Elements of Poetry

An Exercise In Metaphors
 You’re
Ice
Love is Winds of cold Light of My
Blind Change Life

I Smell Rolling in
a Rat What Is A Metaphor? Dough

Apple of my eye Let the Cat Out

Heart of of the Bag
stone
The Sweet Smell of Success

The World
Is a Stage… Bite the
Bullet
 True Definition of
Metaphors
Makes Comparisons Between
Two Unrelated Subjects

Expands the Sense

and Clarifies Meaning
 Why are Metaphors
Significant in Poetry?
Symbolism
Symbolism
Concise
Concise Language
Language
Makes
Makes Language
Language Livelier
Livelier
Writers
Writers Use
Use Them
Them
Without
Without Stating
Stating Obvious
Obvious
Gives
Gives Words
Words New
New Meaning
Meaning
 Figurative Language
Metaphor

Direct Metaphor
Implied Metaphor
Simile

Simile
Personification
 Metaphor

Direct Metaphor

Comparing two unlike objects or ideas

My love is a rose
 Metaphor, Continued
Indirect metaphor

- An indirect comparison between

two unlike things.
“My love has a rosy bloom”
 Simile
A comparison using like or as
“Life is like a box of chocolates”
 Personification
Giving human qualities to an
inanimate object
“The moon smiled down on the
lovers”
 Sound Techniques
Rhyme Scheme
Alliteration
Onomatopoeia
 Rhyme Scheme
Heavy is my heart, A
Dark are thine eyes B
Thou and I must part A
Ere the sun rise B
Rhyme Scheme- The pattern in which end rhyme
occurs

• Example:

Continuous as the stars that shine (A)

And twinkle on the milky way, (B)
They stretched in never-ending line (A)
Along the margin of a bay: (B)
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, (C)
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. (C)
 Alliteration
Repetition of the initial consonant
sound
“She sells seashells at the sea
shore”
 ALLITERATION
Consonant sounds repeated at the
beginnings of words

 If Peter Piper picked a peck of

pickled peppers, how many
pickled peppers did Peter Piper
pick?
 Onomatopoeia
A word whose sound imitates its
meaning
 More onomatopoeia
“The bee buzzed by my ear “

“The clock ticked down the final

hour”

“The engine purred while awaiting

the green light”
 Stanza
•A unit of lines grouped together •
•Similar to a paragraph in prose
Couplet- •A stanza consisting of
two lines that rhyme

Quatrain - •A stanza consisting of

four lines
Mood- the feeling a poem creates
for the reader

Tone - the attitude a poet takes

toward his/her subject
 Imagery
•Representation of the five senses:
sight, taste, touch, sound, and
smell
•Creates mental images about a
poem’s subject
• Example: “Continuous as the
stars that shine and twinkle on
the milky way”
 Symbol
•A word or object that has its own
meaning and represents another
word, object or idea •
• Example: The daffodils
represent happiness and
pleasure to the author.
 Assonance
•The repetition of a vowel sound in
two or more words in the line of a
poem •

• Example: “Which is the bliss

of solitude”
 ASSONANCE
Repeated VOWEL sounds in a line or
lines of poetry.

 (Often creates near rhyme.)

 Lake Fate Base Fade

 (All share the long “a” sound.)
 ASSONANCE cont.
Examples of ASSONANCE:
“Slow the low gradual moan came in
the snowing.”
- John Masefield

“Shall ever medicine thee to that

sweet sleep.”
- William Shakespeare
 CONSONANCE
Similar to alliteration EXCEPT . . .

The repeated consonant sounds

can be anywhere in the words

 “silken, sad, uncertain,

rustling . . “
 Refrain
•The repetition of one or more
phrases or lines at certain
intervals, usually at the end of
each stanza •Similar to the chorus
in a song
 Repetition
•A word or phrase repeated within
a line or stanza •
• Example: “gazed and gazed
”
POETRY
POETRY
 A type of
literature that
expresses ideas,
feelings, or tells
a story in a
specific form
(usually using
lines and
stanzas)
POINT OF VIEW IN POETRY
POET SPEAKER

• The poet is the • The speaker of

author of the the poem is the
poem. “narrator” of the
poem.
 POETRY FORM

FORM - the  A word is dead

appearance of the
 When it is said,
words on the page
 Some say.
LINE - a group of
words together on
one line of the  I say it just
poem  Begins to live
STANZA - a group  That day.
of lines arranged
together
 FREE VERSE POETRY
Does NOT have Free verse poetry
rhyme. is very
conversational -
sounds like
someone talking
with you.

