Literary Devices: The Poet-ential For Something New

By Bridget Ng

Poetry invites us to play with language, listen for the rhythms of words and shift them into new meaning. Often, this results in an army of alliteration or a chain of repetition: classic techniques of sound and figurative language that range from assonance and onomatopoeia to metaphor and enjambment.

But as Robert Frost writes, value lies in “the road less travelled by”. The world of poetic devices is far from limited — there are hundreds of ways you can manipulate the tones and colours of words in order to create a new experience for the reader. For anyone who wants to change things up, here is a list of unique poetic devices you might not have heard of before!  

Asyndeton:

The omission of one or multiple conjunctions between parts of a sentence, as seen in John Milton’s “Sonnet 23”: “Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin’d”. Instead of adding “and”  between the clauses, Milton uses commas to speed up the rhythm of the line. This has the effect of increasing tension, creating an implied hierarchy within a listed series, and evoking a sense of urgency or passion.

Cacophony:

A combination of harsh or unpleasant sounds, such as hard consonants and disjointed rhythms. “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll employs cacophony in the lines, “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! / The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! / Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun / The frumious Bandersnatch!” This utilises sharp, consonant-heavy words to create a strange and discordant atmosphere.

Catachresis:

A figure of speech that misapplies a word to create a rhetorical effect. In Timon of Athens, William Shakespeare writes, “’Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon’s purse.” Here, the emotional concept of winter is deliberately misused in a line about the physical state of a purse, providing a sense of uniqueness as well as an insightful comparison of two different ideas. Though it is naturally impossible for a season to occur within a money pouch, Shakespeare’s use of language thus links the barrenness of snowy days to depleted funds and financial ruin.  

Chiasmus:

The inversion of a phrase or clause to form an A-B-B-A mirror pattern. This is used in Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, which includes the line, “And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them”. The phrase “inward to me” is a reflection of “outward to them”, creating a sense of balance and reciprocity that echoes the poem’s themes of self and humanity. In this way, chiasmus adds musical rhythm to words while also conveying an emotional contrast between concepts. 

Euphony:

The opposite of cacophony, this technique creates harmonious combinations of words through soft consonants, long vowels and smooth rhythms. An example is “To Autumn” by John Keats, which utilises assonance and melodic flow to evoke the golden beauty of a fall day: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun”.

Polyptoton:

The repetition of words derived from the same root. As used in Lord Action’s famous quote “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, the root word “absolute” is employed as both a noun and an adjective, infusing the line with irony and emphatic rhythm.

So, as Edmund Spenser directs in his epic poem “The Faerie Queene”, “Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.” Writing is an endless process of invention, and in a world where originality matters more than ever, the ways we arrange our words offer the unbounded potential to create something both different and meaningful in its difference.

References

‘15 Uncommon Literary Devices to Transform Your Storytelling’. Geniebook, 2024, https://geniebook.com/exam-preparation/gce-o-level/article/15-uncommon-literary-devices-transform-your-storytelling.

Glatch, Sean. ‘12 Literary Devices in Poetry: Identifying Poetic Devices’. Writers.Com, 13 Oct. 2020, https://writers.com/literary-devices-in-poetry.

Hogue, Chelsea. ‘Asyndeton’. LitCharts, 5 May 2017, https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/asyndeton.

Matrix English Team. ‘Part 3: Ultimate List of Poetic Techniques | Beginner’s Guide to Poetry’. Matrix Education, 2 June 2020, https://www.matrix.edu.au/beginners-guide-poetry/ultimate-list-of-poetic-techniques/#antimetabole.

‘Some of the Most Unusual yet Effective Literary Devices in Prose and Poetry’. Msbunburyist, 4 Mar. 2022, https://msbunburyist.wordpress.com/2022/03/04/some-of-the-most-unusual-yet-effective-literary-devices-in-prose-and-poetry/.