I wake, wistful for the first lukewarm sip
Of brown, brewed comfort; braving the Winter chill,
I wrap myself in woollen layers that hold and mold
My morning self into the image of a living man.

To the kitchen now, a silent shadow, 
I go to work my witchery. First:
The soft glow of the stove-top globe; then
the gentle click of the kettle switch; now
the…

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Rhyme

Rhyme is the repetition of same-sounding syllables, usually (though not always) at the end of a word and/or line of poetry. Here is an example from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 98:

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress’d in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.

Spring rhymes with thing; trim rhymes with him. Pretty straightforward—but why do poets do this?

Similar to the way that we naturally prefer buildings with symmetrical, repeating patterns, we seem to find rhyming sounds and words inherently pleasurable. Rhyme, and end rhyme in particular, generates a strong sense of rhythm and cohesiveness in a poem. It also tends to sound quite catchy, so can assist with memorisation.

Poems that include end rhymes can be classified according to a rhyme scheme. A basic rhyme scheme will look something like ABAB, where A represents one rhyme sound, and B represents another. here lines 1 and 3 rhyme with each other, but not with the other lines. The stanza from Sonnet 98 above follows this pattern.

Internal Rhyme

Internal or middle rhyme is the use of rhyming words within, rather than at the end, of a poem’s lines. Internal rhyme can occur within a single line, or across multiple lines. For example:

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.
There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti.

This is from Lose Yourself by Eminem. Okay, Lose Yourself is not a poem, as such—but it kind of is, and seriously, rappers do this a lot. Palms rhymes with arms; sweaty rhymes with heavy, already, and spaghetti; these are not all perfect rhymes, meaning that the rhyming letters do not all match exactly (as with spring and thing), but this is not a problem. The sense of rhyme is still achieved, and it contributes to the pulsing, aggressive feeling that Eminem is trying to convey.

End rhyme can sometimes feel a bit old-fashioned, so internal rhyme is a great alternative if you want to include rhyme in a less obvious way.

Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of multiple words in a line. The effect is usually achieved by the repetition of the same letter, but is sometimes approximated by the repetition of similar sounds (sh and ch, t and th). Consider the first few lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ As Kingfishers Catch Fire:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Kingfishers and catch, dragonflies and draw, and fire and flame are all examples of alliteration. Alliteration is also present in more subtle ways; consider how the lines rim in roundy wells and tucked string tells each achieve a kind of pseudo-alliteration with words that do not, strictly speaking, start with the ‘correct’ letter. The alliterative effect is maintained, but softened somewhat—for the best, I think, as this poem is already a mouthful.

Alliteration has a few uses. Firstly, it can be used to generate a sense of rhythm; sounds that alliterate tend to be stressed (or accented), so when placed in the right sequence, alliterated sounds can provide a steady pulse not unlike that created by rappers with internal rhyme. This is the basis for alliterative verse, a form of poetry that was common in early Germanic cultures (think Beowulf and the Poetic Edda).

Alliteration can also be used to create a harsh, disagreeable sound that poets call cacophony. Not all consonants do this—Ss and Hs produce softer sounds—but many do. To demonstrate what is meant by cacophony, try reading this section from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven out loud:

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
    Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
            Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This is an intentional choice by Poe, intended to force the reader to slow down and physically feel the unpleasant sensations felt by the story’s narrator.

Finally, alliteration is sometimes used to draw attention to certain words and underlying ideas, either to compare them, contrast them, or simply highlight them. A skilled narrative poet might, for example, hint at a secret love affair between two characters by using alliterating words to describe them—He a grand and gallant knight, She a glowing, gorgeous lady—which would add a layer of depth and mystery to the poem.

Consonance and Assonance

Alliteration, strictly speaking, only includes instances where the repetition of consonants occurs at the beginning of each word. What if this repetition occurs elsewhere?

When a consonant sound is repeated either in the middle or at the end of a word, we call this consonance. Like alliteration, consonance can be used to produce a particular sound or feeling, but as you might expect, the effect is generally less pronounced when used in isolation. A poet can choose to use consonance deliberately, or it may occur simply as a byproduct of writing in English. There are only so many letters, after all, so we can naturally expect to encounter some consonance in any poem.

What about the repetition of vowel sounds? This is called assonance. Where alliteration and consonance typically produce a harsh, rhythmic effect, the sound produced by vowels tends to be slower, richer, and more resonant, so is often more pleasant on the ear. For a quick comparison, try saying the following sentences out loud:

Alliteration/consonance: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Assonance: Who would know naught of art must learn, act, and then take his ease.1

Of course, many poems employ of all of these techniques at once. The result is a complete soundscape, deliberately designed by the poet to evoke certain ideas, images, and feelings in the reader.

