Distillations: Alliteration

As I mentioned last month, this column will be exploring various poetry techniques each month and how they are used in current speculative poetry. This month’s featured technique is alliteration, which is defined as the repetition of initial consonants or consonant sounds. It is a simple technique which can be powerful if not overdone. It is also a lot of fun for the writer.

The December 2007 issue of F&SF includes the poem “She Rides” by Sophie M. White. This is a fairly short, simple poem, and a lot of its effect comes from the use of alliteration. The example “lope and lumber behind” is one of the most obvious, but there is also an example of repeated sounds without using the same letter. In the first stanza, the initial S’s and the C’s of “Through the silver cedar forest” create a pattern that is obvious to the ears, and not the eyes.

There are also some good examples of this technique in Aeon #11. In Marge Simon’s “The Gate,” she weaves an assortment of S’s throughout the poem: “to all who sweat and strive…Come your silver ships of war…Sister sings a song of courage.” There is also a fine example in the two lines “to errors compounded / and promises conceded.” With these, alliteration is only one tool leading to the complete echo of “compounded” and “conceded.” It is rare for alliteration to operate alone, but it is one factor that makes a work “poetic” rather than prose. With the modern preference for free verse, this is especially important.

“Invitation to Emerald” by Rachel Swirsky appears in Lone Star Stories #24. Its cascading three-line stanzas have an obvious visual effect, but there are glimmers of alliteration as well with “collaborating to create cities” and “solemn bassoon solos.” Another, hidden example, can be found in “birds parade.” Although the B and P sounds are not identical, they are close enough for the ear to be fooled. The ninth stanza is lush with imagery such as “lilac-scented forests,” but it uses alliteration to round out the sound of the stanza with the alternating S’s and T’s of “taste of strawberries / tumbling fresh on summer breeze.”

Another poem in this same issue, Sonya Taaffe’s “Plague-Bearer” uses alliteration, but only in patches. This poem is one long stanza, with over 20 lines of stark images. Some of these, such as “an umbrella in the dying afternoon,” contain no alliteration whatsoever. However, as the poem gets towards the end, the patterns of alliteration grow stronger. This gathering of similar sounds indicates to the reader than something is happening, and also helps to strengthen the climax of the poem. The end of the poem is a veritable gushing of both S’s and F’s. The first half of the poem has some S’s as well “sun…salt…secret” but they are not as tightly packed as towards the end:

And the froth of tin, the white light
swinging out— Silently, I separate
the stained threads, the rheum and drag
of his lungs, the sunset shallows beyond
the panes. Where he falters, I will flower.
Oh, the sparrow-bones!

And the last line of all draws attention to itself by the removal of alliteration “The lost and broken keys.”

Finally, to show that neither this technique, nor speculative poetry, are entirely new, here are some timely lines from Edgar Allen Poe: “Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December…” Poe can be considered one of the earliest speculative poets with his haunting images and his constant explorations of the supernatural. Both alliteration and speculative poetry may be old, but poets today are continuing to explore its potential.

Next month, alliteration’s crafty cousin: Assonance.

Editor’s note: The name Distillations is used with acknowledgment of Mark R. Kelly’s short fiction review column of the same name which ran in Locus magazine from 1998-2001.