Elements of Poetry
http://homepage.mac.com/rush723/school/Elements%20of%20Poetry.htm
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/basic-elements-of-poetry.htmll
http://www.dscc.edu/weeks/elements_of_poetry.htm
WRITING AND GRAMMAR Prentice Hall 2001
Suggestions for Reading Poetry
• Read the poem more than once
• Look up unfamiliar words
• Listen for patterns of sound in the
poem
• Pay attention; don't "drift off"
• Read the poem aloud to hear it
Look For These Points in the
Poems
• Who is the
speaker?
• What is the
occasion?
• What is the point
of the poem?
ALLITERATION
• Alliteration occurs when the initial sounds
of a word, beginning either with a
consonant or a vowel, are repeated in
close succession.
Examples:
Athena and Apollo
Nate never knows
People who pen poetry
ALLUSION
• An indirect reference to a wellknown person, place, event,
literary work, or work of art.
ie: In Ode on a Grecian Urn,the pictures on
the face of the urn might appear to be
simple artwork, but they allude to episodes
in the poem.
ASSONANCE
• Assonance occurs when the vowel sound
within a word matches the same sound in
a nearby word, but the surrounding
consonant sounds are different.
"Tune" and "June" are rhymes;
but
"tune" and "food" are assonant
(the rhyme is in the vowel sounds only)
DENOTATION
• Denotation is the
objective meaning of a
word.
• Denotation can best be
remembered as the
literal, dictionary
meaning of a word.
CONNOTATION
• The connotative meaning
of a word is based on
implication, or shared
emotional association with
a word.
• Connotation is best defined
as the emotional feeling one
gets from a word—negative
or positive.
• Think of how you connect
with a word you read in a
poem — is the feeling
positive or negative?
DICTION
• Diction refers to both
the choice and the
order of words.
• Elevated diction is the
use of larger, more
meaningful words.
• Low diction is the use
of more common
words.
IMAGE
• As one reads a poem,
the mind's eye begins
to paint a picture.
This image is what
helps one to recall the
details of the poem.
• Poetic imagery alters
or shapes the way we
see what the poem is
describing.
IMAGERY
• The use of
descriptive
language in
poetry to appeal
to the reader's
senses and
emotions.
IRONY
• Irony refers to a difference between the
way something appears and what is
actually true.
• Irony refers to a surprising, amusing, or
interesting contradiction.
• The key to irony is often the tone, which is
sometimes harder to detect in poetry than
in speech.
METAPHOR
• Metaphors immediately identify one object
or idea with another, in one or more
aspects.
• Metaphors compare two or more items
without using like or as to relate them.
"He's such a pig!"
"She's a real goat!"
METER
• Meter is the rhythm established by a poem, and
it is usually dependent not only on the number of
syllables in a line but also on the way those
syllables are accented (stressed and unstressed.)
• The rhythmic unit is often described as a foot;
patterns of feet can be identified and labeled. A
foot may be iambic, which follows a beat pattern
of unstressed and stressed syllables.
 ( / ) stressed ( ˘ )unstressed
example of Meter:
• For example, read aloud: "The DOG went
WALKing DOWN the ROAD and BARKED."
Look at the capitalized words. They carry a loud
beat. The beats will tell you how many iambs
there are in this foot. Because there are five
iambs, this line follows the conventions of
iambic pentameter (pent = five), the common
form in Shakespeare's time.
• The loud parts are stressed syllables and are
labeled with a "/" slash mark above and
unstressed syllables with a "U" mark above.
Example of how to label the meter
of a line...
U
/
U
/
U
/
U
/
The DOG went WALKing DOWN the ROAD
U
/
and BARKED.
RHYME
• The basic definition of
rhyme is two words that
sound alike.
• There are varieties of
rhyme: internal rhyme
functions within a line
of poetry.
• The more common end
rhyme occurs at the
end of the line and at
the end of some other
line, usually within the
same stanza.
RHYTHM
• The pattern
of words
that accent
or form
beats at
fixed
intervals in
the poem.
SIMILE
STANZA
• A comparison • A group of
of two or
lines in a
more
poem, seen
unrelated
as a unit,
things using
much like a
like or as.
paragraph.
SYMBOL
• A symbol works two ways: It has a literal meaning, and it
also suggests something deeper.
• It is crucial to distinguish a symbol from a metaphor:
Metaphors are comparisons between two seemingly
dissimilar things; symbols associate two things, but
their meaning is both literal and figurative.
Apple pie: literally, a dessert / symbolically, it
represents innocence or homespun values.
Raven: literally, a black bird / symbolically, it
represents death.
TONE
• The tone of a poem is roughly equivalent to the
mood it creates in the reader. Think of an actor
reading a line such as "I could kill you." He can read
it in a few different ways: If he thinks the proper tone
is murderous anger, he might scream the line and
cause the veins to bulge in his neck. He might
assume the tone of cool power and murmur the line
in a low, even voice. Perhaps he does not mean the
words at all and laughs as he says them. Much
depends on interpretation.
• The poet will convey his attitude toward the subject
of the poem in the tone of the wording or language
he/she uses. It might be happy, sad, anxious,
remorseful, etc.
WORD ORDER
• Word order matters—sometimes for
clarity of meaning (a solo guitar isn't the
same as a guitar solo) and sometimes
for effect ("a dying man" is roughly the
same as "a man, dying," but the effect of
the word order matters).
POETRY TERMINOLOGY
allusion
assonance
alliteration
connotation
couplet
denotation
diction
epic
figurative
language
hyperbole
image
irony
lyric poem
metaphor
meter
mood
narrative
poem
ode
personification
refrain
rhyme
rhyme
scheme
rhythm
simile
sonnet
speaker
stanza
symbol
theme
tone