POETRY-- Examples
Stanza
 Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Verse
 Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
RHYME
 Words sound alike
because they share the
same ending vowel
and consonant sounds.
 (A word always
rhymes with itself.)
LAMP
STAMP
 Share the short “a”
vowel sound
 Share the combined
“mp” consonant sound
Rhyme
 where there's ice and snow, there lived a
penguin and his name was Joe."
 Brown: [- clown, crown, down, drown,
frown, gown, noun, town]
Slant rhyme
 how, row
 lovely, funny.
 eyes, light;
 years, yours
eyes, light; years, yours
RHYME SCHEME
 A rhyme scheme is a pattern of rhyme (usually
end rhyme, but not always).
 Use the letters of the alphabet to represent sounds
to be able to visually “see” the pattern. (See next
slide for an example.)
Rhyme scheme
Bid me to weep, and I will weep, (A)
While I have eyes to see; (B)
And having none, yet I will keep (A)
A heart to weep for thee. (B)
 Sounds in orange are marked with the letter A
 Sounds in purple are marked with the letter B
SAMPLE RHYME SCHEME
The Germ by Ogden Nash
A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.
a
a
b
b
c
c
a
a
RHYTHM
 The beat created by
the sounds of the
words in a poem
 Rhythm can be created
by meter, rhyme,
alliteration and refrain.
Rhythm
 I hear the sound I love, the soung of the
hyman voice,
I hear all sounds running together,
combined, fused, or following,
Allusion
 Allusion comes from
the verb “allude”
which means “to refer
to”
 An allusion is a
reference to something
famous.
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we
had read
Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous
cave,
And to our own his name we
gave.
From “Snowbound”
John Greenleaf Whittier
Allusion
 "As the cave's roof collapsed, he was
swallowed up in the dust like Jonah, and only
his frantic scrabbling behind a wall of rock
indicated that there was anyone still alive".
 Christy didn't like to spend money. She was no
Scrooge, but she seldom purchased anything
except the bare necessities".
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?
Alliteration
 Don't delay dawns disarming display .
Dusk demands daylight .
Dewdrops dwell delicately
drawing dazzling delight .
Dewdrops dilute daisies domain.
Distinguished debutantes . Diamonds defray
delivered
daylights distilled daisy dance .
IMAGERY
 Language that appeals to the senses.
 Most images are visual, but they can also
appeal to the senses of sound, touch, taste,
or smell.
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather . . .
from “Those Winter Sundays”
Imagery
 sight: the rose is bright red
 hearing: it sounds like the chirping of several birds,
with their high voices.
 smell: the air smells like going to the countryside.
fresh and green. no smell of smoke but the fresh
waters and the leaves.
 touch: it feels bumpy yet gives off a welcoming
warmth
 taste: it tastes sweet yet spicy at once, with a tinge of
orange taste
~IMAGES~
The bear in the back room is wormy
Its meat is all stinky and squirmy,
So I’m reading a book
About how to cook
And another about taxidermy.
Appeal to the five senses
Simile
 My love is like a red, red rose —Robert Burns
 Her hair was like gravy, running brown off her
head and clumping up on her shoulders.
 You are like a hurricane: there's calm in your eye,
but I'm getting blown away —Neil Young
 The air-lifted rhinoceros hit the ground like a
garbage bag filled with split pea soup.
Simile
“It seems to me
You’ve lived your life
Like a candle in the wind”
Elton John
SIMILE
 A comparison of two things using “like, as
than,” or “resembles.”
 “She is as beautiful as a sunrise.”
SYMBOLISM
 When a person, place,
thing, or event that has
meaning in itself also
represents, or stands
for, something else.
=
Innocence
=
America
=
Peace
Limerick
 Old Man with a Beard
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!'
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.)
Lyric poetry
 Dying (I heard a fly buzz when I died )
by Emily Dickinson
 I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
Lyric Poetry
Lyric poetry developed from an ancient Greek form of poetry that was accompanied by a musical
instrument. These types of poems are like songs and have a musical quality about them. Lyric poems
appeal to our senses and emotions. They are personal, subjective poems. By choosing words and
phrases carefully, you can set the mood for a lyric poem. Lyric poems can rhyme or be in free verse.
