POETIC TERMS
A reference to a historical
figure, place, or event.
“O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is
done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize
we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people
all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel
grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.”
~Walt Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!”
A broad comparison between
two basically different things
that have some points in
common. Usually takes form in
a simile or metaphor.
A direct comparison between
two basically different things.
A simile is introduced by the
words “like” or “as”.
“And when they all were seated,/ A
Service like a Drum —/ Kept beating —
beating — till I thought/ My Mind was
going numb”
~Emily Dickinson, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”
An implied comparison
between two basically
different things. Is not
introduced with the words
“like” or “as”.
“Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We'are tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the'eagle and the dove.
The phœnix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one, are it.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit,
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.”
~John Donne, “The Canonization”
A great exaggeration
to emphasize strong
feeling.
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Concord Hymn”
Human characteristics
are given to non-human
animals, objects, or
ideas.
“The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbour and city
on silent haunches
And then moves on.”
~ Carl Sandburg, “Fog”
An absent person or
inanimate object is directly
spoken to as though they
were present.
“Ah, happy, happy boughs! that
cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the
Spring adieu”
~John Keats “Ode on a Grecian
Urn”
A part stands for the
whole or vice versa.
“Friends, Romans,
countrymen, lend me
your ears” ~William
Shakespeare, Julius
Caesar
The use of concrete
details that appeal to
the five senses.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each
to each/ I do not think that they will sing
to me/ I have seen them riding seaward
on the waves/ Combing the white hair of
the waves blown back/ When the wind
blows the water white and black/ We
have lingered in the chambers of the
sea/ By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed
red and brown/ Till human voices wake
us, and we drown.” ~T.S. Eliot, “Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock”
A contrast between what is
said and what is meant. Also,
when things turn out different
than what is expected.
“Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.”
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Rime of the Ancient
Mariner”
The overall atmosphere
or prevailing emotional
feeling of a work.
Explain the mood of
these poems:
“Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.”
~Mary Elizabeth Frye “Do Not Stand at my
Grave and Weep”
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.”
~Robert Barrett Browning, “Sonnets from the
Portuguese, 43”
The vantage point
from which an author
presents the action in
a work.
The repetition of
identical sounds at the
ends of lines of poetry.
“Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”
~Robert Frost, “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
The repetition of
identical sounds
within a line of
poetry.
“I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken…”
~Percy Bysshe Shelley “The Cloud”
The time (both the time
of day and period in
history) and place in
which the action of a
literary work takes place.
“Tiger! Tiger! burning
bright
In the forests of the night”
~William Blake,
“The Tiger”
The repeating of a
sound, word, phrase,
or more in a given
literary work.
“While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there
came a tapping,/ As of some one gently rapping,
rapping at my chamber door./ 'Tis some visitor,' I
muttered, `tapping at my chamber door - / Only
this, and nothing more.’”
~Edgar Allen Poe, “The Raven”
The repetition of
consonant sounds at
the beginnings of
words.
“Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.”
~Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty”
The repetition of similar
vowel sounds followed
by different consonants.
“. . .that hoard, and sleep, and
feed, and know not me.”
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson “Ulysses”
The repetition of
consonant sounds that
are preceded by
different vowel sounds.
“We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June.
We Die soon.”
~Gwendolyn Brooks “We Real Cool”
The use of words whose
sounds suggest the
sounds made by objects
or activities.
“…While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.”
~Edgar Allen Poe, “The Bells”
The main idea or
underlying meaning
of a literary work.
What is the theme in this poem?:
“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and II took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the
difference.”
~Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
Now, take a moment and
create your own examples
for 10 of these literary/poetic
devices.
You may work with a partner!
Add this to your notes.
POETRY TYPES
METER
 A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
 Meter occurs when the stressed and
unstressed syllables of the words in a poem
are arranged in a repeating pattern.
 When poets write in meter, they count out the
number of stressed (strong) syllables and
unstressed (weak) syllables for each line.
They they repeat the pattern throughout the
poem.
METER cont.
Foot - unit of meter. The types of feet are
determined by the arrangement of stressed
and unstressed syllables.
TYPES OF FEET
 Iambic - unstressed, stressed
What light | through yon | der win | dow breaks
 Trochaic - stressed, unstressed
Fire | burn and | cauldron | bubble
 Anapestic - unstressed, unstressed, stressed
With the sheep | in the fold | and the cows | in their
stalls
 Dactylic - stressed, unstressed, unstressed
love again | song again | nest again | young again
FREE VERSE POETRY
 Unlike metered
poetry, free verse
poetry does NOT
have any
repeating
patterns of
stressed and
unstressed
syllables.
