Name: ______________________________ Block: _________ Date: _______________
SOL 7.5 The student will read and demonstrate comprehension of a variety of fictional texts, narrative nonfiction, and poetry.
Poetry Packet – Language Arts 7
Poems tell stories and express feelings in creative ways through musical and rhythmical
language. They can be short or long, funny or serious, sad or joyful. Some poems rhyme and
other don’t. Some have an obvious structure while others don’t. Every poem is a work of art
made entirely of words. (They're Poets and They Know It. New York, NY: Scholastic, 2007.
Print.)
Poetic Devices to Know
□Alliteration is the repetition of beginning consonant sounds in words.
Examples: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Penny poured some pink punch into a purple cup.
□Hyperbole: an intentional exaggeration that cannot possibly be true.
Examples: Shreya’s backpack weighs a ton.
It took a million years for Anne to answer the phone.
□Imagery: vivid and descriptive language that appeals to one of the five senses: sight, touch, feel,
taste, or smell.
Example: The fluffy flakes create a mound of white powder.
She picked the delicate pink bud from the sparse, dying plant.
□Metaphor: a figure of speech that compares two unlike things without using like or as.
Examples: Stuart was a tumbleweed falling down the stairs.
Her smile was a sunbeam lighting up the room.
□Meter: a fixed pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in lines of fixed length to create rhythm.
Example: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM
(weak STRONG / weak STRONG / weak STRONG / weak STRONG / weak STRONG)
Was-THIS the-FACE that-LAUNCH'D a-THOU sand-SHIPS
□Onomatopoeia is the use of a word that imitates the sound associated with the object or action it
refers to.
Examples: The boom of the thunder woke me from my nap.
Somewhere upstairs, a door squeaked eerily.
□Personification is a figure of speech that applies human characteristics to nonhuman objects.
Examples: The flowers danced in the morning breeze.
The cow smiled at the passing children.
□Repetition is the repeated use of sounds, words, phrases or ideas for effect and emphasis. There must
be at least THREE in order for it to be repetition. It doesn’t include common words unless they are part
of a phrase (I, he, she, it, etc.).
Example: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again
by Mother Goose
□Rhyme is the recurring word sound within a line or at the end of a line of verse.
Examples: farm/harm, cat/hat
near/fear, old/bold
□Rhyme: End /External: When the words at the end of two lines rhyme with each other. The lines don’t
have to come one after another in the poem.
Example: There once was a man in a park
Who liked to sit in the dark
□Rhyme: Internal: When words inside of the lines of poetry rhyme with each other.
Example: There once was a man in a park
Who liked to sit with a pan in the dark
□Rhyme Scheme is a pattern of rhyming lines in a poem, usually referred to by letters to indicate which
lines rhyme.
Example 1: The following poem by Emily Dickinson has an A-A-B-C-D-B rhyme scheme:
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
B
I say it just
C
Begins to live
D
That day.
Example 2:
A
A
B
In marble walls as white as milk,
A
Lined with a skin as soft as silk,
A
Within a fountain crystal clear,
B
A golden apple doth appear;
B
No doors there are to this stronghold,
C
Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.
C
by Mother Goose
□Rhythm is the recurring pattern of strong and weak syllabic stresses—also known as beats.
Example: da-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dum
□Simile: a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using like or as.
Examples: You’re as cold as ice.
Her smile was like a sunbeam lighting up the room
□A Stanza refers to a specific section, or unit, of a poem.
Poetic Forms
A couplet is a two-line poem with a fun and simple rhyming pattern. Each line has the
same meter and their endings rhyme with one another. Couplets are often humorous.
Example:
Good night! Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night til it be morrow.
Romeo & Juliet by Shakespeare
A haiku is a short poem invented in Japan. It often describes nature with very simple observations about
the elegant world around us. A haiku consists of three unrhymed lines of 5-7-5 syllables.
An old silent pond...
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.
By Matsuo Basho
Japanese Samurai
(Translated to English)
Rainbow sprouts from earth:
Yellows, greens, oranges and
reds
Delight the farmer.
