Have you ever read your friend’s poetry and felt immediately disappointed with your own work? Maybe yours appeared stale and empty, while theirs struck your heart with its intensity or beautiful language. But no matter how much strain and effort you use, your poetry’s staleness prevails.
I could offer any number of solutions for this issue. However, keeping it basic, I suspect sound devices can largely relieve your disappointment. This idea is by no means original to me but has been studied and established as foundational to all poetry.
Sound devices are essential to poetry because poetry as a genre relies so heavily on details. The detail in poetry, however, goes far beyond just descriptions. The details that make poetry truly enjoyable include the letters in the words. These building blocks can make the difference between stale and lively poetry. And they take practice to perfect. But with that practice, they will become second nature.
Again, the following list is basic and builds upon well-known traditions in the poetry world. If you are curious and would like to dive deeper, I would recommend Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook. I will merely attempt to examine a few sound devices here to help you start thinking more poetically.
In poetry, consonants are divided into three groups: liquids, mutes, and aspirates. The importance of these consonants cannot be overstated as each group serves to support a different idea or theme in your poetry. We will examine each group and the theme or idea with which they are associated.
Liquid consonants are like their name in that they seem to smoothly glide off the tongue, soft and lazy like rolling hills. This group includes l, r, m, and n. Generally, words employing many liquids generate calm, relaxation, and assurance. (Now, notice how many liquids were used in that sentence and observe how using words like “calm,” “relaxation,” and “assurance” support a feeling of calm not only because of their meaning but also because of the letters that form them.) Choosing words where liquids are the dominant sound is an excellent way to inject your poetry with a pliability that pleases the tongue.
Mute consonants are not consonants that are simply invisible or unspoken. Instead, mutes are so called because they abruptly stop or “mute” the breath used to pronounce them. This group includes b, d, k, p, q, t, c (as in carrot), hard g (as in gate), w, and y. One common method for telling mutes apart from liquids is to hold your hand in front of your mouth and pronounce an l and then a k. Notice how much more breath and time is expended on the liquid instead of the mute.
Perhaps you have guessed by now that mutes are good for communicating anger, authority, or some other harsh feeling associated with power, dominance, assertion, confidence, or determination. In other words, mutes are good for emphasis and for driving home a point. If you have a line that needs to sound bold and definitive, using words with dominant mute sounds is the best choice.
Aspirate consonants are like mutes except they elongate the breath instead of stopping it short. This group includes c (as in cent), f, g (as in gentleman), h, j, and x. Aspirates are also good for bold, assertive ideas, but they are breezier and can be used for flowing, energetic communication. If you want less bombastic sounds but still strong ones, aspirate-dominant words are the best choice.
Assonance and consonance are the easiest sound devices to employ because they refer to the repetition of vowel or consonant sounds in a line of poetry. Several words in a line with the same long or short vowel sounds at the beginning, middle, or end would be an example of assonance. Several words in a row with the consonant sounds of “et” or “ch” would be an example of consonance. Why are assonance and consonance important sound devices? Both create a feeling of “one-ness” or synchronicity within a line of poetry.
For example, the assonance in the opening line of Mary Oliver’s “The Swan” creates a breezy feeling that is carried throughout the whole line: “Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?”
Again, this can be seen in Oliver’s “Don’t Hesitate,” where she begins by saying, “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,/don’t hesitate.” The use of consonance can be seen when she reuses the “-ly” sounds and the “l” sounds, thus building a soft entry to a difficult subject and keeping your attention fixed and focused in this important line.
Both these examples show that one-ness or synchronicity is what pleases our ears best because our brains love patterns. Also, using assonance and consonance are excellent ways to audibly support a particular emotion.
Now that you know what sound devices will elevate your writing, try the following exercise. Write out a list of ideas or themes for a poem. If you wish to write about an abstract concept like love, plan out what sound devices you are going to use. For example, decide which of the two examples below better supports the idea of being suddenly struck dumb with love.
If you chose “a.,” you are correct. The reason for this is that “b.” employs more liquids, while “a.” employs more aspirates and mutes (and a bit of assonance and consonance), giving it a harder sound. Because “a.” compares love to a wave that crashes over your heart, it uses words with sounds that support the idea of sudden love.
You can copy exercises like these to improve your poetry. Take each line of the following poem, “The Swan” (Mary Oliver), and break its sounds apart, determining whether you need more or less of a certain sound to help carry meaning:
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
Naturally, sound devices are a very small part of the poetry picture. However, starting here is an easy and quick way to support those lines or verses that seem to sag. Reading widely makes this process even easier because it allows you to choose from a wide bank of words that crackle and pop with aspirates and mutes or glide smoothly with liquids. Most importantly, practicing with sound devices increases your understanding for the details poetry requires and, in turn, your appreciation for the details in the world around us.
About the author
Alaina Suttles is a senior at Pensacola Christian College where she is studying for a bachelor's degree in professional writing. When she was still in high school, Alaina discovered Write the World and fell in love with its welcoming community. She won runner-up for a Write the World fantasy competition and later won first place for her college's creative fiction competition. As a young writer, Alaina was grateful to discover Write the World's community of fellow writers, where she could share her work and experience constructive and kind criticism that helped her grow her writing skills. Now, as a summer intern, she hopes to build that same confidence in other young writers and to encourage them to put their talents to the best use.