Elements of Poetry

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Elements of Poetry
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Alliteration

• Repeating consonant sounds at the beginning of
  words
• She sells sea shells down by the sea shore

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Assonance

• Repeated vowel sounds
• Hear the mellow wedding bells

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hyperbole

• When the truth is exaggerated
• The dog she saw was as big as a bus!

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personification

• Giving human qualities or an animal, object, or
  idea.
• The trees seemed to warn us with their bare arms.

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symbol

• Something that stands for something else
• Flag freedom

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Idiom

• A figure of speech that cannot be taken literally
• Raining cats and dogs

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stanza

• A group of two or mare lines that form a unit in
  a poem.
• As the icy droplets dance through the air
• I shiver with cold and delight

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metaphor

• A comparison of two unlike things
• Life is a roller coaster

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simile

• Compares two unlike things using the words like
  or as
• He is as strong as an ox

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Onomatopoeia

• Words whose sounds echo their meanings
• Buzz, smack, gargle

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oxymoron

• Joining two contradictions or opposites
• Deafening silence
• Jumbo shrimp

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repetition

• When a sound, word, phrase, or line is repeated
  for emphasis
• Cannon to the right of them
• Cannon to the left of them
• Cannon in front of them

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couplet

• Two rhyming lines
• I have the measles and the mumps,
• a gash, a rash and purple bumps.

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Voice

• Expresses the readers personality

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tone

• Expresses the writers attitude towards his or her
  subject

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imagery

• Words and phrases that help a reader visualize
• A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
• And then the lighting of the lamps.

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Sensory detail

• Words and phrases that add to the sensory
  experience of the reader
• The sword gleamed red like blood.

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rhyme

• Repetition of sounds at the ends of words
• Twas brillig and the slithy toves
• Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
• All mimsy were the borogroves
• And the mome raths outgrabe