Manipulating words through use of poetic devices can add amazing depth to your poetry.

Writing poetry is often like creating a painting. The artist must consider what colors to use to portray the feeling that is encompassed by the painting. They must consider the placement of objects and brushstrokes. As an artist must consider the effect his or her paint has on his or her painting so must a poet consider the effect words and literary devices will have on his or her poem.

To address the consideration of literary devices I will outline a few that are often found in poems and discuss how the use of each one can change a poem. To begin I will discuss Denotation and Connotation.

Denotation
Denotation is the direct and specific meaning of a word. This would be the definition of a word that you would find in a dictionary. Denotation is something that poets deal with regularly, the poet uses a word because it carries a certain definition.

Connotation
Connotation is what is suggested by a word, apart from what it explicitly describes. Connotation also contains the feeling a word brings with it. For example the word "shade" has a different connotation than the word "gloom". This often has to do with what the sound of the word does for us as well as our own personal and cultural experiences with the word itself. Using the examples above "shade" and "gloom" both carry a definition of "partial darkness", however, "shade" reminds me of trees, and shadows and seems to carry its own presence of light but "gloom" reminds me of gray clouds, rain and general dreariness.

Considering not only the denotation but also the connotation of your words when writing a poem can add great depth to it. The connotation will stay with the word and will affect the poem, adding to the mood of the poem itself.

Now that I have discussed the meaning and feel of the words we use I will move on to discuss using the sounds of words to affect the feel of your poem. The literary devices that deal with the sounds of words are: Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance and Onomatopoeia. Alliteration, Assonance and Consonance all deal with the repetition of certain letters in words, Onomatopoeia deals with the sound of the word and what it describes. So I will start with the odd man out.

Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is a word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes. Good examples are Buzz, Woof, Bang, Clang. These are all noise words, words that describe a noise while at the same time become the noise they describe. These types of words can be fantastic for a poem as by using the word you can bring the noise directly into your poem. Just as words carry certain meanings and feelings so too do noises. The deep bong of a church bell can call people to church, chime out the time, or announce a death. The loud woof of a dog can sound a warning, or just become an annoyance. Find a sound word and consider how the sound makes you feel, now consider how it could change the feel or mood of your poem.

Alliteration
Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words. Alliteration should not be confused with similar literary devices of assonance or consonance, which I will describe below. Alliteration basically is the repetition of the first letter of consecutive words. For example we see this in a line from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven".
"While I nodded, nearly napping"
The use of alliteration in a poem can bring about a sound by itself, in the above example it brings about a constant "n" sound which could almost imitate the sound of someone snoring. By using the sound and slight meaning that is brought with the use of alliteration you can alter the mood or feel of your poem as well.

Consonance
Consonance is the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession. Though this may sound like it is the same as Alliteration, it is not. Consonance happens within the word instead of at the beginning of the word. An example of this can be seen in Gerald Manley Hopkins's poem "The Wreck of Deutschland":
"And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day
...How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,
Gush!--"
Consonance can also be seen at the end of a line to create slant rhyme or a rhyme that does not rhyme exactly but has a similar sound. This is often seen in Emily Dickenson's poetry. Consonance can also be used for internal rhyme, both slant rhyme and internal rhyme can draw attention to certain parts of your poem and give it a certain feel based on the sounds created by the rhyme.

Assonance
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words with different endings. Assonance is much like consonance except with vowels instead of consonants. An example of assonance can be found in W. H. Auden's "In Memory of W. B. Yeats":
"The death of the poet was kept from his poems"
Assonance is slightly different from alliteration and consonance as vowel sounds create a different feel than that of consonant sounds. In the example above "death" is the first word used for the assonance, the continuance of the "e" sound keeps death on the reader's mind, it makes a deeper impact on the word "poet". Assonance can sometimes do the most to change the mood of a poem; assonance can extend a feeling of horror, love, sorrow or many other emotions throughout a line, a stanza or more of the poem.

Words can make or break a poem and careful consideration of how you choose your words can drastically affect the mood and feel of your poem. Use of poetic devices is a great way to enhance and develop the mood or feel of your poem. Poetry is all about conveying a thought or an emotion using very few words; make your words work for you.


Notes:

Definitions were taken from the LitWeb Glossary http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/litweb05/glossary/welcome.htm

Consonance definition taken from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_consonance