The Sound Effects Of Poetry 5: How To Create Harmony Without Rhymes

In this seven-part series, we examine the different sound effects of poetry. Today, we talk about how to create harmony without rhymes.

Rhyme creates a harmonious sound in poetry – but not everybody likes rhyming. What if you could keep the harmony but ditch the rhyme? We’ll tell you all about it.

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 5: How To Create Harmony Without Rhymes

Poets are like composers – they both create music, but poets can’t rely on orchestras to create their sound. They can only use words!

This is a seven-part series to show how to create those sound effects in poetry. Please read the posts in their numerical order:

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 1 – The Basics

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 2 – Sound Creates Meaning

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 3 – How To Run Your Rhymes

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 4 – How To Make Rhyme Patterns Work

How To Rhyme Without Rhyme

Let’s start with a little recap of part 3, where I explained what rhymes are.

Rhymes are created with the last syllable of a word. If two words share the same sound in their last syllables, they rhyme. That rhyme can be at the end of a line (end-line rhyme) or in the middle of a line (internal rhyme). The sound that they share is usually made of a combination of consonants and vowels.

So, what if two words do share a sound but just not in their last syllable? What if that sound is in the middle of these words? Or at the beginning? What if they share just a vowel? Or just a consonant? Poets can do all of that. Let’s start with the one that’s easiest to explain, alliteration.

Alliteration, Assonance, And Consonance

Alliteration happens when two words share the same sound at the beginning. This is a device so popular that it’s often used in everyday language. Comic book writer Stan Lee used it to name all his heroes. Here are just a few:

Stephen Strange
Peter Parker
Green Goblin
Bruce Banner

This is by no means restricted to popular literature. Just think of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Bilbo Baggins.’ If you look at the names again, you can see that some only repeat the sound of the first letter (like ‘Bruce Banner’), while others share a whole phoneme (like ‘Stephen Strange’).

Alliterations always forge a strong bond between two words. They also make them easier to remember. Most people will find this pleasing to their ears. That’s why it’s widely used in marketing. But beware: it’s easy to overdo it, and then readers will get annoyed.

Let’s move away from the beginning of words. If the repetition of sounds takes place in the middle of two closely related words, you talk about assonance and consonance.

Assonance is, strictly speaking, a repetition of vowel sounds. Again, these vowel sounds don’t have to be at the beginning of the word. The effect is more subtle if each word starts with a different consonant.

Here’s an example from fiction. J.K. Rowling named the villain in the Harry Potter-series ‘Lord Voldemort.’ That’s a very clever name in terms of sound. The /o/- sound comes up three times in ‘Lord’ and ‘Voldemort.’ That’s called assonance.

Two of these sounds, however, also share consonants, and they’re at the end of the name. Because the vowel and the two consonants are in the last stressed syllable, these two rhyme! Assonance and rhyme go hand in hand in our example.

Consonance is the same as assonance, except with consonants. Let’s say, for example, you have a lot of /th/-sounds in one line. Here’s an example:

The thin man with the zither and the thoroughly sad lady thought they’d eat something.

It’s a tongue-twister, I know! It also has alliterations of the /th/ sound in ‘the,’ ‘thin,’ ‘thoroughly,’ ‘thought’ and ‘they.’ The /th/-sound also provides us with consonances in ‘zither’ and ‘something.’

How Does All That Work In Poetry?

Let’s look at an unusual sonnet, The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins. He uses the rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet. It’s a bit hard to see because of the varying lengths he chooses for his lines, and because all the rhymes sound alike! It’s easy to miss the beats at the end of each line.

Please read the poem out loud. Try to pay attention to the alliteration, assonances, and consonances. I have bolded them for you.

Isn’t the sheer amount of sound repetition in this poem incredible? Sometimes, what appears to be just an alliteration (like ‘blue-bleak’) is continued as consonance in another word (as in ‘embers’). This isn’t restricted to one line: look at ‘brute beauty’ and then ‘buckle,’ ‘breaks,’ and ‘billion’ in the next line.

Why does Hopkins do this? The easy answer is that he must. Don’t forget that a traditional sonnet is a closely-knit text with 14 lines in a restrictive rhyme pattern, and with a distinct meter. Hopkins pushes the traditional boundaries by making all rhymes sound alike and by varying the length of the lines. On the surface, he seems to have lost that harmony typical for the sonnet.

Hopkins counters this by providing a certain meter (we’ll discuss this in another post). But he still needs to give the reader this feeling of a harmonious, closely-knit text. Hopkins achieves this by using alliteration, assonance, and consonance.

Why Give It A Try?

Because it’s fun! And it’s a great way to achieve a harmonious sound for any poem. Even more, alliteration, assonance, and consonance are three tools that should be in any writer’s toolbox. Their big advantage over rhyme is that you can use them for prose texts as well.

The Last Word

Rhyming will probably remain the number one feature of poetry for many readers. But modern poets often want to explore other ways to get their readers’ attention. The three tools discussed in this blog are an important alternative to rhyming.

Let’s not forget to mention that alliteration, assonance, and consonance can also be a great addition to rhyming. Our example from Gerard Manley Hopkins just proved that! Experiment a little. See what works best for you.

In my next post on the sound effects of poetry, we’ll talk about the sound effect that provides rhythm to our poetry.

By Susanne Bennett. Susanne is a German-American writer who is a journalist by trade and a writer by heart. After years of working at German public radio and an online news portal, she has decided to accept challenges by Deadlines for Writers. Currently she is writing her first novel with them. She is known for overweight purses and carrying a novel everywhere. Follow her on Facebook.

The Sound Effects Of Poetry 5: How To Create Harmony Without Rhymes