Assonance

POETIC DEVICES

Assonance is the repetition of the vowel sound across words within the lines of the poem creating internal rhymes.

Examples of assonance across words include: crying time; hop-scotch; great flakes; between trees; and, the kind knight rides by.

Look at this stanza from John Agard’s poem 'Hopaloo Kangaroo': 

If you can boogaloo
boogaloo
I can do
the boogaloo too
for I’m the boogiest
hopaloo kangaroo

from The Puffin Book of Fantastic First Poems (Puffin, 2000)

There are examples of the repeated /oo/ sound within the 1st, 4th and 6th lines (assonance), as well as it being used as a rhyme at the end of all the lines, except the 5th line.

 

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