Rhythm and Alliteration

 

Alliteration has fallen out of favor among literary writers, including poets. If you use a lot of alliteration in your prose, you'll be accuse of writing "purple prose"--which is ironic, given that the term itself alliterates. 

Alliteration is the repetition of first sounds in words that are in close proximity to each other. It is a type of rhyme (not all rhyme comes at the end of lines, or at the end of words) that can help create rhythms in a work. "Purple prose," for example, repeats the P sound. "Coca-Cola" repeats the hard C sound. But that is not sufficient. In poetry, a word alliterates with another only if both sounds are on the stressed syllable. In this sense, it is indeed similar to how end-rhymes work. 

Alliteration was used in Old English poems to create the rhythms of the works rather than using regular alternations between stressed and unstressed syllables. Alliteration creates a kind of strong punctuation that can help emphasize a rhythm. It can be particularly effective in rhythmic styles that slightly deviate from the standard iambic pentameter.

Sapphic verse, for example, stresses two syllables after the first unstressed syllable, which is then followed by four iambs (there's slightly more to it than this, but let's leave it here for now and return to Sapphic verse later). Alliteration can help the reader really emphasize the repetition of the stressed syllables and thus notice that those syllables are there rather than the expected iamb. 

The power of alliteration can be seen by the fact that it's so often used in company names. 

Coca-Cola
Krispy Kream
Dunkin Donuts
Best Buy
PayPal

And think about the fact that people sometimes call Wal-Mart, "Wally-World."

The use of alliteration can thus create the rhythm itself, emphasize unusual rhythms (such as two stressed syllables next to each other), and even add another layer of pattern on top of a regular rhythm such as iambic. Alliteration may have "fallen out of favor" among "serious" poets, but all that attitude does is deprive you of a tool you can use to create more complex patterns and rhythms, affect the mood of the piece, and add to the style of your poetry.