What is Poetry?
Poetry is the art of expressing oneself in verse. It uses only a few words to
convey a message. It is meant to be read aloud! It uses imagery or figurative
language/speech to express feelings or create a mental picture or idea.
ELEMENTS OF POETRY
1. Line – a single line in a poem which is often organized into stanzas. For example,
I never saw a Moor LINE 1
I never saw the sea, LINE 2
Yet, I know how the heather looks LINE 3
And what a wave could be LINE 4
** Couplet- 2 lines
** Triplet-3 lines
**
Quatrain - 4 lines
** Quintain – 5 lines
** Sestet- 6 lines
** Octet- 8 lines
2. Stanza- a group of lines that develops and emphasizes one idea.
I never saw a Moor
I never saw the sea,
STANZA
Yet, I know how the heather looks
And what a wave could be
3. Mood – the feeling the reader feels after
can be negative or positive. Mood is created
sentence; the choice of words and the sound of
reading the poem. It
by the length of the
words.
4. Persona- the voice in the poem
5. Tone- the attitude the poet has toward the subject or audience of the poem.
6. Poet – the person who writes the poem
7. Rhyme and Rhyme Scheme – words rhyme if they sound alike. Poets often use rhymes at the end of
lines. Poets use rhyme to add musical sound to the poem. Rhyme scheme is the alphabetical pattern of
rhythm in a poem.
Finding the Rhyme scheme in a stanza of the poem
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, A
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, B
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, A
And towards our distant rest began to trudge. B
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, C
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; D
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots C
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. D
THE RHYME SCHEME IN THE ABOVE STAZA IS ABABCDCD (the rhyming word at the end of
each line determines the rhyme scheme)
Types of rhymes
● Alliteration – the repetition of consonant sounds eg. she sells sea shells on the sea shores
● Consonance- the repetition of the immediate or final consonant sound eg. Tick tock, flip flop,
singing longing
● Assonance – repetition of vowel sounds, eg. Hear the mellow wedding bells.
8. Rhythm – patterns of beats or series of stressed and unstressed syllables in a poem. Poets create rhythm
by placing emphasis on words for example - the stressed words are highlighted and the unstressed words
are underlined in the stanza below
9. Meter – it is a measure of a line in a poem
10. Foot - it is the grouping of the two or more syllables making up a basic unit of a meter
11. Form- a poem’s shape the way the words and lines are laid out on the page
● Conventional /traditional forms- fixed rules- sets of numbers of lines or repeating pattern of
rhythm or rhyme
● Free Verse- open form which has rhythm similar to everyday speech / does not have a regular
rhyme pattern
● Geographical form- helps convey meaning, include position, appearance of words, capital
letters, lines and stanza on a page