DEFINE SCANSION IN POETRY FULL
DEFINE SCANSION IN POETRY SERIES
DEFINE SCANSION IN POETRY FREE

Letter sounds: the sounds that individual letters make Very popular with the elementary school set, this tool can also be useful for adult poets and anyone who writes graphic novels. Onomatopoeia: words with sounds that are identical to their meaning It gives a poem a certain sense of coherence, though it can sometimes feel forced or overdone.Īssonance: the same vowel sounds (though not necessarily the same vowel), which may appear anywhere in a wordĮxamples: w onder/ undo/c omfortable, b ake/ able/ok ayĪssonance (a lovely, slightly naughty-sounding word to say aloud) is an even more subtle way of connecting words within a line or throughout a poem. You can use consonance in consecutive words, or sprinkle it throughout the poem. Alliteration can provide a powerful sense of purpose, or a pop of playfulness.Ĭonsonance: the same consonant sounds, which may appear anywhere in the wordĮxamples: de ck/ kid/a che, wa sp/ slither/a skĬonsonance is a subtle way of connecting words with one another. Cat and children are not alliterative, though cat and kangaroo are. This doesn’t necessarily mean the same starting letters.

DEFINE SCANSION IN POETRY FREE

More subtle than end rhyme, this can be a wonderful echoing note to weave into free verse.Įxamples: wake/ would/ wiggle, cable/ could/ Kant Internal Rhyme: rhyme that appears within a line. Still, I recommend trying it out, and working your way through a variety of rhymes until you find the ones that best express your meaning. Now that so many poets write in free verse, there’s a tendency to think of end rhyme as old-fashioned and sing-songy. Insert a word, and it will offer you perfect rhymes, near rhymes, synonyms, antonyms, definitions, a thesaurus and syllable count (which will prove useful later, when we play with meter and rhythm).Įnd Rhyme: rhyme that comes at the ends of lines in a poem. (Also known as Near Rhyme, Half Rhyme or Off Rhyme)Įxamples: odd/bad, pillow/follow, quotation/Canadian Slant Rhyme: words with similar ending sounds Identical Rime or Rime Riche: a word that rhymes with itself. I tend to go through the alphabet, trying out various beginning letters until I find a rhyme I like, but a rhyming dictionary can also be helpful:

DEFINE SCANSION IN POETRY FULL

(Also known as Full Rhyme, Exact Rhyme or Perfect Rhyme)Įxamples: cat/hat/bat/rat, pillow/willow, quotation/rotation/flotation True Rhyme : words with exact same ending sounds We’re generally think of rhyme as one thing, but it actually comes in a variety of flavors. But rhyme can be useful, whether you’re writing formal verse, free verse or something in between. After the moans and groans ( How can it possibly be poetry if it doesn’t rhyme?), I ask if they’ve ever written a poem where had to force the meaning to fit the rhyme. When I’m teaching beginning poetry to kids – or even to adults – I often tell them they’re not allowed to rhyme. We all know about rhyme, of course: cat/hat/bat/rat. So find a pack of Q-tips, clean the wax out of your ears, and let’s begin. My next post will delve into line breaks, meter and rhythm. In this post, we’ll listen to the sounds of words.

DEFINE SCANSION IN POETRY SERIES

This brief series will give you some tools you may want to use in your poetry. These can be wonderful poems, but you may also want to play with using the sound of language to amplify meaning in your poetry or cause tension between meaning and the sound. Poems are often ideas or feelings spilled out on the page and chopped into line breaks at the places where we would naturally pause for breath. But since formal poetry has become somewhat unfashionable, we don’t talk about sound as much as we used to. You probably have a pretty good idea of the meaning in your poems: the things you want to say, which you hope your reader will understand. So too, sound and meaning can wiggle around to find the best positions to balance each other in a poem. A child and an adult can balance on a seesaw, even though they’re different sizes. I like to think of poetry as a balance between sound and meaning, though not necessarily in exact measure.

Define scansion in poetry