Poetry Terms
Time to take some notes!
Poetry Terms – 3 areas of analysis
Musicality
How things
sound
Imagery
Five senses
(physical
sensation)
Rhyme
Scheme
End rhyme and
internal
rhyme
Poetry Terms – A Closer Look
This includes
Alliteration,
Assonance
and
Consonance
Musicality
Musicality



Alliteration is the repetition of initial
consonant sounds in neighboring words.
Example: And sings a solitary song /That
whistles in the wind
Assonance is the repetition of vowel
sounds but not consonant sounds.
Example: fleet feet sweep by sleeping
greeks
Consonance is the repetition of final
consonant sounds.
Example: She sat, feet in front.
Musicality
We Real Cool
The Pool Player.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
We Real Cool
The Pool Player.
Seven at the Golden
Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Alliteration

The Pool Player.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Assonance
Old Woman
The owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo
From the building and battered paving-stone.
The headlight scoffs at the mist,
And fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain;
Against a pane I press my forehead
And drowsily look on the walls and sidewalks.
The headlight finds the way
And life is gone from the wet and the welter- Only an old woman, bloated, disheveled and bleared.
Far-wandered waif on other days,
Huddles for sleep in a doorway,
Homeless.
-Carl Sandburg

The Pool Player.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real coo l. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Consonance
Old Woman
The owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo
From the building and battered paving-stone.
The headlight scoffs at the mist,
And fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain;
Against a pane I press my forehead
And drowsily look on the walls and sidewalks.
The headlight finds the way
And life is gone from the wet and the welter- Only an old woman, bloated, disheveled and
bleared.
Far-wandered waif on other days,
Huddles for sleep in a doorway,
Homeless.
Alliteration
Assonance
Consonance
Blackberry Eating
I love to go out in late September
among fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.
Poetry Terms – 3 areas of analysis
Musicality
How things
sound
Imagery
Five senses and
kinesthetic
and organic
(physical
sensation)
Rhyme
Scheme
End rhyme and
internal
rhyme
Imagery

Imagery is language that evokes one or all of the five
senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.

Metaphor is a comparison of two unlike things using the
verb "to be" and not using like or as.
Example: life is an adventure

Simile is the comparison of two unlike things using like or
as.
Example: 1 - He eats like a pig.
2 - The sun shines like a brand new penny.
Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashing and enormous moan.
His tearful sight can hardly reach to where
The pale-faced figure with glittery eyes
Returns him such a god-forsaken stare
As outcast Adam gave to Paradise.
Boy at the
Window
Richard Wilbur
The man of snow is, nonetheless, content,
Having no wish to go inside and die.
Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry.
Though frozen water is his element,
He melts enough to drop from one soft eye
A trickle of the purest rain, a tear
For the child at the bright pane surrounded by
Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear.
Rhyme Scheme
 End
rhyme: the repetition of identical
or similar sounds in two or more
different words, occurring at the end
of a line of poetry
 For
end rhyme, label the last word
with letters from the alphabet;
increasing each letter with each new
rhyme you find.
Sonnet Form
 Elizabethan
 14
form is our focus
lines
 Love poems
 End rhyme scheme for Elizabethan
form:
 Abab/cdcd/efef/gg

So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse, (A)
And found such faire assistance in my verse, (B)
As every Alien pen hath got my use, (A)
And under thee their poesy disperse. (B)
Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing, (C)
And heavy ignorance aloft to flie, (D)
Have added feathers to the learned's wing, (C)
And given grace a double majestie. (D)
Yet be most proud of that which I compile, (E)
Whose influence is thine and born of thee, (F)
In others'works thou dost but mend the style (E)
And arts with thy sweet graces graced be. (F)
But thou art all my art, and dost advance (G)
As high as learning my rude ignorance. (G)