Poetry
Personification and Cinquains
What is Personification?
Personification is giving human traits (qualities,
feelings, action, or characteristics) to nonliving objects (things, colours, qualities, or
ideas).
Some examples are:
a)The sun greeted me this morning.
b) Snow had wrapped a white blanket over the
city.
c)Time never waits for anyone.
d)Trees were dancing with the wind.
Example
The sun greeted me this morning.
How is this personified?
To help you answer this, ask yourself:
In the line, what is the human trait?
Let’s work through the examples to help us
understand them.
1. The flowers were dancing back and forth on
the field.
a) What is the object being personified?
b) What is the meaning?
2) The sun greeted me this morning.
a) What is the object being personified?
b) What is the meaning?
3. Snow had wrapped a white blanket over the
city.
a) What is the object being personified?
b) What is the meaning?
4) Time never waits for anyone.
a) What is the object being personified?
b) What is the meaning?
Read the sentences in the boxes on the left. In the middle box, write down
the object that is being personified. In the last box, explain what the
sentences means. The first one is done for you.
Sentence
The wind sang her mournful song
through the falling leaves.
The bear reads my mind.
The leaves danced in the wind.
The rain kissed my cheeks as it fell.
The water called out invitingly to the
hot swimmers.
Object being
personified
The wind.
What does it mean?
It means that the wind
howled through the trees.
Through the last activity you should have
noticed that in each line:
1) There was an object being personified and…
2) There was a meaning.
It is not enough to say “The wall laughed”.
Ask yourself: When someone else reads this,
will they understand
what it means?
Challenge
Create you own line of personification.
Remember…
1) Personification is giving human traits
(qualities, feelings, action, or characteristics)
to non-living objects (things, colours,
qualities, or ideas).
2) It needs to make sense! You cannot just say
“the wall laughed”.
Cinquain
The Definition
An unrhymed poem consisting of
five formatted lines.
Mantis
Stick Predator
Stalking, preening, searching
Slenderly fashioned by nature
Killer
Cinquains do not have titles.
However, the first line
serves as the announced
topic.
The Format
One word topic
two describing words
three action words
A four word phrase
A synonym for the topic
Example
Rain
Heavy, awesome
Drenching, soaking, penetrating
Renewing the earth’s firmament
Soil-soaker
Important!!!
The topic that is introduced in the first line, is
the topic continued though out the whole
poem.
Knights
Armor ,shields
Fighting, charging, slaughtering
Worried, delighted, brave, fearsome
Crusaders
Now let’s try some!
Extension challenge: Try incorporate
personification.