Poetry Study Guide

What would you like to learn about poetry?

Metaphor

• Comparison of two seemingly unlike things without using like, as, than, or resembles.

• Almost as if a statement of fact.

• Example: The forest is a loud marketplace.• The fog comes on little cat feet.

Simile

• A comparison of two seemingly unlike things using a connecting word. (Like, as, than, resembles)

• Example: The class is like a crowd at a concert.

• Do dreams dry up like raisins in the sun?

Personification

• Language attributed to nonhuman things.• Example: The trees yawned in the strong

breeze.

• The sky hollered with a thunderous clap.

Onomatopoeia

• The use of a word whose sound imitates its meaning.

• Example: The bee buzzed around the flower.• The snake hissed in the grass.• We heard a honk right before the car accident.

Imagery

• Descriptive language writers use to make word pictures or images.

• Example: Describe the picture to the right in your own words.

Rhythm, Rhyme, Rhyme Scheme, Meter

• Rhythm is the pattern created by the stressed and unstressed syllables of words in sequence.

• Rhyme is the repetition of identical or similar sounds in stressed syllables.

• Rhyme scheme- a pattern of end rhymes.

• Meter- controlled pattern of rhythm.

• Free verse- no set meter or rhyme scheme.

• We will explore these sound devices on Wednesday.

Alliteration, Consonance, Assonance

• Alliteration- repetition of initial consonant sounds.

• Example: Sometimes, super salmon sing songs.

• Assonance- repetition of vowel sounds.

• Example: I love gloves from the oven.

• Consonance- repetition of consonants within nearby words in which the separating vowels differ.

• Examples: live/love, lift/loft, sift/soft, tame/time

Foreshadow

• Suggestion that something may happen• Indication of events/actions to come

Hyperbole

• Exaggeration• Example: This is taking forever. • I could eat a horse.

Allusion

• A casual reference• Example: Melinda speaks of Cubism and

Picasso.

Repetition

• Repetition- the use of any language element more than once.

• Example: Hughes’s repetition of “Let America be America again”

Types of Poetry• Narrative- A story is told in

verse.• Epic- a long narrative poem

about gods and heroes.• Ballad- songlike narrative

about an adventure or romance.

• Lyric- a brief poem is which the author expresses the feelings of a single speaker.

• Dramatic- writer tells a story using a character’s own thoughts or statements.

Elements of Poetry

• Stanza- groupings of lines.

• Couplets- groupings of two lines

• Tercets- three-line stanzas

• Quatrains- four-line stanzas

• Sestet- six-line stanza• Octave- eight-line stanza

Sonnet and Haiku

• Sonnet- fourteen-line lyric poem with formal patterns of rhyme, rhythm, and line structure.

• See assignment for Wednesday and Thursday

• Haiku- poem containing three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables.

• Usually used to convey a single, vivid emotion using imagery.

Iambic Pentameter

• Iamb- short - long• Pentameter- five feet