POETRY
Elements of poetry
A. Sound elements of poetry
1. Alliteration: Repeated consonant sounds at the beginning of a series of words. This
device uses sound to catch the reader’s attention. I kicked cold coffee coloured puddlesis
alliteration because of the repeating “ck” sound.
2. Assonance: Repeating vowel sounds in the middle of words. This device also uses sound
to catch the reader’s attention. This is a subtle device for which you have to listen
carefully. Twinkle twinkle little star is an example of assonance because of the repeating
short “i” sound.
3. Cacophony: Sounds that are unpleasant and harsh to the ear. Usually, cacophony is
achieved through repeating “s”, “c”, “k” or other, similarly harsh-sounding sounds. For
example: “and squared and stuck their squares of soft white chalk.” It is the opposite of
euphony.
4. Euphony: Sounds that are very pleasant to the ear. It is the opposite of cacophony.
5. Consonance: Repeating consonant sounds in the middle of words. This device also uses
sound to catch the reader’s attention. This is a subtle device, although it is less subtle than
assonance. If elephants laugh carefully, it is because they are afraid is an example of
consonance with the repeating “f” sound. Notice that the ‘ph’, ‘gh’ and ‘f’ letter patterns
all make the “f” sound.
6. Dissonance: Similar to cacophony, dissonance involves the mingling together of
discordant or clashing sounds.
7. Onomatopoeia: Words that sound like what they mean are called onomatopoeia.
“Buzz”, “hiss”, “splash” are typical examples of this sound device. Onomatopoeia is
also known as imitative harmony.
8. Diction:An author’s choice and arrangement of words in a literary work. Diction varies
according to the ends a writer wishes to achieve as well as to the nature of the literary
form, the subject, and the style of the day. The ornate style of much eighteenth-century
prose, therefore, was considered elegant in its time but would be deemed wordy in a
contemporary essay.
B. Elements of literature used for comparison
1. Extended Metaphor: If a metaphor is a direct comparison between two dissimilar
items (see below), an extended metaphor is a longer version of the same thing. In an
extended metaphor, the comparison is stretched through an entire stanza or poem,
often by multiple comparisons of unlike objects or ideas.
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2. Metaphor: A direct comparison between two unlike things without using ‘like’ and
‘as’. She is a monsteris a metaphor comparing a girl to a monster.
3. Personification: A comparison between a non-human item and a human so that the
non-human item is given human characteristics. The trees stretched their arms to
theskyis a personification because the trees are described as if they are people
stretching.
4. Simile: A comparison between two dissimilar items using “like” or “as” to make the
comparison. The stars are like diamonds in the skyis a simile, comparing stars to
diamonds.
C. Elements of literature used as Word Play
1. Allusion: A reference in one piece of literature to something from another piece of
literature. Allusions can also be references to person/events/places in history, religion, or
myth. Allusions are frequently made in poetry, but they can/do occur in other genres as
well.
2. Apostrophe: A rhetorical figure in which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person,
or an abstraction or inanimate object. For example, the speaker in John Donne’s “Holy
Sonnet X” speaks to death as if it were a person. “O Death!”
3. Cliché: A phrase, line or expression that has been so overused, it is boring and common
place, such as “it was a dark and stormy night” or “red with anger.”
4. Connotation: The unspoken, unwritten series of associations made with a particular
word. For example, the word “dog,” depending on how it is used, might connote
faithfulness, loyalty, and devotion. On the other hand, the word “dog” could connote
viciousness.
5. Denotation: The literal meaning of the word that a person would find in the dictionary.
6. Euphemism: Substituting an unpleasant or impolite word or phrase for a pleasant reality.
For example, people say “she passed away”, or “she has gone to her reward” when they
mean “she died”.
7. Figurative Language: The imaginative language that makes a poem rich to a reader.
Figurative language often relies on comparison devices like simile, metaphor, and
personification to make the point. Figurative language is the opposite of literal language.
8. Hyperbole: A deliberate exaggeration to make a point. I am hungry enough to eat the
fridge is a hyperbole.
9. Idiom: A phrase that can’t be translated literally into another language because the
meaning isn’t the same as the words that make up the phrase. There are thousands of
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idioms in English. Some examples include: “it is raining cats and dogs”; “flat broke”;
and “head in the clouds.”
10. Image: A single mental picture that the poem creates in the reader’s mind.
11. Imagery: Poets create pictures in the reader’s mind that appeal to the sense of sight; they
also create descriptions to appeal to the other four senses. This collection of appeals to
the five senses is called the imagery of the poem. Also: the collection and/or pattern of
images in a poem.
12. Literal language: The literal meaning of the poem, which ignores imagery, symbolism,
figurative language and any imagination on the part of the poet or the reader. Literal
language is the opposite of figurative language, it is direct language.
