One more note before I dive in: I’ve seen a few different transcriptions of “The Hill We Climb” out there on the internet, and there are some slight variations between them. I won’t point out every instance of consonance and paromoiosis, because there are so very many of them, but I will draw attention to the uses that have a particular impact. Like many devices of parallelism, it will help you hear the equations as Gorman builds them and will call your attention to the ideas she is linking together. Paromoiosis is what makes the poem feel “lyrical”, but it isn’t only aurally pleasing. It’s the crash of waves within the larger motion of the tide. Paromoiosis is, broadly, that not-quite-rhyme sense, highlighted by parallel structure. I usually look at isocolon as a grammatical device, but in this sense, we might also consider it a metrical device, where the parallelism lives in cadence in addition to or instead of in grammar alone. It is partly rhyme, partly slant rhyme, but importantly the combination of rhyme and some level of isocolon, parallel structure. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds paromoiosis is a little more complex, the repetition of sounds between words of adjacent or parallel clauses or lines. The dominant devices in “The Hill We Climb” are consonance and paromoiosis, both figures of repetition. Mercy sweet heavens, I cannot wait to see what else she gives us. Amanda Gorman has a delightful grasp of rhythm and imagery and the awesome power of our language’s flexibility and potential complexities. I imagine that for decades to come, I will be able to return to it and unfold a little more of its intricate beauty. I will not have found every device worth noting in this poem. Every once in a while, the language is just so gorgeous that I swoon. Julius Caesar‘s “Friends, Romans, countrymen”. As much as I love rhetoric, that dopamine/endorphin/adrenaline rush doesn’t happen every time. In case you somehow missed it, please watch National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman deliver “The Hill We Climb” as the inaugural poem for Joe Biden.įirst things first: This poem is so good that when I finished the initial rhetorical markup, I felt buzzed.
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