Literary Devices for You and Me

When I read The Thrill of the Chase and The Poem, I notice some fun literary devices Forrest may have used intentionally...or unintentionally. I didn't think of something to write about in the middle of the night as I often do, so this post is completely off the top of my head. I just used a literary device. Can you tell which one?

So, let's take a look at the poem and decode the literary devices I see. I can't say whether they're intentional or not, because I'm not the architect who created it. It's just what I personally see.

1. The dreaded and much contested "where warm waters..." is a short alliteration. An alliteration is where multiple words with similar sounds are used in one sentence or phrase. In the case of "where warm waters", the repeated sound is the "wh" sound. If you listen to Forrest speak the poem, you can more clearly hear the "wh" in each word, which makes me think it could be intentional. Here's a good alliteration that Marvin Fenn made up: "Fenn's Flies Fool Fish." Say that three times fast.

This picture is courtesy of Forrest Fenn, through Dal's blog, and the story that goes along with it can be found in Scrapbook One Hundred Twenty Seven.

2. "I can keep my secret where..." could be an inversion. It's usually used in classical type poetry, and we rarely see it today. Maybe that's why it has grabbed our attention so effectively. Inversion involves switching the placement of words for a desired effect. You could say "riches new and old" is also an inversion, since our mind rearranges it to mean new and old riches. But there's another literary term that more accurately describes that phrase, and I'll get to that next.

But the "secret where" grabs my attention, as it seems to be purposely placed. When I parse the sentence, it leads to more confusion. I want to say "where" is a noun in the context of the sentence, but I'm told it's something else, which I haven't researched enough yet to be certain. But, in my mind anyway, "where" means "place."

Is this "where?"

3. "...riches new and old," "canyon down", and "water high" are all anastrophes. An anastrophe is when an author places the adjective after the noun, rather than the usual place before the noun. Both "new" and "old" are adjectives because they describe "riches." Adjectives describe nouns. When I say that I ate a cookie with thick pink frosting on it last night, not only is that sentence true, but it places the adjectives (thick and pink), before the noun (frosting).

All that's left of the cookie cake, and the remaining pink frosting will also soon be gone...

"Canyon down" is tricky, though, because in the context of the entire sentence, "down" is not an adjective. In context, both canyon and down are nouns. Which, in my opinion, greatly restricts the meaning.

I'm not sure what Forrest is saying by canyon down, but maybe it has something to do with being "pillowed down."

Here is a pleasing pyramid of plump, plush pillows. Look, I made an alliteration! Alliteration always allows a lot of awesome.

I think I'll stop there. Three is a good number to stop with for the day. I think the theme for Thursday will thoroughly throw three more thumbs to Thor. That makes no sense. What can I say, it's 6:00 am!