“POETRY”
Structure
• Rhyming or prose.
• Stanza like a paragraph - couplet 2 lines,
tercet = 3, quatrain = 4
• Poem types [epithamium/wedding,
elegy/dead, pastoral/nature]
Analyzing Poetry
Speaker: not always the poet – poet creates
persona
• Audience in the poem
• Audience reading poem
Words
• Tone of voice & Rhythm: tells us the mood
and message
• Diction: choice of words
• Syntax: order of words
• Denotation: literal meaning
• Connotation: implied meaning
Figure of Speech
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Simile (like)
Metaphor (is)
Personification / anthropomorphism
Allusion(reference to another work,
historical event, art, or person to add depth
of meaning)
Figures of Speech Cont..
• Metonymy – words based on association
crown=monarchy
• Synecdoche – part = whole hand=person
• Hyperbole [exaggeration]
• Litote [understatement]
• Paradox and oxymoron (combines two
contradictory terms)
Sound
• Mood: (flowing, choppy)
• Onomatopoeia: sounds like: buzz or hiss
• Alliteration: same consonant at beginning
of each word (Little lover lacy)
• Assonance: same vowel sounds close
together (The crook took the book)
• Rhyme
A little on rhyme scheme
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Mary had a little lamb [a]
Whose fleece was white as snow [b]
And everywhere that Mary went [c]
The lamb was sure to go [b]
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It followed her to school one day [d]
That was against the rule [e]
It made the children laugh and play [d]
To see a lamb at school [e]
Impressions
• Imagery: sensory impressions
• Symbolism: [red rose = love]
• Verbal irony: (one thing said, another
meaning intended)