Elements of Poetry
Osei Yaw Akoto
Department of English
KNUST, Ghana
POETRY
A type of
literature that
expresses ideas,
feelings, or tells a
story in a specific
form (usually
using lines and
stanzas)
Diction
The choice of words of the speaker. It
deals with what the words mean, what
the words imply or suggest. We can
arrive at these by looking at their
denotative or connotative/associative
meanings. The words may be simple,
complex,
Figurative Language
Figurative language is words not meant to
be taken literally. The words are
symbolic. We know these images as
metaphor, simile, personification,
hyperbole, and others.
Metaphor
Direct Metaphor
Comparing two unlike objects or ideas
My love is a rose
Metaphor, Continued
Indirect metaphor
- An indirect comparison between two
unlike things.
“My love has a rosy bloom”
Simile
A comparison using like or as
“Life is like a box of chocolates”
Personification
Giving human qualities to an inanimate
object
“The moon smiled down on the lovers”
Sound Techniques
Rhyme Scheme
Alliteration
Onomatopoeia
Rhyme Scheme
Heavy is my heart, A
Dark are thine eyes B
Thou and I must part A
Ere the sun rise B
Rhyme Scheme- The pattern in which end rhyme
occurs
• Example:
Continuous as the stars that shine (A)
And twinkle on the milky way, (B)
They stretched in never-ending line (A)
Along the margin of a bay: (B)
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, (C)
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. (C)
Alliteration
Repetition of the initial consonant sound
“She sells seashells at the sea shore”
ALLITERATION
Consonant sounds repeated at the
beginnings of words
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers, how many pickled peppers did
Peter Piper pick?
Onomatopoeia
A word whose sound imitates its
meaning
More onomatopoeia
“The bee buzzed by my ear “
“The clock ticked down the final hour”
“The engine purred while awaiting the
green light”
Stanza
•A unit of lines grouped together •
•Similar to a paragraph in prose
Couplet- •A stanza consisting of two
lines that rhyme
Quatrain - •A stanza consisting of four
lines
Mood- the feeling a poem creates for
the reader
Tone - the attitude a poet takes toward
his/her subject
Imagery
•Representation of the five senses:
sight, taste, touch, sound, and smell
•Creates mental images about a
poem’s subject
• Example: “Continuous as the
stars that shine and twinkle on the
milky way”
Imagery
An image is language that describes
something that can be seen, heard,
touched, tasted, or smelled.
The images in a literary work are
referred to, when considered together,
as the work’s imagery.
Sight
The sun’s
beams
shimmered and
danced on the
ocean’s gentle
waves.
Smell
The fragrant
roses drifted
through the
room like
elusive ghosts.
Sound
Although they could
not see outside the
cabin, they could
hear the eerie
tapping, tapping,
tapping, of his knife
upon their door.
Taste
The
cheesecake’s
exquisite flavor
traveled from
his tongue to
his spine.
Touch
The icy breeze
gently brushed
against the hair
on her neck,
and goose-
bumps shortly
followed.
Symbol
•A word or object that has its own
meaning and represents another word,
object or idea •
• Example: The daffodils
represent happiness and pleasure
to the author.
Assonance
•The repetition of a vowel sound in two
or more words in the line of a poem •
• Example: “Which is the bliss of
solitude”
ASSONANCE
Repeated VOWEL sounds in a line or
lines of poetry.
(Often creates near rhyme.)
Lake Fate Base Fade
(All share the long “a” sound.)
ASSONANCE cont.
Examples of ASSONANCE:
“Slow the low gradual moan came in the
snowing.”
- John Masefield
“Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet
sleep.”
- William Shakespeare
CONSONANCE
Similar to alliteration EXCEPT . . .
The repeated consonant sounds can be
anywhere in the words
“silken, sad, uncertain, rustling . . “
Refrain
•The repetition of one or more phrases
or lines at certain intervals, usually at
the end of each stanza •Similar to the
chorus in a song
Repetition
•A word or phrase repeated within a
line or stanza •
• Example: “gazed and gazed”
POINT OF VIEW IN POETRY
POET SPEAKER
• The poet is the • The speaker of the
author of the poem. poem is the
“narrator” of the
poem, technically
called the persona.
Poetry Form
Form is the structure of the poem. Any
type of writing must have something to
hold it together.
The structure can be created through
many means: meter, stanza, rhyme
scheme, or set patterns of poetry like
sonnet, haiku , concrete, and others.
FREE VERSE POETRY
Does NOT have Free verse poetry is
rhyme. very conversational -
sounds like someone
talking with you.
A more modern type
of poetry.
BLANK VERSE POETRY
from Julius Ceasar
Cowards die many times before their
Written in lines of deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but
iambic pentameter, once.
but does NOT use Of all the wonders that I yet have
end rhyme. heard,
It seems to me most strange that men
should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
RHYME
Words sound alike LAMP
because they share STAMP
the same ending
vowel and
Share the short “a”
consonant sounds.
vowel sound
Share the combined
“mp” consonant
(A word always sound
rhymes with itself.)
END RHYME
A word at the end of one line rhymes
with a word at the end of another line
Hector the Collector
Collected bits of string.
Collected dolls with broken heads
And rusty bells that would not ring.
INTERNAL RHYME
A word inside a line rhymes with
another word on the same line.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I
pondered weak and weary.
From “The Raven”
by Edgar Allan Poe
NEAR RHYME
a.k.a imperfect ROSE
rhyme, close rhyme LOSE
The words share Different vowel
EITHER the same sounds (long “o”
vowel or consonant and “oo” sound)
sound BUT NOT Share the same
BOTH consonant sound
SOME TYPES OF POETRY
LYRIC
A short poem
Usually written in first person point of
view
Expresses an emotion or an idea or
describes a scene
Do not tell a story and are often musical
(Many of the poems we read will be
lyrics.)
SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
A fourteen line poem Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
with a specific rhyme Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
scheme. Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
The poem is written in By chance or nature’s changing course
untrimmed.
three quatrains and But thy eternal summer shall not fade
ends with a couplet. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st
The rhyme scheme is So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
abab cdcd efef gg
NARRATIVE POEMS
A poem that tells a Examples of Narrative
story. Poems
Generally longer
than the lyric styles “The Raven”
of poetry b/c the “The Highwayman”
poet needs to
establish characters “Casey at the Bat”
and a plot. “The Walrus and the
Carpenter”
CONCRETE POEMS
Poetry
In concrete poems, Is like
the words are Flames,
Which are
arranged to create a Swift and elusive
picture that relates Dodging realization
Sparks, like words on the
to the content of the Paper, leap and dance in the
Flickering firelight. The fiery
poem. Tongues, formless and shifting
Shapes, tease the imiagination.
Yet for those who see,
Through their mind’s
Eye, they burn
Up the page.
OTHER
POETIC DEVICES
Hyperbole
Exaggeration often used for emphasis.
Litotes
Understatement - basically the opposite
of hyperbole. Often it is ironic.
Ex. Calling a slow moving person
“Speedy”
Idiom
An expression where the literal meaning
of the words is not the meaning of the
expression. It means something other
than what it actually says.
Ex. It’s raining cats and dogs.
Allusion
Allusion comes from A tunnel walled and
the verb “allude” overlaid
which means “to With dazzling crystal: we
had read
refer to”
Of rare Aladdin’s
An allusion is a wondrous cave,
reference to And to our own his name
something famous. we gave.
From “Snowbound”
John Greenleaf Whittier
