Question

What are the tools used to create poetry

Answer 1

Sound and meaning are the twin essences of poetry. Meaning comes directly from the poet's experience or contemplation, but it must be communicated to the audience through language, and that language involves sound. Therefore, knowing the tools available for producing different types of sound in verse is essential for any poet seeking to convey specific ideas and feelings.

Poets use repeating beginning sounds of words, or alliteration, to create a sound-pattern. Though it is commonly used in tongue-twisters or in rap music to produce a sing-song beat, modern poets typically use this tool sparingly. Mary Oliver in "Morning" uses alliteration several times, as in these lines: "Salt shining behind its glass cylinder. / Milk in a blue bowl. / The yellow linoleum. / The cat stretching her black body from the pillow." In Old English verse, alliteration was a more customary device of poets, as in this verse from "Beowulf": "So they went on their way. The ship rode the water, / Broad beamed, bound by its hawser. / Their mail-shirts glinted, / Hard and hand-linked; the high-gloss iron / Of their armor rang."