13. Mood: The emotion of the poem, the atmosphere. The predominant feeling created by or
in the poem, usually through word choice or description. The feelings created by the
poem in the reader; mood is best discovered through careful consideration of the images
presented by the poem, and thinking about what feelings those images prompt. For
example: if the “rain weeps”, the mood is sad; if the “rain dances”, the mood is happy.
Mood and tone are not the same.
14. Oxymoron: An oxymoron is a pair of single word opposites placed side by side for
dramatic effect. A contradiction in terms of characteristics. For example, “cold fire” or
“sick health” or “hot ice”.
15. Paradox: A large oxymoron. An apparently contradictory statement that, despite the
contradiction, has an element of truth in it. Wordsworth’s “the child is the father of the
man” is a paradoxical statement.
16. Repetition: Deliberately repeated words, sounds, phrases, or whole stanzas. Repetition is
used to make a point in the poem.
17. Symbol: Something that represents something else. For example, a dove often represents
the concept of peace.
18. Syntax: Word order—the way words are put together to form phrases, clauses or
sentences in a poem. Sometimes poets play with syntax to increase the richness of their
figurative language or to make a line of poetry work into a particular rhythm.
19. Tone: The narrator’s attitude toward the subject of the poem and, sometimes, toward the
reader of the poem. Tone is not the same as mood, although the two can overlap.
20. Understatement: The opposite of hyperbole. Understatement achieves its effect through
stating less than what is necessary. For example, a person might say to a hospitalized car
crash victim, “I bet that hurt.”
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Verse Forms
1. Ballad Stanza: A ballad stanza is a quatrain (4 line verse) of alternating tetrameter and
trimeter lines. The rhyme scheme is a-b-c-b (sometimes abab). Not all ballads have
stanzas that follow this formula.
2. Couplet: Two lines of poetry that rhyme. The last two lines of an English sonnet work
together to make a couplet. The following is an example of a couplet:
Roses are red, violets are blue
Sugar is sweet and so are you
3. Octave: Eight lines of poetry that have a rhyme scheme. The first part of an Italian
sonnet is an octave.
4. Quatrain: Four lines of poetry that have a rhyme scheme. Quatrains often have an
abab, abcb, or aabb rhyme scheme. The first three verses of an English sonnet are
quatrains.
5. Sestet: Six lines of poetry that have a rhyme scheme. The second part of an Italian sonnet
is a sestet.
Rhythm and Rhyme
1. End Rhyme: Rhyme that occurs at the ends of verse lines. The nursery rhyme in “rhyme
scheme” below is written with end rhyme.
2. Iambic Pentameter*: A line of poetry that is ten syllables in length. The syllables follow
a pattern in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed one. The words
“giraffe” and “destroy” are iambs. An iamb is two syllables, and “penta” means five, so
five iambs in a row = iambic pentameter. A line of iambic pentameter bounces gently
along (soft-hard-soft-hard soft-hard-soft-hard-soft-hard). For example, when Romeo says,
“O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright” (Romeo and Juliet, I.v.44), he is speaking
in iambic pentameter. The following is an example of iambic pentameter (in this case,
blank verse) from Hamlet:
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part… (I.v.14-18)
3. Internal Rhyme: When two or more words rhyme within the same line of poetry. For
example, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary” is an
example of internal rhyme.
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4. Metre (meter): The regular beat of a poem. There are different kinds of meters,
depending on the syllable pattern in the line of poetry. Different syllable patterns, and
different numbers of patterns, have different names. For example: dimeter. trimeter,
tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, and octameter.
5. Tetrameter: “Penta” means “five”, and “tetra” means “four.” So, if pentameter is five
repeating patterns of syllables, tetrameter is four repeating patterns of syllables. Lines
1 and 3 in the “typical” ballad stanza are in tetrameter.
6. Trimeter: “Tri” means “three”, so trimeter means three repeating patterns of syllables.
Lines 2 and 4 in the ballad stanza above are in trimeter.
7. Refrain: The chorus of a ballad, or a repeating set of words or lines, is the refrain of a
poem. Refrains add to the musical quality of a poem and make them more song-like.
This is interesting because the ancestral origin of poetry was song.
8. Rhyme: When sounds match at the end of lines of poetry, they rhyme (technically, it is
end-rhyme). The examples below in “rhyme scheme” demonstrate this.
9. Rhyme Scheme*: The pattern of rhyme in a poem, indicated with letters of the alphabet.
To decide on a rhyme scheme, you assign a letter of the alphabet to all rhyming words at
the ends of lines of poetry, starting with the letter “a”. When you run out of one rhyme
sound, you start with the next letter of the alphabet. For example, the following is an
example of an aabb rhyme scheme (star, are, high, sky):
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
10. Rhythm: A pattern of sound in a poem; it may be a regular or irregular pattern. Rhythm
is the musical beat of the poem, and some poems are more musical than others.
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