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Poetic Elements
Figurative Language to Know
¤  Metaphor
¤  Simile
¤  Personification
¤  Hyperbole
¤  Analogy
Rhyme Scheme
¤ A pattern of rhyme
Rough wind, that moanest loud (a)
¤ Charted by assigning
a letter of the
alphabet to
matching end
rhymes.
Grief too sad for song; (b)
Wild wind when sullen cloud (a)
Knells all the night long (b)
- from “Dirge” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Repetition
¤  A sound, word, phrase, or
line that is repeated for
emphasis and unity.
¤  I loved her, and sometimes she
loved me too.
She loved me, sometimes I loved
her too.
¤  Repetition should be used
sparingly and strategically.
One must pick the most
influential statement and
weave its repetition
throughout.
¤  Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O’ Sea!
-  from “Break, Break, Break” by
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Parallelism
¤  The use of similar grammatical
constructions to express ideas
that are related or equal in
importance.
Excerpt from “blessing the boats” by
Lucille Clifton
¤  Use parallelism to use similar
constructs to approach the
same sentence. Add balance
and break up repetition by
adding parallelism to further
emphasize your ideas.
the wind then turn from it
may you kiss
certain that it will
love you back
may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever (lines 6-11)
Enjambment (Enjambed lines)
¤ Enjambed lines run
on without a natural
pause.
¤ It can create
tension and
momentum until the
thought is
complete.
South of the bridge on Seventeenth
I found back of the willows one summer
day a motorcycle with engine running
- from “Fifteen” by William Stafford
End-Stopped
¤  Lines of poetry end at
a normal speech
pause
¤  This emphasizes the
line endings and
makes a reader view
each line as a
complete unit of
meaning.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are not longer the same.
- From “Tonight I Can Write…” by Pablo
Neruda
End Rhyme
¤  Rhyme
at the
ends of
lines
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though.
- From “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
Extended Metaphor
¤  An extended metaphor is
a figure of speech that
compares two essentially
unlike things at some
length in several ways. It
does not contain the word
like or as.
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.
- From William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Assonance
¤  The repetition of vowel
sounds in words that do not
end with the same
consonant
The waves break fold on jewelled fold.
- From “Moonlight” by Sara Teasdale
Consonance
¤  The repetition
of consonant
sounds within
and at the end
of words
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
- From “Seal Lullaby” by Rudyard Kipling
Alliteration
¤  The repetition
of consonant
sounds at the
beginnings of
words
The scraggy rock spit shielding the town’s blue bay
- From “Departure” by Sylvia Plath
onomatopoeia
¤  Sound device
¤  Meaning is tied to the sound
¤  “snap, crackle, pop”
¤  The “crackling” fire
¤  “bang”
¤  “boom”
¤  The truck “boomed” through the the intersection,
” popping,” “banging”, and finally” wheezing” before the
engine died a block beyond.
Speaker
¤  The speaker is the person telling the poem—the one
created by the poet to tell the poem
¤  The speaker of the poem is like a narrator in fiction
¤  The speaker may or may not be the poet, just as a
songwriter personally may or may not be the one singing
the song (another “voice” has been created by the
songwriter)
imagery
¤  Words and phrases that create mental images in the
reader’s mind
¤  Often uses sensory images that appeal to one or more of
the five senses
Turning point
¤  Place in the poem where the speaker gains new insight,
adopts a new attitude, learns a new way to look at
things, etc.
¤  The turning point will likely occur at some midpoint or
beyond (may occur near or at the end as well)
Concrete Poetry
Concrete, pattern, or shape
poetry is an arrangement of
linguistic elements in which
the typographical effect is
more important in conveying
meaning than verbal
significance. It is sometimes
referred to as visual poetry, a
term that has now developed
a distinct meaning of its own.
Sonnet (Traditional Form)
¤  Typically a 14-line lyric
poem written with a
strict pattern of rhyme
and rhythm.
¤  English/
Shakespearean
Sonnet has a
rhyme scheme of
abab cdcd efef
gg. Notice how
this divide the
poem into four
distinct line
groups: three
quatrains followed
by a couplet.
¤  The meter in each
line of a sonnet is
typically iambic
pentameter.
¤  SONNET 18 by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Quatrain
¤  Four-line
stanza, or
group of
lines.
¤  SONNET 18 by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Couplets
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
¤  Two-line units
with an aa
rhyme
scheme
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
- From “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale
Iambic Pentameter
¤  A metrical
patter of five
feet, or units,
each of which
is made up of
two syllables,
the first
unstressed and
the second
unstressed.
Such men as he be never at heart’s ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves
- From William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
I am a
pirate
with a
wooden
leg.
Ballad
¤  The earliest ballads were
stories told in song, using the
voice and language of
everyday people. They were
composed orally, and
singers often added or
changed details to make
the songs meaningful for
their audience. These early
ballads, typical of the
medieval period, are known
as folk ballads.
¤  Like a work of fiction, a ballad has
characters, setting, and dialogue.
Like a song, it uses repetition and
has regular rhyme and meter. A
traditional ballad has these
characteristics:
¤  Consists of four-line (sometimes
more) stanzas with a simple
rhyme scheme
¤  Narrates a single tragic
incident through dialogue
¤  Tone is often tragic,
melancholy, reflective, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=K16fG1sDagU&list=PLXlebF98OxPe0gsRcia40Tr3Y-ZnZBOts&index=2
Traditional Ballad
Lines 1-12 from “Midwinter Blues” by Langston Hughes
In the middle of the winter,
Don’t know’s I’d mind his goin’
Snow all over the ground.
But he left me when the coal was
low.
In the middle of winter,
Snow all over the ground –
‘Twas the night befo’ Christmas
My good man turned me down.
Don’t know’s I’d mind his goin’
But he left when the coal was now.
Now, if a man loves a woman
That ain’t no time to go.
Dialect
¤  People who inhabit a particular
region or who belong to a
particular social or ethnic group
may speak in a dialect, a
variation of language.
In the middle of the winter,
¤  Their speech may differ in
pronunciation, vocabulary, and
grammar from the standard
form of the language.
Snow all over the ground –
¤  Dialect often provides clues
about a poem’s setting. It can
also reveal information about
the speaker’s identity, such as
ethnicity and social class.
My good man turned me down.
Snow all over the ground.
In the middle of winter,
‘Twas the night befo’ Christmas
- From lines 1-6 from “Midwinter Blues” by
Langston Hughes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NriDTxseog
Limerick (Traditional Form)
¤  a humorous,
frequently
bawdy, verse
of three long
and two short
lines rhyming
aabba,
popularized
by Edward
Lear.
There was a Young Lady whose chin
Resembled the point of a pin:
So she had it made sharp,
And purchased a harp,
And played several tunes with her chin.
- Edward Lear
Free Verse (Organic Form)
¤ Poem written
with no
regular
pattern of
rhythm and
rhyme.