What is Assonance?
This article is for: Beginners and Intermediate, and maybe Advanced poets too!
You might be forgiven for thinking that poetry is made of words—but it isn’t!
Well, OK, it is really—but think for a moment, what is a word?
A word, if spoken, is a collection of sounds—and even written words are just ways to indicate what sound we want the reader to “hear.”
So when we make our poems out of words, we are really making poems out of sounds.
And in fact, a good rule of thumb is:
About 50% of the impact of a poem comes from how it sounds.
So this is why techniques that use sound are so important in poetry, from rhyme to vowels, alliteration to meter.
In this article, I want to cover a sound technique that you may not have heard of, but which is absolutely fundamental. Indeed, it is often the difference between poetry that sounds flat, and poetry that sounds professional.
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What is Assonance?
Assonance is the repetition of the same vowel sound in different words.
It's related to alliteration, which is repetition of the same initial sound in two or more words, but it's a great deal more subtle than alliteration.
Alliteration is the jackhammer of sound devices: it's brash, it's in your face, and you can't ignore it. That's why you'll see it all over media and advertising.
Alliteration is like a strongman, trying to force you to feel a certain way.
But assonance is a gentle hypnotist, changing how you feel about words quietly and almost without your noticing.
Here are some simple examples:
“The rapid cat”: These words share the same short "a" sound.
“A slow toll”: These have the same long "o’.
“With a flick of a fist”: “flick” and “fist” share the same short "i" sound (as well as alliterating, of course).
One thing to be aware of with assonance is that the same letter does not always mean the same sound.
Foe example, there is no assonance between “hat” and “ball,” because the “a” in hat is short, but the “a” in ball is long—it sounds more like an “awww” sound.
So to be sure that two words are connected through assonance, you just have to use your ears: say the words out loud, and see if the vowel in both sounds the same.
What does assonance do?
As with any sound device in poetry, the effects of assonance do vary depending on the context.
But these things are generally true about assonance:
The words that share the same vowel sound will feel more powerfully linked than if they didn't share it.
The repeated sound can help to create a mood or tone for that part of the poem.
If there's a great deal of assonance in the poem as a whole, the poem will feel more "musical" to the reader.
Assonance in Action
Let's explore the effects of assonance with some examples.
To get these examples, I picked two books out of my bag, Home By Now by Meg Kearney and Waterborne by Linda Gregerson, and opened them at random.
Sure enough, the first poems I looked in each book at both used assonance—which helps to show how important this technique is, and how much published poets use it.
"Rescued" by Meg Kearney opens with these two lines:
I have been among the missing, clanging
my rusted rattle in the nursery rubble.
What probably leaps out at you here is the alliteration: "rusted rattle...rubble."
But I'd argue that what makes this pair of lines effective is really the assonance:
The short "a" in "clanging" and "rattle"
The short "u" in "rusted" and "rubble" (and also in “among,” even though it’s spelled with an “o”).
For a start, both uses of assonance link words that are relatively far apart, and so "stitch" the whole image together. They tell our mind's ear (subconsciously) that all these words build up to make one single, potent image.
But they also contribute a particular feeling to the music of the couplet, since both are short vowels, which (as I explain here) we tend to connect with violence, struggle, and rapid movement—echoing very neatly the meaning of the lines.
But to fully understand what the assonance has added here, imagine these lines without it. What if they were:
I have been one of the missing, shaking
my rusted rattle in the nursery mess.
I hope that, as you read my version, you’ll feel that something is missing. The image of the “rusted rattle” is still a strong one, but the scene just doesn’t have the same “feel” of poetry. The images and descriptions don’t build together anymore into an oppressive mood of desperation and loss.
So we see, the assonance was crucial!
Now here's Linda Gregerson, using assonance at the start of "An Offering":
Hold out your hands, girl, open
your palms to the moon, it's new,
and new the grain [….]
[…]. Do this with an open heart,
your vines will thrive[…]
There are two sets of assonance in these lines as well:
One is an example of how you can get assonance from different letters: the long "oo" sound in “moon” is repeated in "new."
The other is the long "i" in "vines" and "thrive."
Here, one effect of the assonance is to strengthen the ties between pairs of words that are already linked.
The “moon” is a new moon, so readers already connect these words at the level of meaning. But the assonance makes that connection much more powerful, almost mystical. This perfectly suits Gregerson’s intention of indicating that the moon has some mysterious power that the “girl” can access.
The same is true with the “vines” that will “thrive.” Again, the reader will understand that the meanings of these words are linked, but reinforcing that with the shared sound makes it seem more inevitable that the plants will grow fruitfully.
But in both cases, the poet is particularly repeating long vowels. The “oo” and the “i” both take a long time to say—which create an impression of smoothness and softness. This suits the dreamy, incantation-like mood of the poem..
So, by taking two poets at random, and choosing two poems at random, you can see how prominent and important assonance is!
I encourage you to try the same experiment. Read poems for their assonance: look for where it happens, and se what you think it adds to the poem.
Then you will learn more about what assonance can do.
Next Steps
However, as with all poetic tools, nothing beats trying out assonance yourself.
But it can be hard to figure out how to make assonance happen! So here’s an exercise to get you started.
Start with a word you're pretty sure you want to emphasize in a poem—for example, "river."
Make a list of words that are full rhymes for this word. Full rhymes are usually easier to find than assonances.
In my case, I’ve got shiver, sliver, quiver, and liver.Isolate a section of these rhyme words that includes the main vowel and what comes after it.
In my example, I’m taking the “-ive-” part of river, quiver, shiver, etc.Look for other words that also include that letter combination and vowel sound, without rhyming with the original word. These words must assonate with your original word!
For “-ive-”, I get “live” and “give.”Now isolate the section of your original word that includes the main vowel and what comes before it.
In my case this is “ri-”Find other words that begin with this new sound combination.
I get “rip,” “rid,” “risk,” “riddance,” and more!Repeat steps 5 and 6 with sections from your rhyme words.
This gets me a lot more words, like “slice,” “slid,” “quick,” “quip,” “lip,” “lit,” and more.If this doesn’t give you enough words, find words that rhyme with a word from your list.
So I can take “lit” and also add “split,” "pit,” and “hit,” for example.This should give you a ton of words that you could weave in around "river"!
