Techniques for Poetry Analysis

alliteration

the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words—for example, "cease, mysong, till fair Aurora rise (Phillis Wheatley, "An Hymn to the Evening")

allusion

brief, often implicit and indirect reference within a literary text to something outside the text, whether another text (e.g., the Bible, a myth, another literary work, a painting or a piece of music) or any imaginary or historical person, place, or thing

anaphora

figure of speech involving the repetition of the same word or phrase in (and especially at the beginning of) successive lines, clauses, or sentences, as in "We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain— / Wepassed the Setting Sun—" (Emily Dickinson, "Because I could not stop for Death—")

assonance

repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of Words with different endings—for example, "The death ofthe poet was kept from his poems" in W. H. Auden's "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

caesura

short pause within a line of poetry

connotation

connotation what is suggested by word, apart from what it literally means or how it is defined in the dictionary

consonance

the repetition of certain consonant sounds in close proximity, as in mishmash

end-stopped line

line of verse that contains or concludes a complete clause and usually ends with a punctuation mark

enjambment

in poetry, the technique of running over from one line to the next without stop, as in the following lines by Pat Mora: "I live in a doorway/ between two rooms." The lines themselves would be described as enjambed.

imagery

broadly defined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object. Imagery may be described as auditory, tactile, visual, or olfactory depending on which sense it primarily appeals to—hearing, touch, vision, or smell.

juxtaposition

placing two or more things next to each other, side by side, to highlight their differences to create contrast, tension, or emphasis

metaphor

figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared implicitly—that is, without the use of a signal such as the word like or as—as in "Love is a rose, but you better not pick it"

personification

figure of speech that involves treating something nonhuman, such as an abstraction, as if it were a person, by endowing it with humanlike qualities, as in "Death entered the room"

shift/volta/turn

a turn of thought or argument in a poem

sibilance

repetition Ofs or sh sounds, as in sash

simile

figure of speech involving a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, usually using the word like or as to draw the connection, as in "My love is like a red, red rose." An analogy is an extended simile.

speaker

the person who is the voice of a poem

stanza

section of a poem, marked by extra line spacing before and after that often has a single pattern of meter and/or rhyme

tone

attitude a literary work takes toward its subject or that a character in the work or speaker of a poem conveys, especially as revealed through diction