscious of its fleeting sounds.
The Blind Poet Can Suddenly See
If our hypothetical blind poet suddenly gained sight, the first thing he would be made aware of is the structure of poetry, lines, and stanzas.
Followed by a more close examination revealing words, differing line lengths, same line lengths, rhyme, and refrain.
In his excitement he might delve deeper and see: syllables, types of rhyme, and repeating words, before whipping out the magnifying glass and finding: stressed and unstressed syllables, alliteration, assonance, consonance, breath pauses, perfect rhyme, general rhyme, identical rhymes, eye rhymes, and mind rhymes.
In a fit of beautiful madness he might go out and buy a microscope and lay the poem beneath the eye peace and checkout whats going on down there, and seeing: length of sounds, length of syllables, elision, masculine rhyme, feminine rhyme, dactylic rhyme, syllabic rhyme, imperfect rhyme, weak rhymes, semirhyme, oblique rhyme, half rhyme, pararhyme,
And at this point, our once blind poet begins to fall down the rabbit hole, and sees patterns and connections between sounds and how they slow or speed up reading, how also sounds can be made to mimic shapes, images, and other things. He would also see homophones and a multiplicity of meaning, how line breaks can make meaning where there was previously none without the structure. And last he would see symbolism, references, and phantom echoes.
I am sure like me and our once blind poet after writing/reading that list you are dizzy and in need of some sort of break from all this. As you can see sound in poetry is a dense topic. It is a hard thing to cover let alone find the angles of entry, but I will do my best to make it less nauseating from here on out.
Unfortunately for me, attacking that list from top down giving definitions will do little for the reader of this. By them selves most of these things are meaningless and only begin to have a passing usefulness when in context, so here goes.
Continues on Alliteration, assonance, and consonance post.
I just wanted to inform anyone who might subscribe or visits that I have recently set up a second blog. Please check it out. Thanks. This new blog contains a lot more resources on poetry learning.
Old bearded men drifting
in the alleys of night
have died with the sunset
and as I have overlooked
their bodies beneath
green park benches and bridges
they too have overlooked my feet
passing quietly by
as the waitress slips silently
into her second or third
miserable job.
The lions roar is very loud–
He voices his power just like a god,
And none would ever doubt
The terror as it strikes them down,
But lions know little of courageous things.
Long, at last, The Vostok had pierced the darkness
and thrust Yuri into the firmament;
We leapt from spherical craft to the vault
of heaven, and waded ourselves in a bit
with legs new formed like a tadpole in morph.
The Poetry Of J.P. 