April
The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.
Yet the backyards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging treeI could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.
-Sara Teasdale
Autumn
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown,
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.
-Emily Dickinson
NARRATIVE POEMS
 A poem that tells a
story.
 Generally longer than
the lyric styles of
poetry b/c the poet
needs to establish
characters and a plot.
Examples of Narrative
Poems
“The Raven”
“The Highwayman”
“Casey at the Bat”
“The Walrus and the
Carpenter”
Narrative Poems
Narrative poems tell stories. These stories can be about real or fictional
events or ordinary or famous people. Kings, queens, knights, explorers,
adventurers, soldiers, travelers, and presidents have all been written about in
narrative poems. They can rhyme or be free verse.
Captain Kidd by Rosemary and Stephen
Vincent Benet
This person in the gaudy clothes
Is worthy Captain Kidd.
They say he never buried gold,
I think, perhaps, he did.
They say it's all a story that
His favorite little song,
Was "Make these lubbers walk the plank!"
I think, perhaps, they're wrong.
They say he never pirated
Beneath the Skull and Bones.
He merely traveled for his health
And spoke in soothing tones.
In fact, you'll read in nearly all
The newer history books
That he was mild as cottage cheese
-But I don't like his looks.
Others:
Casey at the bat
The Listeners by
Walter de la Mare
On the next page, read the poem aloud. As
students listen and read the poem, ask them to
imagine
Abe as his mother describes him. When
finished, have them create an original narrative
poem of their own.
Irony
 Situational
– You break a date with your
girlfriend so you can go to
the ball game with the guys.
When you go to the
concession stand, you run
into your date who is with
another guy
 Verbal
– You are arguing with your
mother, who reprimands
you for being "smart." Your
reply is a sarcastic, "If you
think I am smart, then why
won't you let me make some
smart decisions?"
 DRAMATIC
– In Hawthorne's "The Scarlet
Letter," when Hester is in the
governor's garden to see to it
that Pearl is not taken away
from her, she asks the
Reverend Dimmesdale to
support her position. This is
an example of dramatic irony
as the reader knows that
Dimmesdale and Hester are
partners in sin, but the
characters do not
Puns
 Yesterday I rode my bike twice, I guess that
makes me a recycler.
 The untruthful deli clerk was full of
baloney.
 Little Jimmy told his teacher he never saw a
humming bird but he had watched a spelling
bee.
CONCRETE POEMS
 In concrete poems, the
words are arranged to
create a picture that
relates to the content
of the poem.
Poetry
Is like
Flames,
Which are
Swift and elusive
Dodging realization
Sparks, like words on the
Paper, leap and dance in the
Flickering firelight. The fiery
Tongues, formless and shifting
Shapes, tease the imiagination.
Yet for those who see,
Through their mind’s
Eye, they burn
Up the page.
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.
End rhyme
 Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
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
Internal rhyme
 Now, Jenny and me were engaged, you see
On the eve of a fancy ball
So a kiss or two is nothing to you
Or anyone else at all.
Now we had arranged, through notes exchanged
Early that afternoon
At number four to dance no more,
But to sit in the dusk, and spoon.
Eye rhyme
 move and love,
 bough and though,
 come and home,
 laughter and daughter
REFRAIN
 A sound, word, phrase
or line repeated
regularly in a poem.
“Quoth the raven,
‘Nevermore.’”
Refrain
There lived a lady by the North Sea shore,
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
Two daughters were the babes she bore.
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
As one grew bright as is the sun,
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
So coal black grew the other one.
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
Meter
meter: the regular pattern of beats and stresses in a poem
stressed syllable
unstressed syllable
the meter is named for the number of sets of stressed and unstressed syllables per line
tetrameter = four sets of stressed and unstressed syllables
pentameter = five sets of stressed and unstressed syllables
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
-William Cullen Bryant
- William Shakespear
METER
 A pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables.
