Poetry Notes

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Poetry Notes
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SIMILE- A comparison of two unlike things
using the words like or as in a phrase or
sentence.

• Example
• I saw five of them,
• parked like a week
• of schooldays.
• School Buses,
• Russell Hoban

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METAPHOR- The direct comparison of two unlike
things without using like or as.

• Example
• My cat, washing her tails tip,
• is a whorl
• of white shell
• Cat on a Couch,
• Barbara Howes

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PERSONIFICATION- Giving human traits and
actions to non-human things, ideas, and
qualities.

• Example
• It cools its
• Heels in the
• Driveway, resting
• Its metal, smiling
• Automobile,
• Valerie Worth

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Onomatopoeia- the imitation of sounds by words
either directly or suggestively

• Example
• Every bee
• that
• ever was
• was
• partly
• sting
• and partly
• buzz
• Bees,
• Jack Prelutsky

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Alliteration- the rhyme of initial consonant
sounds

• Example
• I give you over to
• the broad flapping fingers of a
• mechanical genie
• Car Wash,
• Myra Cohn Livingston

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Assonance- the agreement of vowel sounds when
the endings differ

• Example
• Life doesnt frighten me at all
• Not at all
• Not at all.
• Life doesnt frighten me at all.
• Life Doesnt Frighten Me,
• Maya Angelou

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Symbol- a figure in which a concrete object is
used to stand for an abstract idea

• Example
• Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
• I took the one less traveled by,
• And that has made all the difference.
• The Road Not Taken,
• Robert Frost

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Imagery- figurative language that allows for
images in the mind of the reader.

• Example
• Moon is shining.
• Night sky is blue.
• Stars are great drops
• Of golden dew.
• Harlem Night Song,
• Langston Hughes

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Repetition- the repeating of a word or phrase
for emphasis the same phrase, however, is not
repeated regularly throughout the poem as in the
refrain.

• Example
• And it always was Night,
• Night,
• Night.
• Joey,
• Shel Silverstein

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Rhyme

• Example
• I quarreled with my brother,
• I dont know what about,
• One thing led to another
• And somehow we fell out.
• The Quarrel,
• Eleanor Farjeon

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Diction- a writers or speakers choice of words

• Example
• While I slept, while I slept in the dark still
  heat.
• She would come to my bedside stepping cooly
• And smooth the twisted trouble sheet
• While I slept.
• While I Slept,
• Robert Francis

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Hyperbole- an obvious exaggeration for the sake
of effect without any attempt at deception

• Example
• And fired the shot heard round
• the world.

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Rhetorical Question- a question to which no
answer is expected or which implies its own
answer.

• Example
• is life so dear, or peace so
• sweet as to be purchased at the price of
  chains and slavery?

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Allegory-a prolonged metaphor a narrative in
which characters, objects and events have
underlying political, religious, moral, or social
meanings.

• Example
• Humpty Dumpty
• Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
• Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
• All the kings horses
• And all the kings men
• Couldnt put Humpty Dumpty
• together again

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• Humpty Dumpty was King Charles I.
• The wall was the kings position of power.
• The fall was the kings execution.
• The last three lines tell the reader that once
  killed, no one and nothing can help the king.

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Oxymoron- fuses two contradictory /opposing ideas

• Example
• freezing fire
• happy grief

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Paradox- statement which appears
contradictory, but actually presents a truth

• Example
• Thou canst not every day give me thy heart
• If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest
  it
• Lovers Infiniteness,
• John Donne

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End rhyme- the correspondence between the
sound of words at the end of lines Example

• The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
• But I have promises to keep,

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Internal rhyme- rhyme of words in the same line
or between a word in the line and one with the
next

• Example
• We were the first that ever burst
• The trees were black where the bark was
  wetI see them yet, in the spring of the
  year

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Consonance- the agreement of ending consonant
sounds when the vowel sound differ

• Example
• gross-crass
• live-dove

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Refrain- a group of words, a line, or a group
of lines which recurs regularly at the end of
successive stanzas.

• Example
• Every stanza but the last in Alfred
• Lord Tennysons Mariana concludes with the
  following two-line refrain
• She said, I am aweary, aweary,
• O God, that I were dead!

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Rhyme Scheme- the pattern of rhymes in as
stanza It is usually marked by the use of
letters of the alphabet, beginning with a a and
using the same letter to denote all lines which
rhyme.

• Example
• they glide like phantoms, into the wide hall, A
• Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide B
• .sprawl, A
• .side B
• .hide, B
• ...ownsC
• slide B
• stones C

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Exact Rhyme use of identical rhyming sound

• Example
• love/dove

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Slant Rhyme use of similar rhyming sound

• Example
• prove/glove

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Dissonance harsh/inharmonious sounds

• Example
• worse than slant rhyme

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Verse a single line of poetry

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Stanza a unit of poetry consisting of a group
of related verses generally with definite
metrical pattern and rhyme scheme.

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Blank Verse unrhymed iambic pentameter

• Example
• When I see birches bend to left and right
• Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
• I like to think some boys been swinging them.
• But swinging doesnt bend them down to stay
• As ice-storms do
• Birches,
• Robert Frost

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Free Verse poetry with irregular meter and
usually without rhyme, but not the regular
rhythm of traditional poetry

• Example
• in the quiver on Pariss back the head
• of the arrow of Achilles heel
• smiled in its sleep
• and Helen stepped from the palace to gather
• as she would do every day in that season
• from the grove the yellow ray flowers tall
• The Judgment of Paris,
• W.S. Merwins

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Couplet a pair of successive verses which rhyme

• Example
• Once or twice this side of death
• Things can make one hold his breath.

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Quatrain a stanza of four lines, the most
common in English

• Octave-a stanza of eight lines, probably
• the second most common in English.
• It is also the name given to the first
• eight lines of an Italian sonnet.

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Class Practice

• Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes
• What happens to a dream deferred?
• Does it dry up
• Like a raisin in the sun?
• Or fester like a sore-
• And then run?
• Does it stink like rotten meat?
• Or crust and sugar over-
• Like a syrup sweet?
• Maybe it just sags
• Like a heavy load.
• Or does it explode?

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Note the use of

• Alliteration
• Assonance
• Rhyme
• Repetition
• Symbolism
• Allusion
• Consonance

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On your own-Look for simile, metaphor, imagery,
rhyme, and alliteration

• Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
• By Robert Frost
• 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.

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• My little horse must think it queer
• To stop without a farmhouse near
• Between the woods and frozen lake
• The darkest evening of the year.
• He gives his harness bells a shake
• To ask if there is some mistake.
• The only other sounds the sweep
• Of easy wind and downy flake.

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• The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
• But I have promises to keep,
• And miles to go before I sleep,
• And miles to go before I sleep.