Form & Style Devices
The strictest form of poetry. Must have 14 lines, follow a
specific rhyme scheme, and maintain a uniform rhythm and
meter.
If the poem does not include all of the above devices, it is
NOT a sonnet.
Some famous sonnet writers: Shakespeare, Elizabeth B. Browning.
To My Mother by Edgar Allan Poe
1
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
2
3
C
You who are more than mother unto me, D
C
In setting my Virginia’s spirit free. D
E
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
14
Each line
has exactly 10
or 11 syllables.
Was but the mother of myself; but you C
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
12
13
B
My mother – my own mother, who died early, E
10
11
None so devotional as that of “Mother,”
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
8
9
3 Groups of 4
have a similar
pattern of
rhyme.
B
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you –
6
7
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love, A
4
5
A
F
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life. F
C
Rhymed
Couplet
Poetry that follows no rules. Just about anything goes.
This does not mean that it uses no devices, it just means that this
type of poetry does not follow traditional conventions such as
punctuation, capitalization, rhyme scheme, rhythm and meter, etc.
Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then, moves on.
No Rhyme
No Rhythm
No Meter
This is
free verse.
A poem where the words form a visual image.
from wells far underground
with strength
Oak
By Dawn Watkins
girthed itself
upon a trunk
upon a branch
upon a sprig
once a leaf
spring by spring
a century ago
from under land
This is a concrete
poem in the shape of
an oak tree. You read
it from the bottom up,
just like a tree
would grow.
Addressing someone by name or title within a poem.
Addressing someone means talking directly to them while calling
them by name.
Saying “You are my favorite person” does NOT count as an
apostrophe. Saying “Mother, you are my favorite person” is an
apostrophe.
To Abraham Lincoln
By John James Piatt
STERN be the pilot in the dreadful hour
When a great nation, like a ship at sea
With the wroth breakers whitening at her lee,
Feels her last shudder if her helmsmen cower;
A godlike manhood be his mighty dower!
Such and so gifted, Lincoln, mayst thou be,
With thy high wisdom’s low simplicity
And awful tenderness of voted power.
From our hot records then thy name shall stand
On Time’s calm ledger out of passionate days—
With the pure debt of gratitude begun,
And only paid in never-ending praise—
One of the many of a mighty Land,
Made by God’s providence the Anointed One.
A reference to another piece of literature or to history.
Example: “She hath Dian’s wit” (from Romeo and Juliet).
This is an allusion to Roman mythology and the
goddess Diana.
The three most common types of allusion refer to
mythology, the Bible, and Shakespeare’s writings.
Don Quixote
by Craven Langstroth Betts
Gaunt, rueful knight, on raw-boned, shambling hack,
Thy battered morion, shield and rusty spear,
Job ever down the road in strange career,
Both tears and laughter following on thy track,
Stout Sancho hard behind, whose leathern back
Is curved in clownish sufferance, mutual cheer
The quest beguiling as devoid of fear,
Thou spurrest to rid the world of rogues, alack!
Despite fantastic creed and addled pate,
Of awkward arms and weight of creaking steel,
Nobility is thine – the high estate
That arms knights errant for all human weal;
How rare, La Mancha, grow such souls of late, -Dear, foiled enthusiast, teach our hearts to feel!
This poem is an
allusion to the classic
novel Don Quixote
by Miguel
de Cervantes.
That’s it for the form and style devices: