POETRY
Poetic Forms We Will Be
Studying
Narrative Poem
 Tells part or all of a story
 Often feature heroic adventurers
 May be lengthy—entire book—or just a few
lines
 Example: “Beowulf” (not in packet)
Lyric Poem
 Expresses an individual’s thoughts and
emotions
 Most poems are lyric (sonnets, elegies,
odes, villanelles)
 Any poem that is not dramatic or narrative
 Examples: “Sestina” and “The Century
Quilt”
Metaphysical Poetry
 17th century men—most notably Marvell
and Herbert
 Highly intellectual and philosophical verses
on nature of thoughts and feelings
 Blend ethics, religion, love
 Example: “A Dialogue Between the Soul
and Body”
Romantic Poetry
 19th century literary movement
 Representative Poets: Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Keats, Shelly, Byron (sometimes
Tennyson)
 Focus on inner experiences and feelings—
dreams, subconscious, nature, Christianity,
the supernatural, and transcendentalism
 Example: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
Ballad
 Originally sung
 Tell engrossing stories about life, death,
heroism, love, murder, and betrayal
 Example: None in packet
 Tennyson—”The Lady of Shallot””
Dramatic Monologue
 A poem spoken by one person to a listener
who may influence the speaker with a look
or action, but says nothing.
 Robert Browning—influential
 Example: “My Last Duchess”
Elegy
 Aka dirge
 A poem of mourning/meditation
 Subject: death, lost love, lost strength, or
lost youth
 Solemn, dignified
 Example: “Because I Could not Stop For
Death”
Limerick
 Lighter form of poetry
 5 lines built on two rhymes with short 3rd/4th
lines
 Last line contains a surprise or pun
 Example: “There once was a man…”
Ode
 Ancient form of poetic song
 Ode is a celebratory poem
 Pays homage to whatever the poet holds
dear—person, place, object, idea
 Example: (not in packet) “Ode on a Grecian
Urn”
Sonnet
 14 line poem written in iambic pentameter
 Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet: abbaabba/ last
six lines can have varied rhyme schemes
c d c d c d
c d d c d c…
Shakespearean (Elizabethan/English)
Sonnet: abab/cdcd/efef/gg
 Example: Sonnet 12 (Shakespeare)
Villanelle
 19 lines
 5 three-line (tercet) stanzas & a concluding
four-line stanza (quatrain)
 Light in tone
 Two rhymes
 Example: “Do Not Go Gentle into that
Good Night” Dylan Thomas
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.
 Scansion: the process of reading and an dividing
lines into metrical feet
Types of Meter
 Iamb: duple feet –one accented syllable and
one unaccented (most common)
 Other types: trochee, anapest, dactyl
 Dimeter: 2 feet
 Trimeter: 3 feet
Most
 Tetrameter: 4 feet
common
 Pentameter: 5 feet
Rhymes
 End rhyme
 Internal rhyme (occurs w/in a line)
 Perfect, true rhyme: same vowel sound,
different consonant sound (great, late)
 Slant, imperfect partial rhyme: close, but
not identical (years, yours)
 Eye-rhyme: look like they should rhyme,
different pronunciation (have, grave)
Rhyme Scheme:
 pattern of end-rhyme in a poem
 Noted with letters of the alphabet
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
Stanza
 A group of lines arranged together
Couplet
Triplet (Tercet)
Quatrain
Quintet
Sestet (Sextet)
Septet
Octave
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
a two line stanza
a three line stanza
a four line stanza
a five line stanza
a six line stanza
a seven line stanza
an eight line stanza
Form
 Organization of the parts of the poem
 relates to its total effect
BLANK VERSE POETRY
from Julius Ceasar
 Written in lines of
iambic pentameter, but
does NOT use end
rhyme.
Cowards die many times before
their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but
once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have
heard,
It seems to me most strange that
men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
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.
Poetic Diction
 Word choices and the patterns created by
them
 Diction may be..
–
–
–
–
Abstract or concrete
Technical or common
Literal or figurative
“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke
Rhetorical devices
 Figures of speech that are not figurative
language
Allusion
 A brief reference to another work/event
– Typically allude to Bible, Shakespeare,
mythology
Anaphora
 Repetition of words or phrases at the
beginning of consecutive lines or sentences
 Example: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have
a Dream” Speech
Antithesis
 A statement in which two ideas are directly
opposed
 Example: Dickens opening scene of A Tale
of Two Cities “It was the best of times, it
was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..”
 Adrienne Rich: “I long and dread to close”
Caesura
 A pause in a line of poetry
 Often dictated by punctuation by may be
dictated by the natural flow of speech.
Oxymoron
 An expression in which two contradictory
words are joined
 Example: jumbo shrimp, brawling love,
loving hate, bright smoke
Paradox
 An apparently contradictory statement that
contains some truth.
 Metaphysical poets use frequently
 John Donne’s poem “Lovers’ Infiniteness”
“Thou canst not every day give me they heart;
If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it.”
Parallelism
 The use of corresponding grammatical or
syntactical forms
 Ex: also opening excerpts from A Tale of
Two Cities
Pun
 A play on words often achieved through the
use of words with similar sounds but
different meanings
 Example: Romeo and Juliet
 Sampson: When I have fought with the men, I will be civil
with the maids—I shall cut off their heads.
 Gregory: The heads of the maids?
 Sampson: Ay, the heads of the maids or their maidenheads
(virginity) . Take it what sense thou wilt”
Repetition
 Used to emphasize
Rhetorical Question
 Asked for effect
 Does not require an answer
POINT OF VIEW IN POETRY
POET
 The poet is the author
of the poem.
SPEAKER
 The speaker of the
poem is the “narrator”
of the poem.
SOUND EFFECTS
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?
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 . . “
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 . . .”
FIGURATIVE
LANGUAGE
METAPHOR
 An implied/direct comparison of two unlike
things
 “All the world’s a stage, and we are merely
players.”
- William Shakespeare
EXTENDED METAPHOR
 A metaphor that goes several lines or
possible the entire length of a work.
SIMILE
 A comparison of two things using “like, as
than,” or “resembles.”
 “She is as beautiful as a sunrise.”
Hyperbole
 Extreme exaggeration often used for
emphasis.
 Ex.: I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.
Metonymy
 Substituting a name of an object for
another object closely associated with it.
 Example: The pen [writing] is mightier than
the sword [war/fighting].
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.
Synecdoche
 Using part of an object to represent the
whole thing

Example: referring to a car as your
“wheels”
Synesthesia
 Describing one kind of sensation in terms of
another
 Example: a loud color, a sweet sound
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”
OTHER
POETIC DEVICES
Denotation
 The Dictionary Definition of a word
Connotation
 An implied or associative meaning of a
word
Tone
 The attitude of the writer, usually implied,
toward a subject matter
 Not to be confused with mood, which is the
atmosphere or “feel” of a story/poem
SYMBOLISM
 When a person, place,
thing, or event that has
meaning in itself also
represents, or stands
for, something else.
=
Innocence
=
America
=
Peace
Diction
 Already in poetic diction