Spoon River Anthology
Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950).
Review of Elements, Techniques,
And Poetic Devices
Benjamin Fraser
Their spirits beat upon mine
Like the wings of a thousand butterflies.
Assonance, Consonance, Simile
Assonance is a rhyming vowel sound, not just
repetition of the same vowel in words. Consonance
is a repetition of consonant sounds.
I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating.
I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes
Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes
And when they turned their heads;
And when their garments clung to them,
Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies.
Repetition & Parallel Structure, Caesura, Sensory
Detail, Assonance, Concrete Detail
Assonance is a rhyming vowel sound, not just
repetition of the same vowel in words
And they cried to me for life, life, life.
But in taking life for myself,
In seizing and crushing their souls,
As a child crushes grapes and drinks
From its palms the purple juice,
Assonance, Consonance, Simile, Repetition,
Where are the examples of Assonance?
Your red blossoms amid green leaves
Are drooping, beautiful geranium…
-----------I never saw any difference
Between playing cards for money
And selling real estate…
Assonance is a rhyming vowel sound, not just
repetition of the same vowel in words
Your red blossoms amid green leaves
Are drooping, beautiful geranium…
------------------I never saw any difference
Between playing cards for money
And selling real estate…
Assonance?
Across the blackness that came over my eyes…
-------------Yet I lie here
Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows…
--------------I went up and down the streets
Here and there by day and night…
A or I or E
Across the blackness that came over my
eyes…
Only two “a” sounds rhyme
--------------
Yet I lie here
Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows…
Long “i” sound created by three different vowel combinations
--------------I went up and down the streets
Here and there by day and night…
None of these “e” sounds creates assonance – no true rhyme
Does the letter O used in words twelve
times constitute Assonance here?
As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours
On the shore of the turbid Spoon…
How many different O sounds are evident in these
two verses? Only the rhyming sounds constitute
Assonance.
METAPHOR – to bridge, transfer, or cross over
in meaning
The tongue may be an unruly memberBut silence poisons the soul.
Should these lines be taken literally
or metaphorically? Why?
SIMILE – comparison using like or as
My parents thought that I would be
As great as Edison or greater:
For as a boy I made balloons
“As” is NOT always used in comparison, but
may be used as an action verb or adverb in
an adverbial phrase – be careful!
Allusion, Metaphor,
Assonance, Repetition
I came to this wingless void,
Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine,
Nor the rhythm of life is known.
\
Allusion, Metaphor,
Assonance, Repetition
From “Caroline
Branson”
With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,
As often before, the April fields till star-light
Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,
Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing
Like notes of music that run together, into winning,
In the inspired improvisation of love!
Caesura and End-Stops create pauses in a line.
Enjambment assists the flow of thought within a sentence.
MANY DEVICES/TECHNIQUES
Their spirits watched my ecstasy
With wide looks of starry unconcern.
Their spirits looked upon my torture;
They drank it as it were the water of life;
With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes
The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt,
Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight.
Consonance, Assonance, Simile, Metaphor, Parallel,
Repetition, Active verb,
Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950)
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure—
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers—
Blind to all of it all my life long.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
While Homer and Whitman roared in the
pines?