What is Poetry?
 “Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”





– Rita Dove
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and
thought has found its words.” – Robert Frost
“Poetry is thoughts that breath, and words that burn.”
– Thomas Gray
“Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.”- Carl Sandburg
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” - Plato
I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing
a poem is discovering.” - Robert Frost
Narrative Poetry: A poem that tells a story using poetic
devices such as rhyme or rhythm. They may have
characters, conflict, setting.
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak
and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of
forgotten lore, 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.'
Lyric poetry: consists of a poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, that expresses
the thoughts and feelings of the poet.
The term lyric is now commonly referred to as the words to a song.
Lyric poetry does not tell a story which portrays characters and actions.
The lyric poet addresses the reader directly, portraying his or her own feeling,
state of mind, and perceptions.
Modern lyric poems, although usually not sung, still posses musical qualities
Harlem Night Song
Langston Hughes
Come,
Let us roam the night together
Singing.
I love you.
Across
The Harlem roof-tops
Moon is shining.
Night sky is blue.
Stars are great drops
Of golden dew.
Down the street
A band is playing.
I love you.
Come,
Let us roam the night together
Singing.
Free Verse: Free Verse is a form of Poetry composed of either rhymed or
unrhymed lines that have no set fixed metrical pattern. The early 20thcentury poets were the first to write what they called "free verse" which
allowed them to break from the formula and rigidity of traditional poetry.
 Song of Myself
by
Walt Whitman
 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
Example of Blank Verse
Excerpt from Macbeth by
William Shakespeare
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.
Blank Verse:
Poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter
Figurative Language: (not literal or word for word)
Language in which the writer intended something other
than the literal meaning. Using words to represent
meaning.
Examples : Poetic Devices in Songs - YouTube
Metaphor: Comparing two (unlike) “things”
without using like or as
The apple of my eye
Time is a thief - Time isn't really stealing anything, this
metaphor just indicates that time passes quickly and
our lives pass us by.
My life is a dream
The harvest moon is a great pumpkin in the sky
Symbolism: An object or action in a literary work that stands for
something beyond itself. Symbolism is when the author uses an object
or reference to add deeper meaning to a poem, story, etc.
 Symbols referring to salvation: Crosses, angels,
haloes, clouds, churches
 Symbols referring to reincarnation or
reinvention: Phoenix rising from flames, crosses,
rainbows, passing storms, dawn, sunrise, broken
chains
 Symbols referring to death or endings:
Gravestones, cemeteries, Grim Reaper, Day of the
Dead, skulls, candle blowing out, coffin, ringing of bell
Hyperbole: Intentional over exaggeration






“I’ve told you a million times”
“It was so cold, I saw polar bears wearing jackets”
I had a ton of homework.
If I can’t buy that new game, I will die.
Appetite
In a house the size of a postage stamp
lived a man as big as a barge.
His mouth could drink the entire river
You could say it was rather large
For dinner he would eat a trillion beans
And a silo full of grain,
Washed it down with a tanker of milk
As if he were a drain.
Onomatopoeia: Words that imitate the sounds they
describe.
 On the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan
 On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
Personification: Giving inanimate objects living qualities
Two Sunflowers Move in the Yellow Room.
"Ah, William, we're weary of weather,"
said the sunflowers, shining with dew.
"Our traveling habits have tired us.
Can you give us a room with a view?“
"The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in"
from Once by the Pacific by Robert Frost
Alliteration: a phrase with a string of words
all beginning with the same sound.
 Five freaky females finding sales at retail.
 The slithering snake slipped through the gate.
 Rabbits running over roses
 Caring cats cascade off
Laughing lamas
Lounging.
Underneath yelling yaks,
Yelling at roaming
Rats.
Assonance: Repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence
or phrase to set the mood or add to the meaning of the word.
 Hear the mellow wedding bells
From the molten-golden notes - Poe
 “I wandered lonely as a cloud - Wordsworth
 The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking. – Edna St. Vincent Millay
Consonance:Repetition of internal or ending consonant sounds of words
close together in poetry. Example: I dropped the locket in the thick mud.