 Meter occurs when the stressed and unstressed
syllables of the words in a poem are arranged in a
repeating pattern.
 When poets write in meter, they count out the
number of stressed (strong) syllables and
unstressed (weak) syllables for each line. They
they repeat the pattern throughout the poem.
METER cont.
 FOOT - unit of meter.
 A foot can have two or
three syllables.
 Usually consists of
one stressed and one
or more unstressed
syllables.
 TYPES OF FEET
The types of feet are
determined by the
arrangement of
stressed and
unstressed syllables.
(cont.)
METAPHOR
 A direct comparison of two unlike things
 “All the world’s a stage, and we are merely
players.”
- William Shakespeare
~METAPHOR~
My brother is
A PIG!
~a direct comparison; does NOT use “like” or “as”
Metaphor
 "My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely
hill."
(William Sharp, "The Lonely Hunter")
 "Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored
rags and throws away food."
(Austin O'Malley)
 "Words are bullets, and should be used sparingly,
aimed toward a target."
(Army Colonel Dick Hallock)
ONOMATOPOEIA
 Words that imitate the sound they are
naming
BUZZ
 OR sounds that imitate another sound
“The silken, sad, uncertain, rustling of
each purple curtain . . .”
~ONOMATOPOEIA~
“Black is the clear glass now that he glides,
Crisp is the whisper of long, lean strides…”
from “The Skater of Ghost Lake”
by William Rose Benet
~when a word sounds like what it means
Onomatopoeia
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees."
(Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Come Down, O Maid")
 "I'm getting married in the morning!
Ding dong! the bells are gonna chime."
(Lerner and Loewe, "Get Me to the Church on Time,"
My Fair Lady)
 "One of these days, Alice. Pow! Right in the kisser!"
(Jackie Gleason, The Honeymooners
 "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is."
(Advertising slogan of Alka Seltzer)
PERSONIFICATION
 An animal
given humanlike qualities
or an object
given life-like
qualities.
from “Ninki”
by Shirley Jackson
“Ninki was by this time irritated
beyond belief by the general air of
incompetence exhibited in the
kitchen, and she went into the living
room and got Shax, who is
extraordinarily lazy and never catches
his own chipmunks, but who is, at
least, a cat, and preferable, Ninki saw
clearly, to a man with a gun.
Personification
 "And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes."
(T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")
 "The operation is over. On the table, the knife lies spent,
on its side, the bloody meal smear-dried upon its flanks.
The knife rests."
(Richard Selzer, "The Knife")
Couplet
 "Morning Swim"
Into my empty head there come
a cotton beach, a dock wherefrom
FREE VERSE POETRY
 Unlike metered
poetry, free verse
poetry does NOT have
any repeating patterns
of stressed and
unstressed syllables.
 Does NOT have
rhyme.
 Free verse poetry is
very conversational sounds like someone
talking with you.
 A more modern type
of poetry.
Free Verse
 Winter Poem - Nikki Giovanni
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower
HAIKU
A Japanese poem
written in three lines
Five Syllables
Seven Syllables
Five Syllables
An old silent pond . . .
A frog jumps into the pond.
Splash! Silence again.
Haiku
 Fog
On the mountain top
The fog fell down thick and fast
It was like pea soup.
Rain
Tip-tap goes the rain.
As it hits the window pane
I can hear the rain.
Hyperbole
 Exaggeration often used for emphasis.
Hyperbole
 "I think of you a million times a day"
 "The test was so hard, by the time I finished
it I was 100 years old!“
 "That boy's eyes are so big, they look like
they're going to jump out and grab you!
 "My best friend is so forgetful, I sometimes
have to remind her what her name is!"
Idiom
 "making a mountain
 Smell a Rat
out of a molehill."
 Tongue-in-Cheek
 Bend Over Backwards
 Jump Down
Someone's Throat
 Cough Up
 Scratch Someone's
Back
 Shoot Off One's
Mouth
 Go to the Dogs
 Get in Someone's hair
 Kick the Bucket
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.