Overview of Poetic Elements I
5 Poetic Elements:
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Denotation
Connotation
Imagery
Figurative language
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Simile
Metaphor
Personification
Apostrophe
 Metonymy and Synechdoche
Denotation
 The dictionary meaning of a word
 Useful in poetry when words have
multiple meanings
 Examples:
 “Naming of Parts” by Henry Reed p. 692
 “Cross” by Langston Hughes p. 693
 “A Hymn to God the Father” by John
Donne p.697
Connotation
 Overtones of meaning beyond a
word’s literal meaning
 “Cross” by Langston Hughes p. 693
 “When my love swears that she is made
of truth” by William Shakespeare (p.
688)
Imagery
 The representation through language
of sense experience (Perrine’s p.700)
 Appeals to the five senses
 Most often suggests a mental picture
 Examples in poetry:
 “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen
(p. 652)
 “Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (p.
703)
Figurative Language Part I
 Figure of Speech
 Any way of saying something other than
the ordinary way
 Includes
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Simile and Metaphor
Personification
Apostrophe
Metonymy and Synechdoche
 Figurative Language
 Language that uses figures of speech
Simile and Metaphor
 Ways of comparing things that are
essentially unlike
 Simile uses like, as, resembles, or seems:
“The pond is like a mirror.”
 Metaphor substitutes the figurative term
for the literal: “You are a peach.”
 Examples:
 “Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes (p.
732)
 “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime” by
William Carlos Williams (p. 704)
Personification
 Giving the attributes of a human
being to an animal, object, or concept
 Examples in poetry:
 “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath (p. 680)
 “It Sifts from Leaden Sieves” by Emily
Dickinson p. 717
 “Let me not to the marriage of true
minds” by William Shakespeare (p.
1001)
“Love’s not Time’s fool…”
Apostrophe
 Addressing someone absent or dead or
nonhuman as if that person or thing
were present and alive and capable of
responding
 Examples in poetry:
 “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall
(p. 658)
 “Tiger! Tiger! burning bright” by William
Blake (p. 947)
 “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (p.
918)
Metonymy and Synechdoche
 Metonymy
 The use of something closely related for
the thing actually meant
 Example: “The White House” means the U.S.
government
 Synechdoche
 The use of the part for the whole
 “a hired hand” really means a whole person
 “lend an ear” means give your whole
attention
Metonymy and Synechdoche are
basically interchangeable
 Our text uses metonymy to cover all
cases.
 Examples of poems which use
metonymy:
 “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William
Carlos Williams (p. 661)
 “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell
(p. 730)
A poem for analysis
 “Introduction to poetry” by Billy
Collins
(p. 732)
 Discuss and enjoy the figurative
elements.
 See a screen version of the poem on
the next slide.
Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.