Poetic Techniques and Elements

Poetic Elements

Figurative Language

Words or phrases used in such a way as to suggest something more than just their usual dictionary meaning

Most figurative speech involves comparisons. Example: If you tell someone standing on a

street corner to jump in the lake, you are speaking figuratively.

Examples: simile, metaphor, hyperbole and personification

Imagery

all images that are created in a poem

a mental picture created with words or phrases that appeal to the senses such as sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch

Literal Language

uses words in their ordinary sense the opposite of figurative language Example: If you tell someone

standing on a diving board to jump, you are speaking literally.

Dramatic Poetry

poetry that utilizes the techniques of drama

Example: a poem uses dramatic monologue where the poem is spoken by one person and is engaged in a dramatic situation, such as “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe.

Lyric Poem

a poem that has a single speaker and expresses a deeply felt thought or emotion that uses a musical quality

the speaker usually is speaking to himself/herself

Example: Many songs are actually lyric poetry.

Narrative

a poem that tells a story Example: “The Raven” is also a

narrative poem about a man’s grief over the loss of a loved one.

Verse

a group of lines in a poem that forms a unit similar to that of a prose paragraph

Two types - Blank and Free

Blank Verse

poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter lines

Free Verse

poetry that does not have fixed rhythm, rhyme, meter or line length

can also change patterns or use no patterns at all

Haiku

a 3-line poem with 17 syllables– The first and third line have 5

syllables each– The second line has 7 syllable

Example: “Dragonfly catcher, How far have you gone today In your wandering?”

Sonnet

A sonnet is a 14 line lyric poem usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter

Consists of 3 stanzas with 4 lines and one stanza with two lines

Rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg

Ballad

anonymous stories told in song usually passed down through

generations

Elegy

a melancholy or mournful lyric poem about death

Epic

a long narrative poem about the deeds of gods and heroes

Fable

a story usually using symbolic characters or setting used to teach a lesson

Example: “Aesop’s Fables”

Poetic Techniques

Alliteration

the repetition of initial consonant sounds

Example: “And how the silence surged softly backward”

Assonance

the repetition of vowel sounds within words

Example: “weak and weary”

Couplet

a pair of lines in poetry that rhyme Example:

“For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”

Irony

the contrast between what is said and what is really meant or between what happens and what was expected to happen

Example: There is a poem called “Casey at the Bat” where Casey came up to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs. Everyone expected him to win the game with a hit or homerun, but he struck out to lose the game.

Metaphor

a figure of speech in which one thing is spoken about as if it were another, unlike thing

helps the reader see the similarities between two things

Example: ”Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly.”

Onomatopoeia

the use of words that imitate sounds

Examples: sizzle, thud, hiss, clang and pow

Personification

a figure of speech in which a non-human object is given human characteristics

Example: “I asked the soft snow to play with me She played and she melted in all her prime”

Repetition

the use of any element of language - a sound, a word, a phrase, or a sentence that is repeated

Example: In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” the word “Nevermore” was repeated many times.

Rhyme

Repetition of sounds at the ends of words

Two types– End Rhyme– Internal Rhyme

End Rhyme

occurs when the rhyming comes at the ends of lines in poetry

Example: “Swans sing before they die - ‘twere no bad

thing Should certain persons die before they

sing.”

Internal Rhyme

occurs when rhyming appears in the same line

Example: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I

pondered, weak and weary.”

Rhythm

a pattern of beats or stresses in spoken or written language

some poems have very specific patterns

Simile

a figure of speech in which like or as is used to make a comparison between two basically unlike ideas

Example: “Claire is as flighty as a sparrow.”

Stanza

a formal division of lines in a poem, considered as a unit which are often separated by spaces