Anaphora

Anaphora is the repetition of a word or sequence of words across multiple lines of a poem. Anaphora typically refers to phrases used at the start of a line (end-anaphora is called epistrophe). Rudyard Kipling’s poem If— is a popular example:

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

Here the repetition of the phrase “If you can…” creates a sense of dramatic tension, only partly eased by its exclusion toward the end of each stanza, and finally broken at the end of the poem. Anaphora has other uses, too. Like other forms of repetition, it can be used to establish a rhythm; it can also be used to heighten the strength of an emotion being expressed, to emphasise a particular perspective or message, or (if used only at the top- and tail-end of a poem) to mark the conclusion, such as in William Blake’s The Tyger.

Anaphora is a simple enough concept to grasp, but it can be difficult to use well. Repeating the same poorly-chosen word or phrase over and over is a surefire way to lose your reader’s interest.

Metre

Metre (‘meter’ in American) is the rhythmic structure of a poem, defined by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line. Poetic metre is a massive topic—I plan to write a whole separate post on this—but it is another tool by which repetition can be introduced.

One of the most common metres in English is iambic pentameter2. Here iambic refers to the pattern of stresses in each foot (beat) of a line; an iambic foot is one in which a single unstressed syllable is followed by one stressed syllable (as in ex-plain). Pentameter refers to the number of feet in a line. Penta, of course, means five—but a line can have any number of feet, depending on the preference of the poet.

To get a feel for iambic pentameter, try reading this obscure piece out loud:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Iambic pentameter is popular because it most resembles everyday speech. The reader can emphasise the iambic stresses if they desire, but there is no compulsion to do so. Shakespeare used iambic pentameter almost exclusively in his plays and sonnets, as have many other great poets. But not all poets want to imitate natural language—what if you want to write something with more oomph, or want more control over how the reader reads your work? Try this:

Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat—
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;

This is from The Lost Leader by Robert Browning. Here Browning uses dactylic feet (1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3) to produce a pulsing, energetic feeling, similar to the kinds of rhythms you might hear in popular music. Compared to Shakespeare’s passage above, Browning’s metre is more dominant; the reader feels compelled to emphasise the first syllable of each dactyl, as any other interpretation would feel awkward and forced. Other metrical feet will produce different effects—but this is a topic best left for another day, so for now, I encourage you to explore this on your own.

Final Words

There is a lot more that could be said about repetition in poetry. I believe repetition is the main thing that sets poetry apart from other forms of writing, and while there are surely people who disagree with me, I think they would be hard pressed to argue that a text lacking any of these elements could truly be called a poem.

Whatever your perspective, I hope this has given you some new ideas for your own poems, or perhaps a new perspective on the poems you love to read. If you enjoyed this, please considering liking, sharing, commenting, or subscribing—and stay tuned for more on the Art of Poetry in future posts.

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A job perhaps you might consider,
Which beggars not that you should wither,
Or serve up someone else's dinner,
Or puts your mind to bed;

An honest trade, apprenticed first,
That makes you strain, and makes you thirst,
But teaches skills you'll never lose,
And gives you peace instead.

Otherwise you might do well to
Teach the wisdom God has lent you;
Me…

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I have a friend, a modern type
Who lives for games and movie hype,
Whose thoughts are all the right ones.
I asked him once: what would you say?
If you could take the pain away,
And simulate all pleasure?

He answered that of course it would
Be preferable, and that we should
Be lucky to achieve it.
Perhaps he's right—he often is—
And yet it seems to me that this
Is missing something vital.

For what is sport without the taste
Of sweat? Or walking without haste
In rain if you don't get wet?
Dull and old fashioned I may be;
And each to his own—but to me
Life's joy and pain are one and same.

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Monday I'll away to work,
A place of few attractions;
Tuesday I'll begin at last,
To plan for this week's actions.

Wednesday comes to weigh me down,
A bustling mid-week bore;
Thursday hints the end is near,
The hope of something more.

Friday is a day of joy,
The end-of-week is here!
Saturday a day to love,
to laugh and drink and cheer.

Sunday I'll en…

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I look’d upon my life and works and wept
To see the lack it held within its heart;
A lack and longing for things never kept,
For ways that weaker men did not impart.

The Holy Infant first became my quest,
But of my burden He could not avail;
And in the Lord of Khemenu’s request
Tradition true was never to entail. 

How then to seek deracination’s end?
…

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Blank my mind, as in a daze,
I tire and fall to mental haze.
Unable to construct a verse,
I tear my hair, I spit a curse.

The night grows late, the moon defies
The weariness upon my eyes,
And so I close the curtain tight—
In bed at last; I say goodnight.

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