From Cover to Cover by Kathleen T. Horning Page A

words lose their power and meaning. That is the opposite of what a poet strives for.
    Many other devices of sound contribute to rhyme in a pleasurable but less obvious way. These include alliteration (the repetition of initial consonant sounds), assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds), and consonance (the repetition of final consonants). Karla Kuskin uses all the above sound devices in her poem “Thistles.”
    Thirty thirsty thistles
    Thicketed and green
    Growing in a grassy swamp
    Purple-topped and lean
    Prickly and thistly
    Topped by tufts of thorns
    Green mean little leaves on them
    And tiny purple horns
    Briary and brambly
    A spiky, spiney bunch of them.
    A troop of bright-red birds came by
    And had a lovely lunch of them.
    Both poetry and verse have some sort of rhythm, called meter . The lengths of a poem’s lines and the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables constitute its meter. It not only contributes to the way a poem sounds but also can reinforce the poem’s meaning. Meter can be used to slow the reader down and give us a sense of quiet contemplation or dreaming, or to move us along quickly to communicate such things as playful movement. Note how the poet Eloise Greenfield uses short lines to reinforce meaning in this stanza from her poem about a child in motion:
    When Lessie runs she runs so fast that
    Sometimes she falls down
    But she gets right up and brushes her knees
    And runs again as fast as she can
    Past red houses
    and parked cars
    and bicycles
    and sleeping dogs
    and cartwheeling girls
    and wrestling boys
    and Mr. Taylor’s record store
    All the way to the corner
    To meet her mama
    The two-and three-word lines list the people and things Lessie passes as she’s running, and also give a sense of her feet pounding on the pavement in her breathless sprint down the street, until she finally slows down when she reaches the corner.
    Contrast this with the effect that meter has in Douglas Florian’s poem about waiting for winter to end.
    When winter winds wind down and end…
    Then spring is coming round the bend.
    When winter ice begins to thaw…
    Then spring is knocking at the door.
    When winter snow is nowhere found…
    Then spring, you know, has come to town.
    Florian has cleverly used meter to slow down the reading of the first line of each stanza and to speed up the reading of the second, giving us a sense of winter’s prolonged stay and the spring’s welcome arrival.
    Modern poetry had gradually moved away from a reliance on a strict rhythm and the use of end rhymes. Poems need not rhyme at all, and free verse breaks away from formal metrical patterns altogether. Arnold Adoff is one of the best-known children’s poets who brings amodern vision to poetry. His poems often tell a story by combining strong feeling with action.
    i am near the shoulder
    of the girl
    in the lead
    and maybe this lead girl
          looks
            back
    for a second
    to see if i am still
    on her shoulder
    then my eyes
    tell her
    good
        bye
    In Adoff’s poems, the placement of the words on the page is almost like a road map, giving readers guidance as to how they should read the poems aloud.
    THE IMAGES OF POETRY
    Since poems are compact, there can be no wasted words. The poet carefully chooses precise, exact words to evoke the desired mood or feeling, or to surprise the reader with an unexpected—but perfect—comparison. Poetry uses metaphor , bringing unrelated things together to point out similarities or differences. Pay close attention to the way GwendolynBrooks uses words to create images and feelings in “Cynthia in the Snow” from her book Bronzeville Boys and Girls :
    It SUSHES .
    It hushes
    The loudness in the road.
    It flitter-twitters,
    And laughs away from me.
    It laughs a lovely whiteness,
    And whitely whirs away,
    To be
    Some otherwhere,
    Still white as milk or shirts.
    So beautiful it hurts.
    Brooks uses imagery to appeal to the senses of hearing, sight, and touch, making us feel