Welcome! I’m participating in the #BlogchatterA2Z challenge where I’ll share 26 posts on the theme “The Poet’s Alphabet: 26 Secrets for Crafting Beautiful Poetry”. In each post, I’ll offer bite-sized tips and tricks for crafting and perfectly editing poetry. Today’s tip is:
Play With Sound and Alliteration To Create Music in Your Poetry

Poetry is a musical art form, and sound and alliteration can help create a sense of rhythm and melody in your work. Alliteration is a literary device used in poetry and prose where a series of words in a phrase or sentence begin with the same consonant sound. It is a technique of repetition of consonant sounds to create emphasis, rhythm, and musicality in writing.
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Brook” is a beautiful example of how alliteration can create musicality and rhythm in poetry. The poem’s opening lines contain a series of alliterative phrases that establish the flowing and meandering movement of the brook:
"I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley."
Here, the repeated “h” sounds in “haunts,” “hern,” and “fern” create a sense of movement and flow, mimicking the motion of the brook itself. Similarly, the repeated “s” sound in “sudden sally” and “sparkle out” further emphasize the sense of motion and energy.
Later in the poem, Tennyson uses alliteration to create a sense of depth and complexity in his description of the brook:
I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses; I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses; And out again I curve and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.
Here, the repeated “m” sounds in “murmur,” “moon,” and “stars,” and the repeated “l” sounds in “linger,” “loiter,” and “cresses” create a sense of richness and depth in the brook’s experience. The repetition of the phrase “men may come and men may go, but I go on forever” further reinforces the sense of continuity and endlessness that the brook represents.
So now you know how alliteration can be used to create a sense of musicality and rhythm in poetry, enhancing the overall impact of the poem on the reader.
Hope you found this tip useful.
See you with another tip, tomorrow.
This post is a part of the #BlogchatterA2Z 2023 challenge.
Suggested Read: A poem penned by me, that is high on alliteration: “The Song Of A Promising Poetry”
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