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Poetry Terms and Examples
Poetry?
How do you define poetry? What actually
makes something a poem?
Things to consider when
discussing why you like
a poem
Figurative Language
• A literary device used
to create a special
effect or feeling by
making some type of
interesting or creative
comparison
Simile
• A comparison of two
unlike things using
“like” or “as”
• What is the simile in
this poem by Emily
Dickinson? What are
the two things being
compared?
There came a wind like a
bugle;
It quivered through the
grass…
Metaphor
I think of thee!—my thoughts do twine and
bud
About thee, as wild vines, about a tree…
I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare
To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop--docile and omnipotent-At its own stable door.
• A comparison of two unlike
things without using “like” or
“as”
• What is the metaphor in this
poem by E.B. Browning? (Can
you find a simile as well?)
• What is the metaphor in the
poem (2nd poem) by
Dickinson?
Personification
• A literary device in which the
author speaks of or describes
an animal, object, or idea as if
it were a person
• What is being personified in
this poem by Shel Silverstein?
An oak tree and a rose bush
grew,
Young and green together,
Talking the talk of growing
things,
Wind and water and weather.
And while the rose bush
sweetly bloomed
The oak tree grew so high
That now it spoke of newer
things—
Eagles, mountain peaks and
sky…
Hyperbole
• An exaggeration or
overstatement
• What is the
exaggeration in
describing this boy in
this poem by John
Ciardi?
Why does a boy
who’s fast as a
jet
Take all day—and
sometimes two—
To get to school?
Sounds within a poem
Alliteration
• The repetition of initial
consonant sounds in
words
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• In this extract from
the Anglo-saxon epic
poem Beowulf, which
lines contain
alliteration?
•
(Also, can you find assonance
here as well?)
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Within the wine-hall he found the
warriors
Fast in slumber, forgetting grief,
Forgetting the woe of the world of
men.
Grim and Greedy the gruesome
monster,
Fierce and furious, launched
attack,
Slew thirty spearmen asleep in the
hall,
Sped away gloating, gripping the
spoil,
Dragging the dead men home to
his den.
Assonance
• The repetition of vowel
sounds without repeating
consonants
• In this poem by Emily
Dickinson, what lines
contain assonance?
• Her -- "last Poems" -- Poets
-- ended -- Silver -perished -- with her Tongue
-- Not on Record -- bubbled
other, Flute -- or Woman -So divine -- Not unto its
Summer -- Morning Robin
-- uttered Half the Tune -Gushed too free for the
Adoring…
Consonance
And the silken, sad, uncertain
rustling of each purple
curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with
fantastic terrors never felt
before;
• The repetition of
consonant sounds.
Although similar to
alliteration, consonance is
not limited to the first
letters of words.
• What is the consonance
in this poem by Poe?
(can you also find the
assonance?)
Onomatopoeia
• The use of a word whose
sound suggests its meaning,
such as clang, buzz and
twang.
• Which words are examples of
onomatopoeia in this poem by
Shel Silverstein?
Eight balloons no one was buyin’
All broke loose one afternoon.
Eight balloons with strings a-flyin’
Free to do what they wanted to.
One flew up to touch the sun—
POP!
One thought highways might be
fun—POP!...
One sat around ‘til his air ran
out—WHOOSH!...
TWO roads diverged in a
yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel
both
And be one traveler, long I
stood
And looked down one as far
as I could
To where it bent in the
undergrowth;
Rhyme
• The similarity or likeness
of sound existing
between two words. Sat
and cat are perfect
rhymes because the
vowel and final consonant
sounds are exactly the
same.
• What words rhyme in this
first stanza from Frost’s
poem, The Road Not
Taken.
End Rhyme
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
• The rhyming of words that
appear at the ends of two or
more lines of poetry.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
•
But the sea, the sea in darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in
their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveler to the shore.
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
In this poem by Longfellow,
The Tide Rises, The Tide
Falls, identify the end rhyme.
What other conventions
does this poem have?
Internal Rhyme
• Occurs when the
rhyming words
appear in the same
line of poetry.
• You break my eyes with a
look that buys sweet cake
Rhythm
• The regular or
random occurrence of
sound in poetry
• I put my hat upon my head
• And walked into the strand
• And there I saw another man
• Whose hat was in his hand
Meter
• The patterned
repetition of stressed
and unstressed
syllables in a line of
poetry.
Foot
• The smallest
repeated pattern of
stressed and
unstressed syllables
in a poetic line.
Stanza
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Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he
talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he
walked.
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And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his
place.
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So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the
bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his
head.
• A division of poetry
named for the
number of lines it
contains.
• In this poem by
E. A. Robinson,
how many stanzas
are there?
Couplet
• A pair of lines of verse
of the same length
that usually rhyme.
• How easy is this
couplet by Pope to
identify? Which words
rhyme?
Know then thyself, presume not god
to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle
state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
Repetition
• The repeating of a
word, a phrase, or
an idea for
emphasis or for
rhythmic effect.
• In the verses by
Shakespeare
below, find and
explain the
repetition.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and
tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to
day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted
fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief
candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor
player
That struts and frets his hour upon the
stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Mood
Once upon a midnight
dreary, while I
pondered, weak and
• The feeling the verse
weary,
arouses in the reader:
Over many a quaint and
happiness,
curious volume of
peacefulness,
forgotten lore-sadness, and so on.
• What is the mood in
this extract from
Poe’s The Raven?
Free Verse
• An unrhymed form of
poetry that has no set
format—no rhyme and no
rhythm.
• Is there any predictable
format to this poem, The
Death of a Ball Turret
Gunner, by Randall
Jarrell?
From my mother’s sleep I
fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till
my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed
from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the
nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed
me out of the turret with a
hose.