Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash
There are plenty of places online where we can find lists of poetic techniques. They are often defined and demonstrated in useful but fairly limited way, typically using a line or two extracted from a longer poem.
In a complete poem, however, techniques are used in combination.This enables the poet to more powerfully accentuate, and add to, their meanings and emotions.
We must always ask why these techniques might be used. It only makes sense to discuss their effects in the context of what the poem means, and how it feels.
Below are two readings of single stanzas from different poems. I have broken down the analysis into three broad areas, although these are all simultaneously active in the poems.
1) She Walks in Beauty - Byron
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
Let’s explore the particular ways that various devices work in this particular poem. It is clearly about a woman who the narrator, or ‘poetic voice’, finds particularly attractive. Therefore, we should view any techniques in this context, as contributing towards the particular ways in which he finds her beautiful, and how this is presented:
Structure and Form
She Walks in Beauty is written in a very regular pattern, using even line length and iambic pentameter within sestets (six lines per stanza). Each of the three statements in this first stanza is exactly two lines long, with no use of caesura. In this particular poem it makes sense to see such regularity, combined with the diction (words used) as contributing to a sense of gentle harmony and a ‘rightness’ about the woman who is the subject. The iambic meter gives the relaxed, natural feel of speech when read, in contrast to trochaic verse which is more insistent or aggressive, putting the stress on the first syllable of each metric ‘foot’. The harmonious effect works both in the speaking and reading of the poem, and this harmony is enhanced by the use of alternating rhyme.
The Meanings of words
The use of language in this stanza expresses the beauty of this particular woman in a distinctive way. The first statement ‘She walks in beauty’ is highly unusual, as it almost suggests she is metaphorically contained within ‘beauty’ itself. He has used the abstract noun ‘beauty’ deliberately, instead of the expected adjective ‘beautiful’, elevating her attractiveness to a higher abstract level, effectively putting her on a pedestal.
This is then reinforced by the reference to the night sky above, which is relatively bright against the expected darkness, being ‘cloudless’ and ‘starry’. The imagery is again distinctive, with the rest of the stanza characterising her as a perfect balance of the ‘best in dark and light’, creating a beauty which is ‘mellowed’ by the evening light in contrast to the ‘gaudy day’. Clearly, dim evening light can be flattering to anyone’s looks but there is more going on here. Byron is using the contrast, or polarity, of the dark and light to create a kind of balanced perfection.
The Sounds of Words
None of the ‘sound similarities’ here are onomatopoeic, so the sounds created don’t link to a literal meaning. They do have significant effects, however. Alliteration, assonance and consonance can help to draw more attention to images and ideas by creating cohesion between words which are close together. They also create associations through the reader’s associations with sounds via sound symbolism.
What have we got here in terms of alliteration, assonance and consonance? The alliteration of the hard plosive ‘c’ in ‘cloudless climes’ contrasts with the soft sibilants in ‘starry skies’, which mirrors the contrast between dark and light also created in this stanza. (Notice also that Byron is concerned to keep the meter perfect, and shortens ‘climates’ to ‘climes’ to achieve this - this shortening is called elision). The triple use of the hard alliterative ‘d’ in ‘gaudy day denies’ at the end of the stanza has the effect of rhythmically speeding up the end of the stanza, highlighting the harshness of daylight suggested by the adjective ‘gaudy’, and contrasting with the more restful night light. There is also a distant consonance using the emphatic plosive ‘B’, sonically linking the positive descriptors ‘beauty…best…bright’.
Assonance creates a more open, airy effect than alliteration, since it is based on vowels. Its use here - ‘like the night’, and ‘mellowed...tender’, in the context of this presentation of subtle beauty, allows the poem to breathe a little, and draws attention to the comparison of the woman’s beauty with that of the night in the first example, and to her gentleness in the second.
