Download Poetic Devices/Terms - Bremen High School District 228

Poetic
Devices/Terms
Language Arts
• The repetition of the initial consonant sounds.
• Example:
• "Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams fulldazzling!” by Walt Whitman
• "Give me the splendid silent sun"
alliteration
• Reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary
work or work of art
• Example:
• “Don’t act like a Romeo in front of her.”
• – “Romeo” is a reference to Shakespeare’s Romeo, a
passionate lover of Juliet, in “Romeo and Juliet”.
allusion
• Internal rhyming of the vowel sounds, listed close
together in a poem
• Example:
• on a proud round cloud in white high night
• — E. E. Cummings, if a cheerfulest Elephantangelchild
should sit
assonance
• Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter
• Example:
• Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
• (Mending Walls by Robert Frost)
• This poem has no proper rhyme scheme.
• However, there is consistent meter in 10 syllables of each line.
It is following iambic pentameter pattern with five feet in each
line.
• All the stressed syllables are marked in bold.
blank verse
• The repetition of consonant sounds listed close together
in a poem.
• Example:
• The ship has sailed to the far off shores.
• She ate seven sandwiches on a sunny Sunday last year.
• Sally sells sea shells by the seashore.
consonance
• A pair of rhyming lines, usually of the same length or meter
• Example: Shakespeare' Sonnet 18
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:
couplet
• Larger than life central character in an epic.
• Examples:
• Bible - Abraham
• Lord of the Rings – Frodo
• The Hunger Games - Katniss Everdeen
epic hero
• A long narrative poem about the deeds of gods or heroes.
• Example:
• The Odyssey by Homer
• Ancient Greek (mythology)
epic poetry
• An elaborate comparison created without using "like" or "as,"
continuing through multiple lines
• Example: The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost (life is a journey)
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
extended metaphor
• Writing or speech not meant to be interpreted literally
• Example:
• Her head was spinning from all the new information.
• I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.
• I’ve told you a million times to clean your room!
figurative language
• Poetry not written in a regular pattern of meter or rhyme
free verse
• a three-line verse poem
• Example:
• Old Pond
old pond
a frog leaps in
water’s sound
haiku
• a foot with one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed
syllable, as in the word "again."
Iambic pentameter
• the descriptive or figurative language used to create word
pictures for the reader (taste, smell, sight, sound and touch)
He fumed and charged like an angry bull.
He fell down like an old tree falling down in a storm.
He felt like the flowers were waving him a hello.
imagery
• A subtle, suggested comparison without using "like" or
"as“
• Example:
An example of an implied metaphor
a woman barked at her child
an ice cream snowfall
implied metaphor
• A line in the stanza of a poem
• Example:
A sentence of a poem
line
• a highly musical verse that expresses the thoughts,
observations and feelings of a single speaker
lyric poetry
• A comparison NOT using "like" or "as“
• Example:
• Shakespeare “a sea of troubles” “All the world's a stage”
• An example of a metaphor is calling the dependable father a
rock.
metaphor
• The rhythmical pattern of a poem
meter
• The feeling or atmosphere of a poem
• If you have dark words in a poem such as the horrid,
terrible, cold, wet night, then you would assume that the
poem is based on sad and or depressing moods.
mood
• a poem that tells a story
narrative poetry
• a stanza or poem made up of four lines, usually with a
definite rhythm and rhyme scheme
• Example:
Hope is the Thing with Feathers, by Emily Dickinson
"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,
quatrain
• Repetition of sounds at the ends of words
• Example: Shakespeare “Sonnet 65”
•
•
•
•
Since brass nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’er-sways the power,
How his rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
rhyme
A
B
A
B
• The pattern of beats, or stresses, in spoken or written language
• Example:
Because I Could Not Stop For Death
by Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
rhythm
• Figure of speech in which "like" or "as" is used to make a
comparison between two basically unlike ideas.
• Example:
• a heart as big as a whale
• her tears flowed like wine
simile
• a fourteen line lyric poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter
• Example:
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.
sonnet
• The voice of the poem
• Example:
Annabel Lee, By Edgar Allan Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
speaker
• A repeated grouping of two or more lines in a poem that often
share a pattern of rhythm or rhyme.
• Example: This short poem by Emily Dickinson has two stanzas
of four lines each.
I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample It
Could finish enmity.
Nor had I time to love; but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.
stanza
• The writer's attitude concerning his or her subject.
• Example:
• Robert Frost “The Roads Not taken”
• “I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Frost tells us about his past with a “sigh” the gives the above
lines an unhappy tone.
This tone convinces us into thinking that Frost is telling us
sullenly of a choice in the past about which he was not happy
or contented in the present.
tone