Poetry Terms

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Poetry Terms

• Important words and definitions youll need to
  know as you unleash your inner poet

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These are the terms well be looking at over the
next several days

• Alliteration
• Allusion
• Assonance
• Cliché
• Connotation
• Consonance
• Couplet
• Euphemism
• Hyperbole
• Imagery
• Irony
• Metaphor
• Mood
• Near/Slant Rhyme

• Onomatopoeia
• Oxymoron
• Persona
• Personification
• Pun
• Refrain
• Rhyme Scheme
• Rhythm
• Simile
• Sonnet
• Stanza
• Symbol

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Alliteration

• Alliteration is the repetition of consonant
  sounds usually at the beginning of the word two
  or more times in a line of poetry.
• Tongue twisters are extreme examples of
  alliteration
• She sells seashells by the seashore
• Tommy turned timidly toward Timmy
• It can just be two words
• Jacob just asked a good question.
• Jacob asked a good question just now.

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Allusion

• Allusions are references to words, phrases,
  people, etc. from literature, history, art,
  politics.
• An allusion connects a piece of writing to real
  life or to an aspect of culture.
• Example- In The Gift of the Magi the story and
  the title itself allude to the story of the wise
  men from the Bible.

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Assonance

• Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds when
  consonant sounds are not the same. These sounds
  are close together in a poem (often the same
  line).
• Make and late
• Fight and bike
• Spam and scan
• Flick and split
• Leg and said
• Beam and lean

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Cliché

• A cliché is an overused expression or phrase
• You mean the world to me
• Youre making me crazy
• I love you more than anything
• Comparing love or beauty to inanimate object
• Flowers
• Sunsets, the moon, etc.

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Connotation

• The emotion that you associate with a word the
  non-dictionary definition
• A writer may choose to use a particular word in
  order to get a certain response from a reader.
• These are words that, when you hear them, make
  you have an emotional response

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Consonance Couplet

• When the stressed consonant sounds at the end of
  two or more words are the same, but the vowels
  before them are not the same
• Stroke of luck
• Touch each latch
• Consonance, assonance, and alliteration are the
  trio of rhyming devices that gives musicality and
  pattern to poetry

• A pair of lines that rhyme
• The girl had purple hair/She acted like she
  didnt care
• The internet is really, really great/Ive got a
  fast connection so I dont have to wait
• Chillin out, take it slow/Then you rock out the
  show

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Euphemism

• A polite or less blunt way of saying something
  that might be offensive or bad.
• Hes a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
• He passed away last night.

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Hyperbole

• An over exaggeration for effect- EMPHASIS!
• Im so hungry I could eat a horse.
• Shes ugly as sin.
• I wouldnt be caught dead with her.
• Id rather be eaten by a rabid coyote than clean
  my room.

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Imagery

• Imagery something you read that relates to and
  calls upon our five senses.
• The way things sound, look, smell, taste, feel.
• It helps us to fully experience a piece of
  writing and brings us closer to understanding its
  plot (if there is one) and the mood.

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Irony

• Lets review! IRONY- AN UNEXPECTED TWIST
• Verbal- when you say one thing but mean something
  else (sarcasm)
• Situational- when the reader expects one thing to
  happen and then something different happens
• Dramatic- when the reader knows something the
  characters do not

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Metaphor

• Speaking about one thing as though it were
  another unrelated thing
• States the comparison as if it were a fact.
• What light through yonder window breaks? It is
  the east and Juliet is the sun.
• An aged man is but a paltry thing,
• A tattered coat upon a stick
• W.B. Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium

• Extended Metaphor
• A metaphor that involves a whole poem or section
  of a poem
• Implied Metaphor
• A metaphor that does not directly tell you whats
  being compared

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Near/Slant Rhyme

• When words do not rhyme perfectly, but share a
  matching consonant or vowel sound. Or sometimes
  they simply look like they should or should not
  rhyme

• Blonde - Wand
• Touch French
• Jeans Me
• Tight Lift
• Blue Shoe
• Fake- hate

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Onomatopoeia

• A word that sounds like what it means
• Splat
• Bang
• Knock
• Thud
• Burp
• Crash
• Boom
• Zoom
• Pow
• Shacrack!

