Poetry
A unique and creative
form of expression
Poetry Appreciation
 Reading a poem for its ‘total effect’
 Understanding poetic devices employed
 Examples of poetry
Interpretation
 Meaning – What is the poet/poem
attempting to convey
Story line of the poem
Narrative or lyrical poem
Theme
Interpretation
 Language
Question why the poet chooses
certain words. What do they
represent? What do you
associate with the word?
Interpretation
 Form
Why is the poem arranged the
way that it is? How does it
reflect the content of the poem?
Interpretation
 Sound
Which poetic devices related to
sound are being used? What is
the rhyme scheme? How does
the sound of the poem reflect the
meaning?
Interpretation
 Total Effect
How do all the elements of the
poem: meaning; language; form;
sound; work together to create
the ‘total effect?’
Poetic Devices
 Alliteration – The repetition of initial
consonant sounds.
Seven slithering snakes slid by.
 Assonance – The repetition of vowel sounds.
How now brown cow?
In the total effect interpretation of poems,
these poetic devices relate to sound.
Poetic Devices
 Imagery – Words or phrases that appeal
to any sense or any combination of
senses.
‘I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and
hills, When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils…’
William Wordsworth
Poetic Devices
 Metaphor – A comparison between two
objects with the intent of giving clearer
meaning to one of them.
The sun was a golden coin.
 Simile – A comparison between two
objects using the specific words ‘like’ or
‘as.’
She had eyes like a frog.
Poetic Devices
 Meter – The recurrence of a pattern of
stressed and unstressed syllables.
 Iamb – A metrical foot, an unstressed
syllable followed by a stressed one or
short syllable followed by a long one.
 Iambic Pentameter – A line of verse with
5 metrical feet. In a 10 syllable line of
verse, every other syllable is stressed.
(Popularized by Shakespeare)
Poetic Devices
 Onomatopoeia – The use of words to
imitate sounds.
Buzz, Chew, Crunch, Sizzle, etc.
 Personification – A figure of speech
which endows animals, ideas, or
inanimate objects with human traits or
abilities.
The winter wind howled and tormented
us.
Poetic Devices
 Point-of-view-The author’s/poet’s point-ofview is their vantage point of the speaker (or
teller) of the story or poem.
1st person: the speaker is a character in the
story or poem and tells it from his/her
perspective using ‘I.’
3rd person limited: the speaker is not part of
the story, but tells about the other characters
with limited information about what one
character sees and feels.
3rd person omniscient: the speaker is not part
of the story, but is able to ‘know’ and describe
what all the characters are thinking.
Poetic Devices
 Repetition – the repeating of words,
phrases, lines or stanzas.
The Bells by Edgar Allen Poe
…with the bells, Silver bells!
…bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells…
Poetic Devices
 Rhyme – The similarity of ending sounds
existing between two words.
They are all gone away,
The house is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Poetic Devices
 Rhyme scheme – The sequence in which
the rhyme occurs. The first end sound
is represented with the letter ‘a’, the
second is ‘b,’ etc.
They are all gone away, (a)
The house is shut and still, (b)
There is nothing more to say. (a)
Through broken walls and gray(a)
The winds blow bleak and shrill:(b)
They are all gone away.(a)
Poetic Devices
 Stanza – The grouping of two or more
lines of a poem in terms of length,
metrical form or rhyme scheme.
 Couplet – A stanza with two lines.
 Quattrain - A stanza with four lines.
In Depth Interpretation
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Ask yourself the following questions:
What is the dramatic situation?
What is the structure of the poem?
What is the theme?
Are the grammar and meaning clear?
What are the important images or
figures of speech?
 What are the most important single
words used in the poem?
 What is the tone of the poem?
 What literary devices does the poem
employ?
 What is the prosody of the poem?
Review of Poetry
 Poetry has its own form
 The foot, line, and stanza are the
building blocks
 Meter and rhyme are sound effects of
poetry
 There are many types of rhyme forms
 There are many types of poetic feet:
iambic, trochaic, anapestic, etc.
Review cont’d
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There are several stanza forms
Narrative poetry tells stories
Ballads are simple narratives
Lyric poetry is subjective and emotional
Odes are formal lyrics that honor
something or someone
 Elegies are lyrics that mourn a loss
Review cont’d
 Dramatic monologues converse with the
reader as they reveal events
 The sonnet is a 14 line form of poetry
 The villanelle is a fixed form that
depends on refrains
 Levels of interpretation depend on the
literal and figurative meaning of poems
 Symbols provide for many levels of
interpretation
Review cont’d
 When comparing and contrasting poems,
remember to consider speaker, subject,
situation, devices, tone and theme
 Poetry interpretation and analysis
considers a multitude of factors,
and requires insight and
understanding of language, words,
imagery and literary elements to
fully appreciate it.