Download Poetry Vocabulary

Poetry
Vocabulary
POETRY
Poetry is literature that uses a few words to tell about ideas, feelings and paints
a picture in the reader’s mind.
Most poems were written to be read aloud.
Poems may or may not rhyme.
FORM
The form of a poem is the way that it looks on the page.
WHAT A POEM LOOKS LIKE
Stanza
Bad Hair Day
I looked in the mirror
Line
with shock and with dread
to discover two antlers
Rhyming words
had sprung from my head.
LINES
The way that poets arrange words into lines.
The lines may or may not be sentences.
STANZAS
Groups of lines in traditional poetry, kind of like the paragraph of the poem.
What Bugs Me
When my teacher tells me to write a poem.
When my mother tells me to clean up my room.
When my sister practices her violin while I’m watching
TV.
When my father tells me to turn off the TV and do my
homework.
When my brother picks a fight with me and I have to go
to bed early.
When my teacher asks me to get up in front of the class
and read the poem I wrote on the school bus.
Stanza
FREE VERSE
Poems that do not usually rhyme and have no fixed rhythm or pattern. They
are written like a conversation.
RHYME
Sounds that are alike at the end of words, such as snow and crow.
Middle, end, or near rhyme
There are several types of rhyme. Here are a few:
1. End rhyme like “run and fun.”
2. Internal rhyme such as “Once upon a midnight dreary, while
I pondered weak and weary.”
3. Near Rhyme such as words that do not exactly rhyme such as
“rose and lose.”
SAMPLE RHYME SCHEME
The Germ by Ogden Nash
A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
-A
You probably contain a germ.
-A
-A
-B
-B
-C
-C
-A
ALLITERATION
Consonant sounds repeated at the beginnings
or middle of words
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers, how many pickled peppers did Peter
Piper pick?
ONOMATOPOEIA
Words that imitate the sound they are naming
BUZZ, BLIP, DRIP
RHYTHM
The beat of the poem.
These are made up patterns of strong and weak syllables.
REPETITION
The repeating of sounds, words, phrases, or lines in a poem.
I like popcorn!
I like candy!
I like chips!
I like ice cream!
I need to brush my teeth!
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Words and phrases that help the reader picture things in a new way.
IMAGERY
Words or phrases that appeal to the five senses:
sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.
Imagery is what helps you paint a picture or imagine what is happening or
what the poet is feeling.
Example: The hamburgers sizzled on the grill……
SIMILE
A comparison of two things using the words like or as.
Her smile was bright like the sun!
.
My dog is as mean as a snake.
METAPHOR
A comparison of two things WITHOUT using “as or like”
His face is a puzzle to me, I can never figure out what he is thinking.
PERSONIFICATION
Giving an animal or an object human qualities.
My dog smiles at me.
The house glowed with happiness.
The car was irritated when she pumped it full of cheap gas.
TONE
The attitude the poem conveys.
A writer can be formal, informal, playful, ironic, and especially, optimistic or
pessimistic, sad, scary, etc….
HYPERBOLE
obvious and intentional exaggeration
Example:
There are a million people in here!
I could sleep for a year!
I have a ton of homework tonight!
I’m so hungry I could eat a horse!
NO WHERE NEAR THE END!!!
There is so much more to poetry....we have only scratched the surface.....