Word+Music


 * Word Music**

“Words have certain sounds which, when combined properly, can create their own kind of music. Most good writing will contain this musical quality, from the King James Version of the Bible to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to the well-written travel essay in National Geographic. This musical quality is essential to a poem, for poetry is above all else an oral art, the creation of words to be said chanted, sung) aloud with a particular rhythm and sound. “ – Len Roberts.

Word music can be created using four devices: alliteration, assonance, consonance, and finally, end rhyme and internal rhyme.

Bright black-eyed creature, brushed with brown. (Robert Frost, “To a Moth Seen in Winter”)
 * Alliteration:** the repetition of one or more initial sounds, usually consonants, in words within a line.

Other examples include: 'Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped' from //[|Strange Meeting]// by Wilfred Owen Or 'Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust blown.' from Tennyson's //[|The Lotos-Eaters].// Burnt the fire of thine eyes (William Blake, “The Tiger”)
 * Assonance**: The effect created when words with the same vowel sound are used in close proximity - but where the consonants in these words are different. In //[|To Autumn]// by [|John Keats] the line: 'Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;' displays assonance due to the repeated use of the 'i' vowel sound. This means that these words nearly rhyme with each other.

And all is seared with trade; bleared smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil (Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”)
 * Consonance**: repetition of two or more consonant sounds within a line.

I was angry with my friend I told my wrath, my wrath did end (William Blake, “A Poison Tree”
 * End Rhyme**: rhyme that occurs at the end of verse lines.

. **Internal Rhyme**: rhyme contained within a line of verse. The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes And the wild cataract leaps in glory. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Blow, Bugle, Blow”

Examples of Word Music in Poetry: ==[|Poems of **Edgar Allan Poe**]== Examples of end rhyme and internal rhyme. ==[|****Alliteration Examples****]==

==[|**Acquainted with the Night**]== Examples of alliteration. = =

[|A Rose for Janet]
Examples of assonance.

[|**Follower** by **Seamus Heaney**]
Examples of consonance.

==[|**Seamus Heaney** (1939-)]==