Poetic Elements and Devices

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Poetic Elements and Devices
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Genres of Poetry

• Lyric Highly musical, expresses feelings to the
  listener.
• Narrative A poem that tells a story in verse.
• Concrete Shape poems. The shape gives it
  meaning.
• Blank Verse Sounds like the way we speak.
  UNRHYMED IAMBIC PENTAMETER.

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Genres Continued

• Free Verse No specific rhyme scheme or rhythm
  necessary.

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Poetic Elements

• Rhyme Repetition of sounds at the ends of words.
• Rhythm The beats. The way your voice naturally
  stresses certain parts of a line.
• Stanza A group of lines in a poem considered as
  a unit.

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Elements Continued

• Imagery a word or phrase that appeals to one of
  the five senses.
• Metaphors A comparison, one thing is spoken of
  as if it were something else. Ex. Death is the
  long sleep.
• Similes A comparison, using like or as. Ex.
  Death is like the long sleep.
• Personification giving human characteristics to
  non-human things.

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Sound Effects

• Assonance The repetition of vowel sounds.
• Alliteration Repetition of initial (beginning)
  consonant sounds. Ex. She sells sea shells by
  the seashore.
• Consonance Repetition of consonant sounds in a
  word of phrase.
• Onomatopoeia Words that imitate sounds. Ex.
  gurgle, quack, hiss.

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Elements Continued

• Hyperbole gross exaggeration for effect
  overstatement.
• Oxymoron contradictory terms brought together
  to express a paradox for strong effect.
• Ex. Beautiful tyrant, jumbo shrimp

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Elements Continued

• Euphemism a figure of speech using indirection
  to avoid offensive bluntness, such as deceased
  for dead or remains for corpse.
• Parable a story designed to suggest a principle,
  illustrate a moral, or answer a question.
• Paradox a statement that seems to be
  self-contradicting, but in fact, is true.

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Elements Continued

• Parody a composition that imitates the style of
  another composition normally for comic effect.
• Heroic couplet two end-stopped iambic
  pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc, with the
  thought usually completed in the two-line unit.
• Iamb a two-syllable foot with an unaccented
  syllable followed by an accented syllable. The
  iamb is the most common foot in English poetry.

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Elements Continued

• Internal rhyme rhyme that occurs within a line,
  rather than at the end.
• Pentameter a line containing five feet.
• Hexameter a line containing six feet.
• Sonnet normally a fourteen-line iambic
  pentameter poem with two rhyming couplets at the
  end.
• Tetrameter a line of four feet.
• Terza rima a three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb,
  cdc.