Sound Notes
Euphony:
Cacophony:
Alliteration:
Assonance:
Bear In There by Shel Silverstein
There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire-He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there—
That Polary Bear
In our Fridgitydaire.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Fast Break by Edward Hirsch
In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984
A hook shot kisses the rim and
hangs there, helplessly, but doesn't drop,
and for once our gangly starting center
boxes out his man and times his jump
perfectly, gathering the orange leather
from the air like a cherished possession
and spinning around to throw a strike
to the outlet who is already shoveling
an underhand pass toward the other guard
scissoring past a flat-footed defender
who looks stunned and nailed to the floor
in the wrong direction, trying to catch sight
of a high, gliding dribble and a man
letting the play develop in front of him
in slow motion, almost exactly
like a coach's drawing on the blackboard,
both forwards racing down the court
the way that forwards should, fanning out
and filling the lanes in tandem, moving
together as brothers passing the ball
between them without a dribble, without
a single bounce hitting the hardwood
until the guard finally lunges out
and commits to the wrong man
while the power-forward explodes past them
in a fury, taking the ball into the air
by himself now and laying it gently
against the glass for a lay-up,
but losing his balance in the process,
inexplicably falling, hitting the floor
with a wild, headlong motion
for the game he loved like a country
and swiveling back to see an orange blur
floating perfectly through the net
Lesson 3: Sound
Models: “Fast Break” by Edward Hirsch, “Bear in There” by Shel Silverstein, “Stopping by Woods
on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, “Cartoon Physics, Part 1,” by Nick Flynn
Poetic Devices You Should Know: euphony, cacophony, alliteration, assonance
Assignment:
Keep sound in mind as you write your poem for this assignment.
You will need to use alliteration OR assonance
AND
You will need to use euphony OR cacophony
When you are finished, circle an example of where you used 2 devices listed above. This means
you are circling specific words (for euphony/cacophony) and specific letters (for
alliteration/assonance), not entire lines or clusters of words.
Below your poem, write a brief note to me that explains how/why you used each one.
For example, Robert Frost might circle the w’s in line 4 and label them ‘euphony,’ then write, “I
used euphony in line 4 because I wanted the reader to get the idea that the narrator enjoyed
stopping in the woods—it was a pleasant experience.” He might label line 13 with alliteration
and explain, “I repeated the ‘d’ sounds to draw out how far back the woods go so the reader
dwells on it for a minute.”
Here is a prompt to get you started, but if you don’t like the topic, you may choose your own:
Using “Cartoon Physics, Part 1” as a model, write a poem that explores one of the following
topics:


What is something that should have a minimum age requirement? Why? (getting a
tattoo, falling in love, lying, seeing your parents be vulnerable, playing with fire, etc.)
What is something that you don’t realize until you’re older? Is it a good thing you don’t
realize it when you’re a kid? (People lie, people die, it’s fun to get an adrenaline rush
through extreme sports, there is no tooth fairy, Santa is not making a list, etc.)
Like Flynn, use vivid imagery and maybe even images that are symbolic or metaphoric.