Consonance is very similar to alliteration, but the distinction between the two
lies in the placement of the sounds. If the repeated sound is at the start of the
words, it is alliteration. If it is anywhere else, it is consonance.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/675686
 "some mammals are clammy“
The emphasis is on the two m’s
 Consonance is the repetition of the s sound within "uncertain" and
"rustling.“
 Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow. – Robert Frost
Tone: The implied attitude of the writer
"The word tone in literary terms is borrowed from the
expression tone of voice. Tone is the manner in which
a poet makes his statement; it reflects his attitude
toward his subject.
Examples:
loving, ironic, bitter, pitying, fanciful, solemn are often
tones heard in literature
Concrete Poem: A concrete poem is a poem based on the
spacing of words. The pattern of the letters illustrate the
meaning of the poem. It does not have to rhyme and can
be of any length
• )
a
pen
_cil
holds
a gr
eater
know
ledge
than
any c
omp
uter,
a pen
cil hol
ds 100
years
of ex
peri
ence
and
has
been
thro
ugh
the
stori
es of
milli
ons
Haiku: "Haiku" is a traditional form of Japanese poetry.
Haiku poems
consist of 3 lines. The first and last lines of a Haiku have 5 syllables and
the middle line has 7 syllables. The lines rarely rhyme.
 I am first with five
Then seven in the middle -Five again to end.
 An old silent pond...
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.
 Sick and feverish
Glimpse of cherry blossoms
Still shivering.
Meter: In poetry and verse, meter is the recurring
pattern of stressed (accented or long) syllables in lines of
a set length
The unstressed syllables are in blue and the stressed
syllables in red.
Shall I - com PARE- thee TO - a SUM - mer’s DAY?
Rhyme Scheme: A regular pattern of rhyming
words in a poem
 Example:
Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn a
The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn. a
Where is the boy that looks after the sheep? b
“He’s under the haystack, fast asleep.”b
Will you wake him? “No, not I’ c
For if I do, he’ll be sure to cry.” c
Stanza: A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the
same form, with similar or identical patterns of rhyme and
meter.
 A Stanza consists of two or more lines of poetry that
together form one of the divisions of a poem. The stanzas
of a poem are usually of the same length and follow the
same pattern of meter and rhyme and are used like
paragraphs in a story. Some different types of stanzas are as
follows:
Couplets - Couplets are stanzas of only two lines which
usually rhyme
Quatrains - Quatrains are stanzas of four lines which can
be written in any rhyme scheme.
Refrain:A refrain is a repeated part of a poem,
particularly when it comes either at the end of a stanza
or between two stanzas
The cat so silent
Lay curled up on the rug
The fire a blaze
The room so snug.
Purring, purring
Quiet and still
Purring, purring
Content from his fill.
Tatters the cat
Big, fat cat.
He had just eaten
A dinner of fish
What a treat to have
Filling up his dish.
Purring, purring
Quiet and still
Purring, purring
Content from his fill.
Tatters the cat
Big, fat cat.
No more cold for the day
He was in for the night
Fun he had had
When the day was light.
Purring, purring
Quiet and still
Purring, purring
Content from his fill.
Tatters the cat
Big, fat cat.
Rhyme is a poem composed of lines with similar
ending sounds
 "Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow."
(Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening")
 "Hey, why don't I just go eat some hay, make things out of
clay, lay by the bay? I just may! What do ya say?"
(Adam Sandler, Happy Gilmore, 1996)
A Couplet is a Stanza of only two lines which usually
rhyme
 Rhyming Couplet Example
But if thou live, remember’d not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.
-Shakespeare, Sonnet III
 End of Sonnet XVIII
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Simile: Comparing two unlike “things” using like
or as
 "My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain."
(W.H. Auden)
 "Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the
square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming."
(John Updike, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," 1960)
 "Matt Leinart slid into the draft like a bald tire on black ice."
(Rob Oller, Columbus Dispatch, Feb. 25, 2007)
The word external means “outside.” So an external rhyme
scheme is a pattern of words that rhyme on the “outside” edge of
the poem – the last syllable in the last word of each line in a
stanza.
 There was a dog named Cat.
He always wore a blue hat.
People made fun of him,
so he changed his name to Jim.
The word internal means “inside.” So an internal rhyme
scheme is a pattern of rhyming words inside the same line.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and
weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a
tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber
door. “
'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more." Poe