Download Poetry Terms PPT 2015

Poetry Terms
• General Elements
• Figurative Language
• Sound Devices
• Forms of Poetry
• Types of Poetry
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Elements: Stanza
•Formal division of lines in a poem
•Considered a unit
•Separated by spaces
•Couplets: two lines
•Quatrains: four lines
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Speaker
• Imaginary voice assumed by poet
• Often not identified by name
• May be person, animal, thing, or
abstraction
• E.g.: Dickinson as dead person:
“Because I could not stop for Death-He
kindly stopped for me-”
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Tone
• Writer’s attitude to
audience and subject
 E.g.: formal or informal
serious, playful, pompous
bitter, ironic, personal
sympathetic, friendly
grieving, sarcastic, harsh
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Allusion
• Reference to well-known person, place, event,
literary work, or art
• Usually to the Bible or to
mythology
• E.g.: “The Magi . . . were wise men . . . who brought
gifts to the Babe in the manger.”
5
Connotation
• Ideas or meanings associated with a word (in
addition to dictionary definition)
• E.g.: “caged bird” = sad, trapped
creature
“previously owned vehicle” = used car
“vacation spot” = lake
Compare: fragrance, smell, stench
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Denotation
• Dictionary definition of a word
• Independent of other associations
(connotations)
• E.g.: lake
• Denotation: inland body of water
• Connotation: vacation or fishing spot
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Paradox
• Statement that seems contradictory but may be true
• Surprising, catches reader’s attention
• E.g.: “Youth is wasted on the young.”
“The more things change, the
more they stay the same.”
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Symbol
• Object has own meaning but also
abstract idea
represents
• Stands for something else
• E.g.:
• Flag symbolizes country
• Scarlet ibis symbolizes Doodle and other people who
struggle
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Figurative Language
• Writing not meant to interpret literally
• Compares dissimilar things
• Creates vivid impressions
• Metaphors, similes, personifications
• E.g.:
• “My black eyes are coals burning
Like a low, full jungle moon
Through the darkness of being”
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Fig Lang: Metaphor
• Figure of speech
• A comparison
• One thing spoken of as if
it is something else
• E.g.: “Poetry is a river.”
“The sky is a patchwork quilt.”
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Fig Lang: Simile
• Figure of speech, comparison
• Uses like or as to compare
two unlike ideas
• E.g.:
• “The morning sun is like a red rubber ball.”
• “Does it dry up, like a raisin in the sun?”
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Fig Lang: Imagery
• Descriptive or figurative language
• Creates word pictures (images)
• Details of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, or
movement
• E.g.:
“ghostly marching on pavement
stones”
“wind-tanned skin”
“wise black pools”
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Fig Lang: Personification
• Figurative language
• Nonhuman subject given human
characteristics
• E.g.: “The wind danced in the trees.”
Daffodils “tossing their heads in sprightly dance”
Storm “tosses her hair, throws back her head, and closes her eyes”
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Fig Lang: Extended Metaphor
• Writing about a subject as if it were something else
• Comparison several lines long or
• E.g.: “caged bird” becomes
who is not free
entire poem
person
“broken-winged bird that cannot fly”
becomes life without a dream
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Fig Lang: Sensory Words/Lang
• Writing that appeals to the senses images
• Provides details related to senses
• E.g.: feeling the sun beating
head
down on one’s
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Sound Devices: Onomatopoeia
• Words that imitate sounds
• E.g.: murmur, thud, sizzle, hiss,
pop, cuckoo
buzz, bang,
• E.g.: Poe’s “Bells”
“Of the bells, bells, bells, bells”
ringing, chiming, jangling,
rangling, clang, clash, roar”
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Sound Devices: Assonance
• Repetition of vowel sounds followed by different
consonants in 2 or more stressed syllables
• E.g.:
“weak and weary”
“child of silence”
“so rolling…a stone”
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Sound Devices: Alliteration
• Repetition of initial consonant
sounds
• Emphasizes words, imitates sounds, creates musical
effects
• E.g.: “I grew like a thin, stubborn
weed, watering myself
whatever way I could.”
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I
pondered weak and weary.”
“The fair breeze blew, the white foam
flew.”
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Sound Devices: Rhyme
• Repetition of sounds at ends of words
• End rhyme vs. internal rhyme
• E.g.: “Swans sing before they die—’twere no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.” (end)
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary.”
(internal)
• Exact rhyme vs. slant rhyme (slant rhyme – similar but not identical sounds)
• E.g.: ball and hall (exact)
hold and bald (slant)
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Sound Devices: Repetition
• Use of any language element – a sound, word,
phrase, clause, or sentence – more than once
• Used for musical effects and for emphasis
• E.g.:
• Alliteration, assonance, rhyme, rhythm repeat
sounds
• Refrain repeats line/s
• “You liked winning…You liked writing…You liked
all the faces…”
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Sound Devices: Refrain
• Regularly repeated line
or group of lines
In music: a chorus
E.g.: Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
“Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one
like Macavity.”
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Sound Devices: Rhythm
• Pattern of beats or stresses
• Some poems have a specific pattern or meter
• E.g.:
“There was a young lady named bright
Whose speed was far faster than light;”
• Prose and free verse use natural
of everyday speech
rhythms
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Forms of Poetry: Fixed Form
• Stanzas have repeated or predictable patterns
• Words in each stanza may rhyme or sound alike
• Length and rhythm of stanzas are related
• Number of syllables in line may be fixed
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Forms of Poetry: Free Form or Free Verse
• Lacks structure or pattern
• Words may not rhyme
• Lines do not match in number of syllables, length, or rhythm
25
Types of Poetry: Sonnet
• 14-line lyric poem
• Formal patterns of rhyme, rhythm
and line structure
Two types:
English, or Shakespearean
(3 quatrains + couplet)
Italian, or Petrarchan
(octave + sestet)
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Types of Poetry: Haiku
• 3-line verse form
• 1st and 3rd lines: 5 syllables (?)
• 2nd line: 7 syllables (?)
• Single vivid emotion
• Images from nature
• E.g.: Basho:
• “furu-ike ya
“An old pond
kawazu tobi-komu A frog jumps in
Mizu-no-oto”
The sound of water”
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Types of Poetry: Lyric Poem
• Brief poem
• Musical verse: uses rhythm, alliteration, and rhyme
• Observations and feelings of
one speaker
• Sung with lyre in ancient times
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Types of Poetry: Narrative Poem
• Tells a story in verse
• May be an epic or a ballad
• E.g.:
• “Casey at the Bat”: humorous narrative poem
• Poe’s “Raven”: serious narrative poem
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Types of Poetry: Ballad
• Songlike poem that tells a story
• Often adventure and romance
• Most written in 4 to 6-line stanzas, regular rhythms
and rhyme schemes, often a refrain
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Types of Poetry: Limerick
• Humorous, rhyming, five-line poem
• Specific meter and rhyme scheme
• E.g.: Edward Lear:
“There was an Old Person whose habits,
Induced him to feed upon rabbits;
When he'd eaten eighteen,
He turned perfectly green,
Upon which he relinquished those habits.”
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Types of Poetry: Concrete Poem
• Poem with shape that suggests subject
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Types of Poetry: Dramatic Poem
• Uses techniques of drama
• Writer tells a story
• Character’s own thoughts/words
• E.g.: Poe’s “Raven” uses dramatic
dialogue
• Dramatic monologue: 1 person speaks to silent
listener
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