“Poetry is when an emotion has found its
thought and the thought has found words”
-Robert Frost
Terms to know:
Alliteration
 is a stylistic literary device identified by the repeated sound of
the first consonant in a series of multiple words, or the repetition
of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the
beginning of words or in stressed syllables of a phrase.
Ex: Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers
Two types of Alliteration:
Assonance and Consonance
 Assonance:
 In this type, the sound of the vowel or diphthong (combination of vowels like 'oi'
in coin or 'ai' in praise) is repeated.
Ex: She sees sheep sleeping.
-In this example, the sound 'ee' is repeated.
 Consonance:
 In consonance, the sound of the consonants or a combination of consonants, is
repeated for better effect.
Ex: She shouted and shooed the sheep to the shelter.
-Here, the sound of the consonants 'sh' is repeated. This makes it consonance.
Analogy
 An analogy is a comparison in which an idea or a thing is compared to
another thing that is quite different from it (Just as a sword is the weapon of
a warrior, a pen is the weapon of a writer). It aims at explaining that idea or
thing by comparing it to something that is familiar. Metaphors and similes
are tools used to draw an analogy. Therefore, analogy is more extensive
and elaborate than either a simile or a metaphor. Consider the following
example:
“Structure of an atom is like a solar system. Nucleus is the sun and electrons are
the planets revolving around their sun.”
 Here an atomic structure is compared to a solar system by using “like”.
Therefore, it is a simile. Metaphor is used to relate the nucleus to the sun and
the electrons to the planets without using words “like” or “as’. Hence, similes
and metaphors are employed to develop an analogy.
Example of an analogy
 These lines are taken from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, Act II, Scene
II.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,”
 Juliet is indirectly saying that just like a rose that will always smell sweet by
whichever name it is called; she will like Romeo even if he changes his
name.
 Ballad
 A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads
were originally written to accompany dances.
 Couplet
 A pair of end-rhymed lines of verse that are self-contained in
grammatical structure and meaning. A couplet may be formal
(or closed), in which case each of the two lines is end-stopped,
or it may be run-on (or open), with the meaning of the first line
continuing to the second (this is called enjambment). Example
from Shakespeare:
"How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!"
Blank Verse
 Blank verse is poetry written in regular metrical but unrhymed
lines, almost always iambic pentameters. Shakespeare wrote
most of his poems in blank verse.
Features of Blank Verse
1. Blank verse poetry has no fixed number of lines.
2. It has a conventional meter that is used for verse drama and long
narrative poems.
3. It is often used in descriptive and reflective poems and dramatic
monologues — the poems in which a single character delivers his
thoughts in the form of a speech.
4. Blank verse can be composed in any kind of meter, such as iamb,
trochee, spondee and dactyl.
Iambic Pentameter
 An iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed
syllable. The rhythm can be written as:
da DUM
 The da-DUM of a human heartbeat is the most common
example of this rhythm.
 A standard line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a
row:
da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM
 Diction:
refers to the writer's or the speaker's distinctive
vocabulary choices and style of expression in a poem
or story. Use of slang and colloquial language, and
level of formality (Formal or informal).
 Dramatic poetry:
expresses the deep emotions of a poet. Can be in the
form of a soliloquy or dramatic monologue.
 Enjambment:
 is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the
meaning runs-over from one poetic line to the next,
without terminal punctuation.
Figurative language
 is the writing or speech not meant to be taken literally. It is often
used to create vivid impressions by setting up comparisons
between dissimilar things. Common figures of speech:
metaphors, similes, and personifications.
Free verse
 is an open form of poetry. It does not use consistent meter
patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern. It thus tends to
follow the rhythm of natural speech.
Haiku
 Haiku is a Japanese poetry form. A haiku uses just a few words to capture a
moment and create a picture in the reader's mind. It is like a tiny window
into a scene much larger than itself.
 Traditionally, haiku is written in three lines, with five syllables in the first line,
seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line.
The last winter leaves
Clinging to the black branches
Explode into birds.
Heroic Couplet
 is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used in epic and narrative
poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of
lines in iambic pentameter. Use of the heroic couplet was pioneered by
Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales.
Imagery
 is the descriptive or figurative language used in literature to create word
pictures for the reader. These pictures, or images, are created by details of
sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, or movement.
Lyric Poem
 is a highly musical verse that expresses the thoughts, observations, and feelings
of a single speaker (usually in first person in a form of a sonnet or ode).
The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
-Alfred Tennyson
Meter
 is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse
Shall I com PARE thee TO a SUM mer’s DAY?
 Each pair of unstressed and stressed syllables makes up a unit called a foot.
