POETRY
Poetry…is truth in its Sunday
clothes.
"A good poem is a contribution to reality.
The world is never the same once a good
poem has been added to it.
A good poem helps to change the shape
of the universe, helps to extend
everyone's knowledge of himself and the
world around him."
-- Dylan Thomas
What does a poet look like?
A poet can look like anyone
• A poet is just somebody who feels and
expresses their feelings through words.
• The life you are living is as meaningful to
you as any famous poet’s life.
• You’re a poet even though you didn’t
know it
So why is this poem so famous?
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
...and this one?
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
The keys are:
• A poet uses beautiful, colourful language
to make the subject of the poem come
alive to the reader.
• A poet is thrifty with words and chooses
them carefully
• Poetry is… word painting
• Poets create images in your mind’s eye
How do poets create images?
• Poets uses literary forms also known as
figures of speech or figurative language.
• They are also found in the stories you
read…you’ve probably just never noticed
them before.
Figurative Language
• Usually uses a comparison or an
exaggeration to make a point.
• For example: He is as sharp as a tack.
Literal Language
• Means exactly what it says
• He is as sharp as a tack would mean he
has a very pointed head.
Figurative or literal language?
• The airliner roared down the main runway.
• The airliner took off from the main
runway.
• The crowd of students melted away from
the principal.
• The crowd of students dispersed when the
principal came.
Figurative or literal language?
• The yellow and brown leaves announced
the arrival of fall.
• The leaves turned yellow and brown at the
beginning of fall.
• The driving wind punished the plants.
• The driving wind damaged the plants.
Your first literary weapon, the
simile
• Often when you’re trying to describe
something it helps to compare it with
something else
• When you compare two things using
the words LIKE or AS you are using a
simile
• Ex. She sings like a canary
Watch out!!!!!! For…the cliché
• Some similes have been used so
frequently they have become clichés
• As red as a _______
• As green as the ______
• As quiet as a ________
• As brittle as _______
Some of my favourite similes:
• A heart as cold as coal
• The cold stabbed like a driven nail
• Her face looked awful like a rained on
waffle
• The frog had feet like water lilies
• As black as a Halloween night
• Like coins between a dying miser's
fingers.
Try it out
• As sharp as…
• As talkative as…
• He has eyes like…
• The ballerina dances like
• As green as…
• As white as…
Choose one and create your own
example
• Fog is as thick as…
• I am as hungry as…
• Mountains are like…
• Skyscrapers are like…
• The machine was as quick as…
• Lions roar like…
And now, the simile’s big brother,
the metaphor
A winter's day
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets
below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
The metaphor
• A metaphor is a literary device that compares two unlike
items but does not use like or as to compare them.
• It is often a direct statement: “I am a rock”
“Happiness is a warm bed” “The moon is the North
Wind’s cookie”
• Original metaphors can make language vivid and give us
new insights.
• “The desert is the devil’s furnace”
• “The bullfrog’s croak was the tuba of the swamp band”
(I never thought of the swamp in that way before).
Remember this poem?
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow
• What is life being compared to in the first
stanza?
• In the second stanza?
• How does this create a vivid image?
Remember this poem?
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
• What is the fog being compared to?
• Why is the fog compared to it? What do
they have in common? What do you know
about fog?
Beware!! Metaphors can be clichés
too.
• He’s the backbone of our hockey team.
• He’s a ______ in the grass
• This place is a _____!
• She’s a big fish in a small ______
Can you tell the difference?
Metaphor or simile?
• Your education is your ticket to the future.
• The clouds were like puffs of cotton, floating in
•
•
•
the summer sky.
Like a pendulum of a grandfather clock, the
conductor’s arms swung in time to the music.
The road stretched ahead like silver ribbon in
the moonlight
The old diary was a window to the past.
Mission Possible:
• Use the poetry duotangs and poems within it to
•
•
•
hunt for examples of similes and metaphors
Write the similes you find on one side of the
page and the metaphors on the other
Pick one favourite simile and one metaphor and
be prepared to explain why you chose it
If you don’t find any before the end of class
your teacher will…
EXPLODE!!!!!
End of lesson 1
Poetry sorting activity
Cut and sort the lines into 4 piles:
Simile, metaphor, personification, and
hyperbole
Now that you are armed with two
literary weapons, let’s see what
other literary weapons poets have
in their arsenal
Lesson 2
Personification
• Personification is a literary device that
gives human qualities such as emotions,
intelligence, or personality to animals or
objects.
There are two ways to create it:
• You can give a human condition to a non-
human object (the flowers danced in the
wind)
• Or you can compare parts of the nonhuman object to parts of the human body
(the hands of the tree waved to each
passerby)
Examples:
Proud Words
Look out how you use proud words.
When you let proud words go, it is not easy
to call them back.
They wear long boots, hard boots, they walk
off proud; they can’t hear you calling –
Look out how you use proud words.
The Musical Lion
Said the Lion, “On music I dote
But something is wrong with my throat.
When I practice a scale,
The listeners quail,
And flee at the very first note!”
Can you think of any stories that
use personification?
• Charlotte’s Web
Think of four objects or living
things from nature and combine
with a human action
1. The rock bounded down the mountain
2. The spring birds chattered
3. The desk swallowed the papers
Combined with a simile:
1. …like a deer through the forest
2. …like ladies at a tea party
3. …like a fireman at a smorgasbord
Think of two things that can have
human body parts substituted for
their own. For example:
• The face of Big Ben watches over the city
of London
• A tree
• A daffodil
• A stapler
• A car
Alliteration
• Alliteration is the repetition of sounds
• Consonance is the repetition of consonant
sounds
• Assonance is the repetition of vowel
sounds
• For example: One by one the large leaves
fell from the mighty maple tree
What sound is being repeated in
each of these lines?
• Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed
in the dark innyard.
• He clasps the crag with crooked hands
• The snake slithered silently to the stream
• The willows were whispering in the wind
Onomatopoeia
• Screech
• Crash
• Burp
Onomatopoeia
• Is a literary form in which words sound
like their meaning.
• When you want to use a word to imitate a
sound, you use onomatopoeia.
• Examples; snap, hiss, bang, clash, boom,
thud, buzz, click, quack, and sizzle.
Classroom
I hear
the screech of chalk on the board.
the grinding of a pencil in the sharpener.
the tapping of fingers on the desk.
the push of students taking a test.
Other examples:
• Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the
king reign.
• Rough wind, that moanest loud…
Hyperbole
• A literary device that gives force or
intensity to what we write.
• An exaggeration.
• Examples: I’m as hungry as a horse
• There were a million people ahead of me
in line
• She’s older than the hills
• I’m so big, sometimes I even scare myself
Yarns
They have yarns
Of a skyscraper so tall
They had to put hinges
On the two top stories
So to let the moon go by.
The Ostrich Is a Silly Bird
The ostrich is a silly bird,
With scarcely any mind.
He often runs so very fast,
He leaves himself behind.
And when he gets there has to stand,
And hang about till night,
Without a blessed thing to do
Until he comes in sight.
Mission Possible:
• Use the poetry duotangs and poems within it to
•
•
•
hunt for examples of personification, alliteration,
onomatopoeia, and hyperbole.
Write the examples you find on a separate page
for each category
Pick one favourite from each category and be
prepared to explain why you chose it
If you don’t find any before the end of class
your teacher will…
EXPLODE!!!!!
Poetry Mindmap Assignment
• Use the examples of literary devices to
create a mindmap
• Remember to colour code it
• It should be a collection of your favourite
poetic language
• See sample