Download Poetry Terms - Learn District 196

Poetry Terms
English 11
Alliteration
The repetition of the same or similar
consonant sounds at the beginning of
words, as in the common tongue twister,
Peter Piper.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers.
Allusion
• A reference to a well-known or historical figure or event.
No Helen of Troy she,
Taking the world by war,
But a woman in plain paper wrapped
With a heart of love untapped,
She waits, yearning for her destiny
Whether it be a he on a charger white
Or one riding behind a garbage truck.
Perhaps instead a room of students
Lurks in the shadows of her life
Needing her interest to be shown.
Yet other concerns may call
No, no Helen of Troy she,
But a woman set the world to tame
Wherever she may be.
Helen of Troy brings to mind a woman so beautiful that
two countries went to war over her.
Assonance
• The repetition or a pattern of similar sounds,
especially vowel sounds, as in the following
phrases:
• Moses supposes his toeses are roses.
• And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride.
Connotation
• The emotional meaning of a word based
on personal experience.
• Which word in each pair below has a more
favorable connotation to you?
thrifty-penny-pinching
pushy-aggressive
politician-statesman
chef-cook
slender-skinny
Consonance
• The repetition of similar consonant
sounds, especially at the end of words.
• For example:
• Late, let, light, lot, lute
• Life, rough, tough, laugh, puff
Denotation
• The exact definition of a word as it is
found in the dictionary; The literal
meaning of the word.
• A house is a dwelling in which people live.
Epic
• A long, serious poem that tells the story of
a heroic figure.
• Two of the most famous epic poems are
the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer,
which tell about the Trojan War and the
adventures of Odysseus on his voyage
home after the war.
Foot
• Two or more syllables, that together make
up the smallest unit in a poem.
• Some lines of poetry have just a few feet,
while others have many. These feet help
to form a pattern or rhyme in the poem.
Free Verse
• Poetry composed of either rhymed or unrhymed lines
that have no set meter.
Winter Poem
Nikki Giovanni
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower
Hyperbole
• A figure of speech in which deliberate exaggeration is
used for effect.
• This poem uses hyperbole in a description of a young
boy.
Why does a boy who’s fast as a jet
Take all day—and sometimes two—
To get to school?
—John Ciardi, "Speed Adjustments"
Imagery
•
Words that arouse the five senses.
•
•
Word Paintings
•
A Clean Slate
Poems
by Mike Monroe
I.
red flare bursts
explodes
into the purple night sky spreading
lightning flowers
white flash
of light blasts booms and
crackles
fire passion madness streaks out
smears the sky
pops
yellow and orange fill in spaces
between clouds and
peter out
burst loud under the moon
and fade
until
in a sudden blast
flashes
fill and splatter
the sky
with white yellow green red pink
thunder smashes crashes
blasts sputters splashes
cracks
Limerick
• A light, humorous poem with five lines
that has a definite rhyme scheme.
There was a mean clown in the circus.
For fun he would push us and jerk us.
He would hit us with pies
That left cream in our eyes.
His act never once failed to irk us.
Lyric
• A poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, that a expresses the thoughts
and feelings of the poet. A lyric poem may resemble a song in form
and style. A lyric poem expresses the author’s feelings.
homage to my hips
these hips are big hips
they need space to move around in.
they don't fit into little petty places.
these hips are free hips. they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top!
--Lucille Clifton
Meter
• The arrangement of a line of poetry by the number of symbols and
the rhythm of accented, or stressed syllables.
• In poetry, Meter is determined by how many "feet" are written per
•
•
•
•
•
line. Look at the foot at the end of your leg.
A "foot" is the basic unit of measure, usually containing 2 or 3
syllables, a combination of accented and unaccented. A foot must
have an accent. It's like music, the accent is used instead of the
beat to make the rhythm. Say the lines below out loud and listen to
the accents:
Dimeter: the line has two feet (the WAY a CROW)
Trimeter: the line has three feet (NA-tures first GREEN is GOLD)
Tetrameter: the line has four feet (whose WOODS these ARE i
THINK i KNOW)
Pentameter: the line has five feet (SOME-thing there IS that DOESn't LOVE a WALL )
Hendecasyllabics has 11 syllables per line. It is very unusual and
Frost wrote only one poem in this meter.
English meters are almost always one of these 5 patterns.
Metaphor
• A figure of speech in which 2 things are
compared without using the words “like”
or “as”.
• Examples:
All the world’s a stage
He was a lion in battle
She is the apple of his eye
Narrative
• Telling a story
• Ballads and epics are different kinds of narrative poems.
Paul Revere's Ride
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, "If
the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,-One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."
Onomatopoeia
• A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate
•
sounds.
Examples: buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop
• Title: Summer Storm
Gentle summer rain,
spish splash against the lake,
crash clang rattle bing bang
Thunder claps
crack smack
lightning flashes
Irony
• A contrast between what is said and what
is meant. Also, when things turn out
different than what is expected.
Symbol/Symbolism
• “Do not go gentle into that good night
• Rage, Rage against the dying of the light”
Paradox
• An apparent contradiction, which may
actually be true.
Example:
"A little learning is a dangerous thing."
Personification
• A figure of speech in which nonhuman things or abstract
•
ideas are given human qualities.
Examples: the sky is crying, dead leaves danced in the
wind, justice is blind.
A toad the power mower caught,
Chewed and clipped off a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him
Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
Of the ashen heartshaped leaves, in a dim,
Low, and a final glade.
Quatrain
• A stanza or poem of 4 lines
HEY!! Does anybody have a quarter? What's a quarter have
to do with this type of poetry? Well, a quarter is 1/4 of a
dollar. The word quatrain comes from Latin and French
words meaning "four." See the connection? The quatrain
is a poem or stanza of four lines. It is a very popular
form of poetry. Famous poets like William Blake and T.
S. Eliot used quatrains. Read these examples:
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Refrain
• A phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated
throughout a poem, usually after every stanza.
The Dying Cowboy
“Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie
Where the wild coyotes will howl o’er me,
In a narrow grave just six by three.
Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie.”
Rhyme
• The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words.
Sammy Snake's Grandpa
-- by Bob (Grandpa) Tucker Copyright 1998 –
Sammy gives an admiring stare
At his old grandpa resting there.
And he is proud, for goodness sake,
To have him as his Grandpa Snake.
It seems that age demands it's toll.
Now he is helped out of his hole.
And he's no longer good at sneaking
With a body that is always creaking.
Each night his fangs sleep in a cup.
He has to have his mice chopped up.
His vision is a little blurred,
And his hisses are a little slurred.
At dusk, as the fire is burning low,
They crowd around him in its glow.
And Grandpa Snake is in his glory,
As they listen to his snake life story.
Simile
• A figure of speech in which 2 things are
compared using the word like or as.
Example: His eyes sparkle like the morning
dew.
Haiku
• Haiku is an ancient Japanese pattern. It
is three lines of seventeen syllables
separated into 5 syllables in the first line,
7 syllables in the second, and 5 in the last.
But a haiku is much more than that. Look
at the following haiku written by Mike
Reiss.
Haiku
• Any moron can
Write haikus. Just stop at the
Seventeenth syllab
Haiku
I think he was trying to be funny. Did you laugh?
Real haiku also have other characteristics besides syllables.
1.
Haiku depend on imagery.
2.
Haiku are condensed; the poet leaves out all
unnecessary words.
3.
Haiku are concerned with emotions; nature reflects
these emotions.
4.
Haiku rely heavily on the power of suggestion or
connotation.
Sonnet
• A lyric poem that is 14 lines long.
Holidays by William Wadsworth Longfellow
The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;--The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows.
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on the stream,
These tender memories are;--a Fairy Tale
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream.
Stanza
• Two or more lines of poetry that together form one of the divisions of a
poem. The stanzas of a poem are usually of the same length and follow
the same pattern of meter and rhyme.
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
•
•
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
• He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
• The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Tone
• The poet’s attitude in a piece of writing.
Remember by Christina Rossetti
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
The End