The line contains five feet in all, as shown next:
....1.............. 2.................3..............4................ 5
Shall.I..|..com.PARE..|..thee.TO..|..a.SUM..|..mer’s DAY?
Narrative poetry
one that tells a story. For example, Geoffrey
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Octet
a stanza of poetry that has eight lines.
Ode
 is a type of lyrical stanza. It is an elaborately structured poem praising or
glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as
emotionally.
 Example: Ode To the Sea by Pablo Neruda
HERE
Surrounding the island
There's sea.
But what sea?
It's always overflowing.
Says yes,
Then no,
Then no again,
And no,
Says yes
In blue
In sea spray
Raging,
Says no
And no again.
It can't be still.
It stammers
My name is sea.
It slaps the rocks
And when they aren't convinced,
Strokes them
And soaks them
And smothers them with kisses.
With seven green tongues
Of seven green dogs
Or seven green tigers
Or seven green seas,
Beating its chest,
Stammering its name,
Oh Sea,
This is your name.
Oh comrade ocean,
Don't waste time
Or water
Getting so upset
Help us instead.
We are meager fishermen,
Men from the shore
Who are hungry and cold
And you're our foe.
Don't beat so hard,
Don't shout so loud,
Open your green coffers,
Place gifts of silver in our hands.
Give us this day
our daily fish.
-Pablo Neruda
Rhyme
 Is the repetition of sounds at the end of words.
 End Rhyme: occurs when the rhyming words come at the end of the lines.
Ex) “The Desired Swan Song” -Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Swans sing before they die-’twere no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.
 Internal Rhyme: occurs when the rhyming words appear in the same line.
Ex)
“The Raven” – Edgar Allen Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
 Exact Rhyme: repetition of words with the same vowel and consonant sound, like ball
and hall.
 Slant Rhyme: repetition of words that sound alike but do not rhyme exactly, like grove
and love.
Rhyme Scheme
 Is a regular pattern of rhyming words in a poem.
 The rhyme scheme of a poem is indicated by using different letters of the
alphabet for each new rhyme.
 For example:
 In a aabb stanza, line 1 rhymes with line 2 and line 3 rhymes with line 4.
“I Wandered as Lonely as a Cloud”Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
What is the rhyme scheme?
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
Rhythm
 Is the patter of beats , or stresses, in spoken or written language. Some
poems have very specific pattern, or meter, where as prose and free verse
use the natural rhythms of everyday speech.
Because I Could Not Stop For Death, by Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
Sestet
 A sestet is the name given to the second division of an Italian sonnet (as
opposed to an English or Spenserian Sonnet), which must consist of an octave,
of eight lines, succeeded by a sestet, of six lines.
 The sestet should mark the turn of emotion in the sonnet; as a rule it may be
said, that the octave having been more or less objective, in the sestet reflection
should make its appearance, with a tendency to the subjective manner. For
example, in Matthew Arnold's The Better Part, the rough inquirer, who has had
his own way in the octave, is replied to as soon as the sestet commences:
So answerest thou; but why not rather say:
"Hath man no second life? - Pitch this one high!
Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see? More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!
Was Christ a man like us? Ah! let us try
If we then, too, can be such men as he!"
Sonnet
14 line lyric poem
Usually written in iambic pentameter
Shakespearean (English) Sonnet
Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet
Shakespearean (English) Sonnet
 William Shakespeare (1564 (baptized)-1616)
 Wrote 154 sonnets
 Consists of three quatrains (four-line stanzas) and a
couplet (two lines), usually rhyming abab cdcd efef gg
 The couplet usually comments on the ideas contained in
the preceding twelve lines.
Sonnet 30 (Shakespeare)
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.
Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet
 Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374)
 Wrote 366 sonnets for a woman named Laura…
 Consists of an octave (eight-line stanza) and a sestet
(six-line stanza).
 Often, the octave rhymes abbaabba and the sestet
rhymes cdecde
 The sestet is more flexible. Petrarch typically used
cdecde or cdcdcd for the sestet. Some other possibilities
for the sestet include cddcdd, cddece, or cddccd
 The octave states a theme or asks a question. The sestet
comments on or answers the question.
Example of a Petrarchan sonnet: William Wordsworth's
"London, 1802"
Octave - introduces the theme or problem
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: - A
England hath need of thee: she is a fen - B
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, - B
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, - A
Have forfeited their ancient English dower - A
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; - B
Oh! raise us up, return to us again; - B
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. - A
Sestet - solves the problem
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; - C
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: - D
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, - D
So didst thou travel on life's common way , - E
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart - C
The lowliest duties on herself did lay. - E
Questions?