Sound Effects in Poetry

1. Sound Effects in Poetry

2. What is poetry? • Poetry is a kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery to appeal to emotion and imagination. • Written in lines (a row of words not necessarily sentences) and stanzas (a group of lines).

3. End Rhyme • Rhymes made by pairing the last word in one line with the last word in another line. • Example: Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature’s law is wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. -Tupac Shakur, from “Concrete Rose”

4. Internal Rhyme • Rhymes formed by echoing the last word in a line by placing it at the beginning or in the middle of the following line. • Example: And out of the houses the rats came tumbling; Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats, -Robert Browning, from “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”

5. Rhyme Scheme • The pattern of rhyming sounds at the ends of lines in a poem. • To find a poem’s rhyme scheme, mark the first line of the poem and all of the lines that rhyme with it with a a; mark the second line of the poem and all of the lines that rhyme with it with a b; and so on.

6. Rhyme Scheme Example • Now the Star-belly Sneetches Had bellies with stars The Plain-belly Sneetches Had none upon thars. What is the rhyme scheme?

7. Alliteration • The repetition of a single consonant sound in words that are close together. • Example: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers

8. Onomatopoeia • The use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning. • Example: Our washing machine went whisity whirr Whisitywhisitywhisity whirr One day at noon it went whisity click Whisitywhisitywhisity click click grr click grr click grr click Call the repairman Fix it…quick -Patricia Hubbell