By Erica Garman
SHMS Teacher
Whitecaps on the bay:
A broken signboard banging
In the April wind.
By Richard Wright
American Novelist
A limerick is a funny or silly poem that always has five lines and a specific rhythm and rhyme scheme
(A,A,B,B,A). When you write a limerick, think of the poem as a very short story.
It’s in vain that the teenagers try
There once was a man from Kilkeary
All their algebra skills to apply.
Whose face was handsome, but hairy.
Though they can, on occasions,
After he went for a shave
Solve x in equations,
The town was amazed
They still haven’t figured out y.
That Harry was really a Mary!
Brendan Beary
Andrew Bailey
Free Verse poetry doesn’t have a regular rhythm or rhyme scheme. Poets like to write in free verse
because it gives them lots of freedom to express themselves. If you are a rule-breaker, free verse may
be the poetry form for you.
Fog
by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
so sweet
This is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
It sits looking
that were in
over harbor and city
the icebox
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
and so cold
Winter Poem
by 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
A ballad is a songlike, narrative poem that tells a story. It usually features rhyme, a specific rhythm, and
sometimes has a refrain, or repetitive verse. Way before the internet, TV, and even the printing press
(gasp!), people were entertained by oral storytellers. During the Middle Ages, these storytellers, or
traveling minstrels, recited lengthy and detailed stories through poetry or song. By putting these stories
in song or rhyme, entertainers could more easily memorize long verses and they could be passed on from
one generation to the next.
John Henry
When John Henry was a little tiny baby
Sitting on his mama's knee,
He picked up a hammer and a little piece of steel
Saying, "Hammer's going to be the death of me, Lord, Lord,
Hammer's going to be the death of me."
John Henry was a man just six feet high,
Nearly two feet and a half across his breast.
He'd hammer with a nine-pound hammer all day
And never get tired and want to rest, Lord, Lord,
And never get tired and want to rest.
John Henry went up on the mountain
And he looked one eye straight up its side.
The mountain was so tall and John Henry was so small,
He laid down his hammer and he cried, "Lord, Lord,"
He laid down his hammer and he cried.
John Henry said to his captain,
"Captain, you go to town,
Bring me back a TWELVE-pound hammer, please,
And I'll beat that steam drill down, Lord, Lord,
I'll beat that steam drill down."
The captain said to John Henry,
"I believe this mountain's sinking in."
But John Henry said, "Captain, just you stand aside-It's nothing but my hammer catching wind, Lord, Lord,
It's nothing but my hammer catching wind."
John Henry said to his shaker,
"Shaker, boy, you better start to pray,
'Cause if my TWELVE-pound hammer miss that little piece of steel,
Tomorrow'll be your burying day, Lord, Lord,
Tomorrow'll be your burying day."
John Henry said to his captain,
"A man is nothing but a man,
But before I let your steam drill beat me down,
I'd die with a hammer in my hand, Lord, Lord,
I'd die with a hammer in my hand."
The man that invented the steam drill,
He figured he was mighty high and fine,
But John Henry sunk the steel down fourteen feet
While the steam drill only made nine, Lord, Lord,
The steam drill only made nine.
John Henry hammered on the right-hand side.
Steam drill kept driving on the left.
John Henry beat that steam drill down.
But he hammered his poor heart to death, Lord, Lord,
He hammered his poor heart to death.
Well, they carried John Henry down the tunnel
And they laid his body in the sand.
Now every woman riding on a C and O train
Says, "There lies my steel-driving man, Lord, Lord,
There lies my steel-driving man."
A quatrain is a stanza with four lines and a rhyme scheme.
The Mountain
Untitled
The mountain frames the sky,
A
Once I made a snowman
A
As a shadow of an eagle flies by,
A
Handsome as can be
B
With clouds hanging at its edge,
B
In the snow he melted
C
A climber proves his courage on its rocky ledge. B
A sad sight to see.
B
by Donna Brock
author unknown