Poetry Unit Literary Devices

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Poetry UnitLiterary Devices
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Alliteration

• The repetition of initial consonant sounds draws
  attention to certain words or ideas
• Slowly, silently, now the moon
• Walks the night in her silver moon

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Allusion

• A reference to a well-known person, place event,
  literary work, or work of art
• Ex Robert Frosts Nothing Gold Can Stay
  references the Garden of Eden

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Atmosphere (mood)

• The feeling created in the reader by the poem it
  may be images, dialogue, words usually
  established at the beginning

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Audience

• The particular group of readers the poet is
  addressing this is considered by the poet when
  he/she chooses his/her tone, word choice, etc.

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Concrete poem

• A poem with a shape that suggest its subject
• Poe's                  raven told           
  him nothing nevermore                  and
  Vincent's circling                    crows were
  a threat to destroy                     
  sunlight. Now I saw a bird, black with a
  yellow                        beak, orange
  rubber legs                           pecking to
  kill the                             lawn, storm
  bird                              hates with
  claw,                                  evil
  beak,                                       
  s                                       
  u                                       
  n                                    and eye
• By Don J. Carlson

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Couplet

• A pair of lines (two) that usually ryhme

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Dialect

• The form of language from a particular people or
  group differences include punctuation, grammar,
  and word choice

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Dialogue

• A conversation between characters usually set
  off with quotations

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Imagery

• Words or phrases that appeal to one or more of
  the five senses

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Inference

• Taking the information and details at hand, and
  making an educated guess

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Irony

• Situational when what happens is in direct
  contradiction to what actually occurs
• Dramatic when the readers know something that
  the characters do not

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Metaphor

• Comparison of two unlike things a figure of
  speech where something is described as something
  else

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Simile

• A figure of speech that uses like or ass to
  make a direct comparison of two unlike things

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Narrative poem

• A story told in verse that has all the elements
  of a short story (conflict, plot, characters)

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Onomatopoeia

• Use of words that imitate sounds
• Ex buzz, crash

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Paraphrase

• Restate the lines in your own words

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Climax - narrative
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Personification

• A nonhuman subject is given human characteristics

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Point of view

• The perspective from which the story is told
• 1st, 2nd, 3rd

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Prose

• Ordinary form of written language

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Quatrain

• Four lines in poetry

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Refrain (chorus)

• Regularly repeated lines or group of lines in a
  poem

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Repetition

• The use, more than once, of sounds, words,
  clauses, phrases

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Rhyme

• The repetition of sounds at the ends of words

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Rhyme Scheme

• The regular pattern of rhyming words in the poem

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Speaker

• The imaginary voice assumed by the writer in the
  poem the character who tells the poem

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Stanza

• The formal division of lines in a poem
• Ex couplet, quatrain, etc.

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Theme

• The central message the lesson learned a
  universal truth

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Hyperbole

• An obvious and intentional exaggeration
• Ex Id give a million dollars for a bite of
  that cookie.

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Symbolism

• Anything that stands or represents something else

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Free Verse

• Poetry not written in any rhyme scheme or pattern

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Lyric poem

• A short, highly musical poem that expresses that
  feelings and observations of a single speaker

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Ballad

• A songlike poem that often deals with adventure
  or romance and tells a story usually written in
  4 to six line stanzas has often repeated lines