Assonance is a kind of rhyme made of vowel sounds. Poetry makes music from assonance as often as from alliteration. Read any good poem aloud and hear the assonance sing. Listen for echoes, not just at line-endings but anywhere in a poem. Poetry uses ‘w’ and ‘y’ for assonance as well as the long, short and combined sounds that the 5 vowels make.<\/p>\n
‘O,wild west wind, thou breath of autumn’s being’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
wrote the poet Shelley nearly 200 years ago. You can hear the west wind in the words, especially in the first 5 words.<\/p>\n
There are words made of nothing but vowel sounds: Where, why, away, oh, woe, you, I, we, ah! Actually, with a bit of punctuation and some dramatic expression you could make a poem out of just those 9 words.<\/p>\n
In a poem I wrote about the poor a hundred years ago breaking stones to sell to road builders, I repeat one main assonant sound: the long ‘o’ of ‘bones’, because ‘o’ is full of sorrow. I add a long ‘a’ in ‘aching’ and ‘breaking’, and short clicky sounds in ‘picking’, ‘swishing’, ‘tarmac, ‘track’., and much more, for these are the games poets play.<\/p>\n
Breaking Stones<\/p>\n
Out in the dusk
\nday after day
\nbreaking stones,
\nsummer and winter,
\naching bones.<\/p>\nNothing but dirt tracks,
\nnothing but muddy ruts
\nfor a horse and cart,
\ntill they smashed stones
\nto smithereens.<\/p>\nUnder the country lanes
\nwhere we dawdle in summer
\npicking blackberries,
\nswishing at nettles with sticks,
\nare their broken stones.<\/p>\nUnder the tarmac of every road,
\nevery motorway,
\nlie the old tracks
\nand the stones they broke,
\nthe stones they sold.<\/p>\nWinter and summer
\nstones for bread,
\nand bread for stones,
\ntill their old bones ached
\nfrom breaking stones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Assonance is a kind of rhyme made of vowel sounds. Poetry makes music from assonance as often as from alliteration. Read any good poem aloud and hear the assonance sing. Listen for echoes, not just at line-endings but anywhere in a poem. Poetry uses ‘w’ and ‘y’ for assonance as well as the long, short… Continue reading Assonance<\/span>