Elements and Techniques of Poetry

Narrative Poetry

poetry that tells a story

Dramatic Poetry

Is a verse that relies heavily on dramatic elements such as monologue or dialogue. Often are narratives - which means they usually tell a story

Lyric Poetry

is a highly musical verse that expresses a speaker’s emotions

Sonnet

is a fourteen-line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, that follows one of a number of different rhyme schemes

ode

a lofty lyric poem on a serious theme

free verse

poetry that avoids the use of regular rhyme, meter, or division in stanzas (follows the rhythms of ordinary speech)

elegiac lyric

expresses a speaker’s feelings of loss, often because of the death of a loved one or friend

imagist poem

a lyric poem that presents a single vivid picture in words

metrical verse

follows a set rhythmic patternf

meter

of a poem is its rhythmical pattern

stanza

is a group of lines in a poem

rhyme

the repetition of sounds at the ends of words

end rhyme

rhyme that occurs at the ends of lines

internal rhyme

the use of rhyming words within lines

slant rhyme

half rhyme, near rhyme, or off rhyme is the substitution of assonance or consonance for true rhyme

alliteration

the repetition of initial consonant sounds

assonance

the repetition of vowel sounds in stressed syllables that end with different consonant sounds; Ex. “molten-golden notes”

consonance

a kind of slant rhyme in which the ending consonant sounds of two words match, but the preceding vowel sound does not, as in the words wind and sound

onomatopoeia

the use of words or phrases that sound like the things to which they refer, such as POW, CLANK

Parallelism

a rhetorical technique in which a writer emphasizes the equal value or weight of two or more ideas by expressing them in the same grammatical form

antithesis

a rhetorical technique in which words, phrases, or ideas are strongly contrasted, often by means of repetition of grammatical structures

hyperbole

an exaggeration made for rhetorical effect