Poetic Devices
English 3 Honors
Sept. 17, 2014
Tips for Reading Poetry
• Good readers of poetry
do the following:
– pose questions
– identify unfamiliar
vocabulary or allusions
– make connections to
their own experience
– rephrase inverted lines
comment on the poem
Tone, Mood, and Diction
• Tone – The author’s implied attitude
towards the subject and audience
- Ex: Informal or Formal, Bitter, Playful,
Serious
• Mood – The feeling created in the reader
by a literary work.
• Diction – Author’s choice of words.
The Sound of Words
• Alliteration: Repeated consonant sounds
at the beginning of words placed near
each other, usually on the same or
adjacent lines. A somewhat looser
definition is that it is the use of the same
consonant in any part of adjacent words.
– Example: fast and furious
– Example: Peter and Andrew patted the pony
at Ascot
The Sound of Words
• Cacophony A discordant series of harsh,
unpleasant sounds helps to convey
disorder. This is often furthered by the
combined effect of the meaning and the
difficulty of pronunciation.
– Example:
My stick fingers click with a snicker
And, chuckling, they knuckle the keys;
Light-footed, my steel feelers flicker
And pluck from these keys melodies.
--“Player Piano,” John Updike
The Sounds of Words
• Euphony: A series of musically pleasant
sounds, conveying a sense of harmony
and beauty to the language.
– Example:
Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam—
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.
--“A Bird Came Down the Walk,”
Emily Dickinson (last stanza)
Internal Rhyme
• Rhyme that occurs within a single line
– “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I
pondered weak and weary”
The Meaning of Words
• Allusion: A brief reference to some
person, historical event, work of art, or
Biblical or mythological situation or
character.
The Meaning of Words
• Ambiguity: A word or phrase that can
mean more than one thing, even in its
context. Poets often search out such
words to add richness to their work. Often,
one meaning seems quite readily
apparent, but other, deeper and darker
meanings, await those who contemplate
the poem.
The Meaning of Words
• Hyperbole: An outrageous exaggeration
used for effect.
– Example: He weighs a ton.
The Meaning of Words
• Oxymoron: A combination of two words
that appear to contradict each other.
– Example: a pointless point of view; bittersweet
• Paradox: A statement in which a seeming
contradiction may reveal an unexpected
truth.
– Example: The hurrier I go the behinder I get.
The Arrangement of Words
• Stanza Forms: The names given to describe
the number of lines in a stanzaic unit, such as:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
couplet (2)
tercet (3)
quatrain (4)
quintet (5)
sestet (6)
septet (7)
octave (8).
Categorizing Poetry
Blank Verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter (much of the
plays of Shakespeare are written in this form)
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
--Macbeth, William Shakespeare
Categorizing Poetry
• Free Verse: lines with no prescribed pattern or
structure — the poet determines all the variables
as seems appropriate for each poem
– I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to
you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of
summer grass.
--Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
Categorizing Poetry
• Sonnet: a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter with
a prescribed rhyme scheme; its subject was traditionally
love
– Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.
--John Donne, “Holy Sonnet 10”
Theme
• A central idea in a work of literature
– It is NOT the subject or what the poem is
about; instead theme is a perception about life
or human nature.
– A central idea or statement that controls an
entire literary work.
Reference Websites
• Literary terms:
– http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_A.html
– http://www.chaparralpoets.org/devices.pdf
(This is a printable PDF)
• To find a poem:
– Poetryfoundation.org
– http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/