Love Poem With Toast

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds and diphthongs in poetry. Like rhyme, assonance can create rhythm in a poem, and Williams makes heavy use of assonance from the outset of “Love Poem with Toast.” From the first line, “what we do, we do,” the “wa/ we” sound plays a role in the poem that continues to the end. The first stanza has the words “what,” “we” twice, “wake,” and also car and start, both of which share the “ahh” sound.

In the second stanza, again the repetition of “what” and “we,” and in the third stanza, the double use of “we” followed by “wanting,” “wanted,” and “wanting” repeated five more times after that. In the final stanza, the words “wants,” “watching,” “want,” “wanting,” and “we” appear. The heavy use of the “wa/we” sound largely at the beginning of the lines builds a fluid, incantatory rhythm.

Williams also uses assonance with the diphthongs like coffee, perc, keep, getting, battery, leave, meat, breakfast, and pretend. And the “uh/oh” sounds as in “up,” “rusting,” “truth,” “hoe,” “poles,” “lose,” “boil,” “home,” “run,” “other,” “alone,” and “bone.” Interestingly, he tends to use the “wa/ahh” sounds, a lighter more fluid sound, to begin most lines, and the “ee/e/a” and “o/oi/u,” heavier sounds, to end the lines.