 Does NOT have
rhyme.
 Free verse poetry
is very
conversational sounds like
someone talking
with you.
 A more modern
type of poetry.
BLANK VERSE POETRY
from Julius Ceasar
 Written in lines of
iambic
pentameter, but
does NOT use
end rhyme.
Cowards die many times
before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of
death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet
have heard,
It seems to me most strange
that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a
necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
LYRIC
A short poem
Usually written in first person point
of view
Expresses an emotion or an idea
or describes a scene
Doesn’t tell a story and is often
musical
HAIKU
A Japanese poem
written in three lines
“An old silent pond . . .
A frog jumps into the pond.
Splash! Silence again.”
Five Syllables
Seven Syllables
Five Syllables
“Agonize for me
daughter of a sinful birth:
Antigone, dead.”
CINQUAIN
A five line poem containing
22 syllables
How frail
Above the bulk
Two Syllables
Of crashing water hangs
Four Syllables
Autumnal, evanescent, wan
Six Syllables
The moon.
Eight Syllables
Two Syllables
SHAKESPEAREAN/ ENGLISH
SONNET
A fourteen line poem
with a specific rhyme
scheme.
The poem is written in
three quatrains and
ends with a couplet.
The rhyme scheme is
abab cdcd efef gg
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
ITALIAN / PETRARCHAN
SONNET
 Rhyme scheme divides
the poem's 14 lines into
two parts, an octet
(first eight lines) and a
sestet (last six lines).
 The rhyme scheme for
the octet is typically
abbaabba. There are
a few possibilities for
the sestet, including
cdecde, cdcdcd, and
cdcdee.
My heart I gave thee, not to do it pain;
But to preserve, it was to thee taken.
I served thee, not to be forsaken,
But that I should be rewarded again.
I was content thy servant to remain
But not to be paid under this fashion.
Now since in thee is none other reason,
Displease thee not if that I do refrain,
Unsatiate of my woe and thy desire,
Assured by craft to excuse thy fault.
But since it please thee to feign a default,
Farewell, I say, parting from the fire:
For he that believeth bearing in hand,
Plougheth in water and soweth in the
sand.
TERZA RIMA
 Terza rima is poetry
written in three-line
stanzas
 Linked by end-
rhymes patterned
aba, bcb, cdc,
ded, efe, etc.
I have been one
acquainted with the
night.
I have walked out in rain
— and back in rain.
I have outwalked the
furthest city light.
I have looked down the
saddest city lane.
I have passed by the
watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes,
unwilling to explain.
NARRATIVE POEMS
 A poem that tells a story.
Examples of Narrative Poems:
 Generally longer than the
lyric styles of poetry b/c
the poet needs to establish
characters and a plot.
“The Raven”
“The Highwayman”
“Casey at the Bat”
“The Walrus and the
Carpenter”
CONCRETE POEMS
 In concrete
poems, the
words are
arranged to
create a picture
that relates to
the content of
the poem.
Poetry
Is like
Flames,
Which are
Swift and elusive
Dodging realization
Sparks, like words on the
Paper, leap and dance in the
Flickering firelight. The fiery
Tongues, formless and shifting
Shapes, tease the imagination.
Yet for those who see,
Through their mind’s
Eye, they burn
Up the page.
BALLAD POEMS
A short narrative poem with stanzas of
two or four lines and usually a refrain.
The story of a ballad can originate
from a wide range of subject matter
but most frequently deals with folk-lore
or popular legends. They are written in
straight-forward verse, seldom with
detail, but always with graphic
simplicity and force.
LIMERICK POEM
 A limerick is a kind of a witty, humorous,
or nonsense poem
 a strict rhyme scheme (aabba)
 Usually 5 lines
There was an Old Man in a tree,
Who was horribly bored by a Bee;
When they said, 'Does it buzz?’
He replied, 'Yes, it does!'’
It's a regular brute of a Bee!'
EPIC POEM
 A lengthy narrative
poem
 Usually about a
serious subject
containing details
of heroic deeds
and events
significant to a
culture or nation.
 The Odyssey
 Beowulf
 Illiad