Poetry Terms

A Reviewwith examples

• Poetry is the most musical literary

form. Poets choose

words for both sound

and meaning.

• Sensory language is writing or speech that appeals to one or more of the five senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Sometimes it is called imagery.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.

~Ezra Pound,In a Station of the Metro

• Figurative Language is writing that is imaginative and not meant to be taken literally. This includes metaphors, similes, and personification.The Eagle, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(1851) He clasps the crag with crooked hands;Close to the sun in lonely lands,Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;He watches from his mountain walls,And like a thunderbolt he falls.

• Metaphors describe one thing as if it were another– Her eyes were saucers, wide with

expectation.

• Similes use like or as to compare two unlike things– The drums were as loud as a fireworks

display.

• Personification gives human qualities to something that is not human.– The clarinets sang.

• Sound devices add a musical

quality to poetry. You

notice sound devices mostly

when reading poetry aloud or

listening to it.

• Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words.

Girl Help, by Janet Lewis

Mild and slow and young,She moves about the room,And stirs the summer dustWith her wide broom.

In the warm, lofted air,Soft lips together pressed,Soft wispy hair,She stops to rest,

And stops to breath,Amid the summer hum,The great white lilac bloomScented with days to come.

• Repetition is the repeated use of a sound, word, or phrase.

Circles, by Myra Cohn Livingston

I am speaking of circles.

The circle we made around the table,our hands brushing as we passed potatoes.The circle we made in our potatoesto pour in gravy, whorling in its round bowl.The circle we made every eveningfinding our own place at the tablewith its own napkin in its own ring.

I am speaking of circles broken.

• Assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound followed by different consonants in stressed syllables.

“Her goodly eyes like sapphires shining bright,Her forehead ivory white...”

-Edmund Spenser

• Consonance is the repetition of a consonant sound at the end of stressed syllables with different vowel sounds.

“Now men will go content with what we spoiledOr, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled...

-Wilfred Owens

• Onomatopoeia is the use of words that imitate sounds.

Eskimos in Manitoba,Barracuda off Aruba,

Cock an ear when Roger BoboStarts to solo on the tuba.

~from “Recital,” by John Updike

• Rhyme is the repetition of sounds at the ends of words.

On My Boat on Lake Cayuga, by William Cole

On my boat on Lake CayugaI have a horn that goes “Ay-oogah!”I’m not the modern kind of creepWho has a horn that goes “beep beep.”

•Meter is the rhythmical pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?”

• The structure of a poem determines its form. Most poems are written in lines. Lines can be grouped into stanzas.

Lyric poetryNarra

tive poetry

Ballads

Free verse

Haiku

Rhyming couplets

Limericks

• Lyric poetry expresses the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker.

• Funeral Blues, by W.H. AudenStop all the clocks, cut off the

telephone,Prevent the dog from barking with

a juicy bone,Silence the pianos and muffled

drumBring out the coffin, let the

mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Tie crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one,

pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

• Narrative poetry tells a story in verse. It often has the same elementsthat arefoundin shortstories, including characters, setting, and plot.

• Examples include

“Describe Somebody”

and “Almost a Summer

Sky”

• Ballads are songlike poems that tell a story. They often tell about adventure and romance.

• Examples:– “The Highwayman,” by Alfred Noyes– “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” by

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Free verse is poetry that is defined by its lack of strict structure. It does not have to rhyme or have regular meter. Lines do not have to be a specific length. There may be no specific stanza pattern.

Six Variations, by Denise Levertov

Shlup, shlup, the dogas it laps upwatermakes intelligentmusic, restingnow and then to take breath in irregularmeasure.

• Haiku is a three-line Japanese form. The first and third lines usually have five syllables each. The second line usually has seven syllables. Two concrete images (having to do with seasons and/or nature) are linked.

The falling flowerI saw drift back to the branchWas a butterfly.

-Arakida Moritake

• Rhyming couplets are a pair of rhyming lines that usually have the same meter and length.

Fatigue, by Hilaire Belloc

I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme.But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

Variation on Belloc’s “Fatigue,” by Wendy Cope

I hardly ever tire of love or rhyme—That’s why I’m poor and have a rotten time.

• Limericks are humorous poems with five lines. They have a specific rhythm pattern and rhyme scheme.

The limerick packs laughs anatomicalIn space that is quite economical,

But the good ones I've seenSo seldom are clean,

And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

-Anonymous