The overall effect of the stanza, or indeed of any poem as a whole, cannot be reduced to a series of individual techniques used in a predictable, mechanical way, but is created by the complex interaction of language, sound, structure and form.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————
2) A New Year’s Eve in Wartime - Thomas Hardy
Phantasmal Fears,
And the flap of a flame,
And the throb of a clock,
And loosened slate,
And the blind night’s drone,
Which tiredly the spectral pines intone!
As you can see, this second poem also uses meter, rhyme, sound effects and imagery. However, the topic here is the effects of wartime conditions on the usually happy time of New Year’s Eve. We have to judge the poet’s techniques very differently here. The atmosphere created is clearly bleak and fearful, so how does the use of poetic devices enhance the presentation?
Structure and Form
Again we have a sestet, but with shorter lines, apart from line 6, and the statements are complete per line without enjambment. However, because of the meanings of the words, and the different meter, the emotional effect is quite different to She Walks in Beauty.
A New Year’s Eve is mostly written in a three syllable anapaestic meter (Da -da-da, Da- da-da, Da-da-da). This gives an impression of insistent forward motion, rather like horses galloping. Combined with the short line lengths, this gives an uneasy, obsessive mood to the poem.This is highlighted by the syndetic listing - the four central lines start with an initial capitalised ‘And’. Lines 1-5 all end on a stressed syllable, on emphatic one-syllable nouns, and the final line is an exclamative which is surprising, given the preceding adverb ‘tiredly’. This use of the exclamation mark seems designed to persuade the reader/listener how scary things are, or perhaps it is a cry for help.
The Meanings of Words
A sense of terror and ghostly unreality is created here, even though there are very real objects and concerns in the poem. Lines 1 and 6 envelope the stanza in ghostliness via ‘phantasmal fears’ and ‘spectral pines’. The flame and clock, possibly in a living room, are made unfamiliar and anything but cosy by the verbs ‘flap’, which creates an agitated flame which moves like flapping arms, and ‘throb’, which almost personifies the clock, bringing it to life in an uncanny, rather gothic way.
The ‘loosened slate’ gives an impression of decay of the home from the roof outside, adding to the sense of insecurity, especially in the wartime context. The night is not starry here. It is not merely dark, but is personified as ‘blind’, its ‘drone’ adding to the uncanny ‘throb’ of the clock. The ‘spectral’ (ghostly) pines ‘intone’, or sing, the ‘drone’ of the night, perhaps the wind blowing through them, invisible in the dark.
The environment of the house and its surroundings is thus brought to life in a very unsettling way, suggesting danger and decay, perhaps mirroring the feelings of insecurity of a wartime population, even at New Year.
The Sounds of Words
The use of both alliteration and assonance serve to draw attention to the idea expressed throughout, that of an unsettling menace in the poetic voice’s environment: fricative alliteration on ‘phantasmal fears’ and ‘flap of a flame’, the assonantal ‘throb of a clock’. These two are made more persuasive via parallel grammatical construction.
The sibilant ‘loosened slate’ is almost onomatopoeic, the ‘s’ sound imitating a sliding roof tile, which in turn acts as an image for things falling apart in wartime.
The constant repetition of ‘And’ sets up an insistent, unpleasant pulse, in combination with the anapaestic meter mentioned above, leading the reader/listener to tire, like the ‘tiredly’ intoning of the pine in the final line of the stanza.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Conclusions
When analysing a poem, we often have to separate out the techniques so we can clearly identify what the poet is doing. However, we should always read the poem to see how different aspects of the writing reinforce each other:
The meanings and emotional charge of individual words and phrases are often, as above, reinforced by the way they sound, both on their own and in the way they are wrapped up in the rhythm or meter of the poem.
Powerful concrete writing using sensory language may also contain figurative meanings where it is being used to produce simile or metaphor. We should consider alternative interpretations to get the most from the poem.
The effects of poetic techniques can only be understood in the context of the individual poem. This means that the effect of any particular sensory and figurative language, and of word sounds, structure and form, vary dramatically from poem to poem.
It is really useful to practise using poetry freely available to read online.