Click Clack: Sound

Literary devices such as rhyme, meter, alliteration, enjambment, and caesura help to create sound in a poem.  Sound is often used to set the mood and tone of a poem.  Rhyme is when words have sounds that correspond to one another, and it helps create melody.  Meter counts the measure, stressed and unstressed syllables, in a line, and represents how words are supposed to be pronounced.  Alliteration is the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent words, and also adds melody.  Enjambment is the continuation from one line to another without a pause, and creates a rushed feeling.  Lastly, caesura is a pause in a sentence, and slows down the tempo of a poem.  In Hamlet, Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter to define natural speech for the characters.  In "Out, Out" Frost personifies the buzz-saw through sound, and makes it come to life as a vicious animal. Finally, in Pope's "Sound and Sense" Pope uses couplets to create a light melody to the poem.