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Mood Persona

• Mood
• The general feeling or atmosphere that a poem
  creates
• Are you supposed to feel happy? Depressed?
  Scared? Excited? Suspicious? Confused?
• What does the author want you to feel?

• Persona
• The person who is speaking in a poem
• Sometimes its a person, an animal, a rock, or
  anything else
• Whos telling us the information is often times
  as important as the words

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Oxymoron

• Two words that dont seem to go together, but do
  to create a new meaning.
• Jumbo shrimp
• A fine mess
• Act naturally
• Boneless ribs
• Dark day
• Fresh frozen vegetables
• Legally drunk
• Student-teacher

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Personification

• Giving something non-human human qualities
• The wind whistled through the trees
• The stars blinked rapidly
• The sunset reached down and enfolded the horizon
• Her heart broke into a thousand pieces

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Refrain

• Refrain
• One or more lines that are repeated in a poem or
  song is also often referred to as the chorus
• Usually the part that gets stuck in your head
• Quoth The Raven, Nevermore.
• Maybe next time hell think before he cheats.

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Rhyme Scheme

• A pattern of rhyming sounds at the ends of lines
  in a poem.
• To describe a rhyme scheme, assign each line of a
  stanza a letter of the alphabet, starting with
  a for the first line.
• Assign the same letter to lines that rhyme.

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• Every who down in Who-ville like Christmas a lot,
  A
• But the Grinch, who lived just north of
  Who-ville, did not.A
• The Grinch hated Christmas, the whole Christmas
  season.B
• Now, please dont ask why, no one quite knows the
  reason.B
• It could be his head wasnt screwed on just
  right.C
• It could be perhaps that his shoes were too
  tight.C
• But I think that the most likely reason of allD
• May have been that his heart was two sizes to
  small.D

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Form

• The distinctive way a poem is laid out on the
  page.
• Poems are usually divided into lines
• The lines are arranged in groups called stanzas.
• The form can be shaped by the rhyme scheme.

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Rhythm

• -Pattern of sound created by the arrangement of
  stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of
  poetry
• -Basically its how the poem sounds
• Just like songs are supposed to be played a
  certain way, poems are supposed to be read a
  certain way

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Simile

• Comparing two things that arent really alike.
  Uses the words as, like, appear, or seem
• Sleep like a log
• She was as beautiful as the stars in the sky
• He moved like a tank
• Im happy as a tornado in a trailer park.

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Sonnet

• Fourteen-line poem with a fixed rhythmic pattern,
  meter, and rhyme scheme
• Shakespeares version of the sonnet is the most
  widely used
• Usually they focus on love
• Well be spending a whole day with these soon
• ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

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Theme

• The main idea of the poem
• Well be looking at poems by author and by theme.
  The following are all possible subjects
• Love- Love conquers all
• Death- You cant escape death
• Carpe Diem- Seize the day because life is short
• War- War tears families apart
• Youth- Youth is impulsive
• Choices- Make good choices because you have to
  live with them
• Themes are the authors opinions on those
  subjects.

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Poetry

• A type of rhythmic, compressed language that uses
  figures of speech and imagery to appeal to the
  readers emotions and imagination.
• There are two major forms of poetry
• Lyric- short poem that expresses a speakers
  thoughts or feelings.
• A popular type of lyric poem is a sonnet.
• Narrative- tells a story.
• Narrative has two types epic and ballad.

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Figure of speech

• Word or phrase that describes one thing in terms
  of another and is not meant to be understood on a
  literal level.
• Usually involve an imaginative comparison between
  seemingly unlike things.
• Simile, metaphor, and personification are all
  figures of speech.