![]() The forest floor is ‘speckled’ bronze and we can almost hear the crunch of leaves underfoot in ‘sugar caramelized’ Specificity: Each object has a particular colour, texture.The lyrical description of the colours in the forest floor give way to the mysterious ‘finger of light’. Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (1997), p. One morning I watch a finger of light move its way deliberately to me across the ground. The branches look painted onto the onion-white sky. The forest floor is speckled bronze, sugar caramelized in the leaves. Many authors create lyrical effects like Debussy, by creating subtle or overt shifts of tone, phrase, and cadence as sentences build.Ĭonsider the lyricism and visual strength of this description of a forest in Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces: For example the French impressionist composer Claude Debussy’s piano piece ‘Poissons d’Or’ (‘Golden Fish’) evokes the darting and shimmering of fish in its trills and swift changes in mood and rhythm. Many lyrical pieces of music conjure visual images. Emotional use of time: The various ‘befores’ and ‘afters’ of the poem create some of the lyrical quality – for example the poignant idea of a destroyed city’s dust rising in the air. ![]() Strong and evocative visuals: Miłosz uses words like a paintbrush – we see the ‘rosy colour’ that ‘tints’ buildings.Sound quality: Miłosz uses alliteration such as the soft sibilant ‘s’ repeated in ‘The sky before sunri se is soaked with light’.What gives the poem its nostalgic and lyrical qualities, besides subject matter (a walk with someone at sunrise)? Czesław Miłosz, ‘At Dawn’ (translated by Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass) I cast a spell on a city asking it to last. The bygone lives are like my own past life, uncertain. I was here when she, with whom I walk, wasn’t born yetĪnd the cities on a distant plain stood intactīefore they rose in the air with the dust of sepulchral brickĪnd the people who lived there didn’t know. Rosy colour tints buildings, bridges, and the Seine. The sky before sunrise is soaked with light. Take for example this poem by Polish poet Czesław Miłosz, ‘At Dawn’: Read examples of lyrical writing in both novels and poems and write out sentences that strike you as particularly lyrical. Lyrical writing makes use of elements such as these in a way that is expressive, pleasing to our ears. Wilfred Owen, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, available here. Only the s tuttering rifles’ ra pid ra ttleĬan pa tter ou t their has ty orisons. Similarly, ‘alliteration’ refers to the pattern made by consonants.įor example, in the famous war poem ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ by Wilfred Owen, the alliteration of plosive ‘t’ and ‘p’ sounds in the description of gunfire mimics the hail of bullets: The repetition of the long ‘a’ sound has a slightly plaintive quality. For example, if a departing character were to say, when asked if they’re leaving the next day: ‘Assonance’ refers to the patterns and repetitions of vowels. ![]() Two poetic devices relating to the sounds words make as we read them aloud are assonance and alliteration. Sentence length: The larger structures of how words and images are grouped add to the overall musical quality of a writer’s prose.Cadence: (the rising and falling of speech patterns – this is even more so for tonal languages where pitch of a word partially determines its meaning).Rhythm: the pattern formed between words’ syllables and stresses (which syllables we emphasize in speech).Think about the sound of each sentenceĪ paragraph is often lyrical because of the patterns made by elements such as: Here are 5 simple tips to write in a more lyrical style: 1. ![]() Lyrical writing is writing that is song-like, poetic, or deeply evocative. ![]()
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