A more modern
type of poetry.
 BLANK VERSE POETRY
from Julius Ceasar

Cowards die many times before

their deaths;
Written in lines of The valiant never taste of death but
iambic once.
pentameter, but Of all the wonders that I yet have
heard,
does NOT use end It seems to me most strange that
rhyme. men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
 RHYME
Words sound alike  LAMP
because they  STAMP
share the same
ending vowel and
consonant sounds.  Share the short “a
” vowel sound
 Share the
combined “mp”
(A word always
consonant sound
rhymes with itself.)
 END RHYME
A word at the end of one line rhymes
with a word at the end of another
line

 Hector the Collector

 Collected bits of string.
 Collected dolls with broken heads
 And rusty bells that would not ring.
 INTERNAL RHYME
A word inside a line rhymes with
another word on the same line.

 Once upon a midnight dreary,

while I pondered weak and weary.

 From “The Raven”

 by Edgar Allan Poe
 NEAR RHYME
a.k.a imperfect  ROSE
rhyme, close  LOSE
rhyme
 Different vowel
The words share sounds (long “o”
EITHER the same and “oo” sound)
vowel or  Share the same
consonant sound
consonant sound
BUT NOT BOTH
SOME TYPES OF POETRY
WE WILL BE STUDYING
 LYRIC
A short poem
Usually written in first person point of
view
Expresses an emotion or an idea or
describes a scene
Do not tell a story and are often musical
(Many of the poems we read will be
lyrics.)
 HAIKU
A Japanese
poem written in An old silent pond . . .
three lines
A frog jumps into the
pond.
Five Syllables Splash! Silence again.
Seven Syllables
Five Syllables
 CINQUAIN
A five line poem How frail
containing 22 Above the bulk
syllables Of crashing water
hangs
Two Syllables
Four Syllables Autumnal, evanescent,
Six Syllables wan
Eight Syllables The moon.
Two Syllables
SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
A fourteen line poem Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
with a specific Rough winds do shake the darling buds of
May,
rhyme scheme. And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
The poem is written in And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course
three quatrains and untrimmed.
ends with a couplet. But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his
shade,
The rhyme scheme is When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st

abab cdcd efef So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
gg
 NARRATIVE POEMS
A poem that tells Examples of
a story. Narrative Poems
Generally longer
than the lyric “The Raven”
styles of poetry “The Highwayman”
b/c the poet
needs to establish “Casey at the Bat”
characters and a “The Walrus and
plot. the Carpenter”
 CONCRETE POEMS
Poetry
In concrete Is like
poems, the words Flames,
Which are
are arranged to Swift and elusive
create a picture Dodging realization
Sparks, like words on the
that relates to the Paper, leap and dance in the
Flickering firelight. The fiery
content of the Tongues, formless and shifting
poem. Shapes, tease the imiagination.
Yet for those who see,
Through their mind’s
Eye, they burn
Up the page.
 OTHER
POETIC DEVICES
 Hyperbole
Exaggeration often used for
emphasis.
 Litotes
Understatement - basically the
opposite of hyperbole. Often it is
ironic.

Ex. Calling a slow moving person

“Speedy”
 Idiom
An expression where the literal
meaning of the words is not the
meaning of the expression. It
means something other than what
it actually says.

Ex. It’s raining cats and dogs.

 Allusion
Allusion comes A tunnel walled and
overlaid
from the verb
With dazzling crystal: we
“allude” which had read
means “to refer to Of rare Aladdin’s
” wondrous cave,
An allusion is a And to our own his name
we gave.
reference to
something
From “Snowbound”
famous. John Greenleaf Whittier
The End