The other major matters of sound that have yet to be discussed but are just as important are assonance, consonance, and alliteration.

• Assonance: The same or similar vowel sound repeated in the stressed syllable of a word, followed by uncommon consonant sounds. Examples would be: hate and sale, or drive and higher.

Sound

When getting away from the straight rhythms of a poem, we get into the sounds. As mentioned above, if the meter is the poetic equivalent of the horizontal movement in a piece of music, then sound is the vertical movement. If meter serves to cut up the poem into time, then sound serves to configure the poem into a melody or sorts. This means that repeated sounds cohere the poem in much the same way that repeated rhythms do. There are nearly as many aspects to sound as there is to rhythm. The first is perhaps the one with which people are typically most familiar.

Poetic Feet

There are two parts to the term iambic pentameter. The first part refers to the type of poetic foot being used predominantly in the line. A poetic foot is a basic repeated sequence of meter comprised of two or more accented or unaccented syllables. In the case of an iambic foot, the sequence is “unaccented, accented”. There are other types of poetic feet commonly found in English language poetry.

Meter

The bible of most poets today regarding meter and sound is a book by Paul Fussell called Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. Although some of Fussell’s ideas are a bit outdated (namely, he doesn’t deal with the visual elements of a poem), his approach is complete, concise and useful. Fussell defines meter as “what results when the natural rhythmical movements of colloquial speech are heightened, organized, and regulated so that [repetition] emerges from the relative phonetic haphazard of ordinary utterance.” (4-5) To “meter” something, then, is to “measure” it (the word meter itself is derived from the Greek for measure), and there are four common ways to view meter.

Introduction to Sound and Meter

Having defined pattern in poetry as “The artistic arrangement and use of the material (aural and visual) aspects of words into particular repetitive and/or serial forms as a means to structure a poem,” and having discussed visual pattern elsewhere, we turn to those aspects of poetics that are probably most familiar to us, sound and meter. Whereas the visual aspects of poetry are “read at a glance,” so to speak, the aural aspects are read in time, like music.

This page offers some information on the Community Writing and Education Station (CWEST), the Purdue OWL’s area for adult basic education. To go to the CWEST and use its resources, click here and select the CWEST link in the navigation bar on the left or the CWEST link in the body text under Engagement Projects.

A Grammar for Reading and Writing

We do not read words, one by one. Meaning is contained not so much in individual words as in collections of words conveying broader or more specific ideas.

Description of the task: In this task type, students look at a photograph, usually depicting a business or travel setting, and listen to four sentences. They have to choose the one sentence that describes the photograph accurately. They only hear the sentences once.

Description of the task: In this task type, you look at a photograph (usually showing someone in an office or travelling) and listen to four sentences. You have to choose the one sentence that describes the photograph accurately. All the other 3 sentences will not match the photo is some way, for example describing someone’s feelings (something you can’t see), using a slightly different word that is not the same as the thing in the photo, etc. The sentences are only spoken once.

Description of the task: In this task type, which often appears in the exam, you are given a text with 5 to 7 paragraph headings missing. You must select the right paragraph headings from a list.
Depending on the length and difficulty of the text and the number of paragraph headings, you will have between 5 and 8 minutes to do this task.
There are always more paragraph headings than paragraphs, so you won’t need to use all of the paragraph headings that are given. There will always also be some other different reading tasks for detailed understanding to do with the same text.