Poetic Devices

Alliteration: repeated consonant sounds at the beginning of words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines. A somewhat looser definition is that it is the use of the same consonant in any part of adjacent words. Example: fast and furious and Peter and Andrew patted the pony at Ascot

Assonance: repeated vowel sounds in words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines. These should be in sounds that are accented, or stressed, rather than in vowel sounds that are unaccented. Example: He’s a bruisin’ loser.

Consonance: repeated consonant sounds at the ending of words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines. These should be in sounds that are accented, or stressed, rather than in vowel sounds that are unaccented. Example: boats into the past and cool soul

Cacophony: a discordant series of harsh unpleasant sounds to help convey disorder. This is often furthered by the combined effect of the meaning and the difficulty of pronunciation.

Euphony: a series of musically pleasant sounds, conveying a sense of harmony and beauty to the language.

Onomatopoeia: words that sound like their meanings. Example: boom, buzz, crackle, gurgle, hiss, pop, sizzle, snap, swoosh, whip, zip

Repetition: the purposeful re-use of words and phrases for an effect. Longer phrases that contain a different key word each time is called parallelism. Many psalms use repetition.

Rhyme: words that have different beginning sounds but whose endings sound alike including the final vowel sound and everything following it.

Slant rhyme/half rhyme: if only the final consonant sounds of the words are the same but the initial consonants and the vowel sounds are different.

Consonance: appears in middle of lines.

Near rhyme: if the final vowel sounds are the same, but the final consonant sounds are slightly different Example: fine, rhyme, poem, goin’

Sight rhyme: words which are spelled the same but are pronounced differently. Example: enough, cough, through, bough

Rhythm: organization of speech rhythms (verbal stresses) into a regular pattern of accented syllables separated by unaccented syllables. Example: i THOUGHT i SAW a PUSsyCAT.

meter: organization of voice patterns (both arrangement of stress and their frequency of repetition over time)

scansion: conscious measure of the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

allegory: a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning. Sometimes it can be a single word or phrase, such as the name of a character or place. Often, it is a symbolic narrative that has not only a literal meaning, but a larger one understood only after reading the entire story or poem.

allusion: a brief reference to some person, historical event, work of art, or Biblical or mythological situation or character

ambiguity: a word or phrase that can mean more than one thing, even in its context. Poets often search out such words to add richness to their work. Often, one meaning seems quite readily apparent, but other, deeper and darker meanings, await those who contemplate the poem. Example: Robert Frost’s “The Subverted Flower”

analogy: a comparison, usually something unfamiliar with something familiar. Example: The plumbing took a maze of turns where even water got lost.

apostrophe: speaking directly to a real or imagined listener or inanimate object, addressing that person or thing by name. Example: O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done…

cliche: any figure of speech that was once clever and original but through overuse has become outdated. If you’ve heard more than two or three other people say it more than 2 or 3 times, chances are the phrase is too timeworn to be useful in your writing.

connotation: the emotional, psychological or social overtones of a word; its implications and associations apart from its literal meaning. Often, this is what distinguishes the precisely correct word from one that is merely acceptable.

Contrast: closely arranged things with strikingly different characteristics.

Denotation: the dictionary definition of a word; its literal meaning apart from any associations or connotations.

Euphemism: an understatement, used to lessen the effect of a statement; substituting something innocuous for something that might be offensive or hurtful. Example: She is at rest.

Hyperbole: an outrageous exaggeration used for effect.

Irony: a contradictory statement or situation to reveal a reality different from what appears to be true.

Metaphor: a direct comparison between two unlike things, stating that one is the other or does the action of the other. Example: His fingers danced across the keyboard.

Metonymy: a figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing is referred to by something closely associated with it. Example: The Crown reported today that…

Oxymoron: a combination of two words that appear to contradict one another. Example: a pointless point of view; bittersweet.

Paradox: a statement in which a seeming contradiction may reveal an unexpected truth. Example: The hurrier I go the behinder i get

Personification: attributing human characteristics to an inanimate object, animal, or abstract idea. Example: The days crept by slowly, sorrowfully.

Pun: Word play in which words with totally different meanings have similar or identical sounds. Example: Like a firefly in the rain, I’m de-lighted.

Simile: A direct comparison to two unlike things using “like” or “as.”

Symbol: An ordinary object, event, animal, or person to which we have attached extraordinary meaning and significance- a flag to represent a country, a lion to represent courage, a wall to symbolize separation. Example: A small cross by the dangerous curve on the road reminded all of Johnny’s death.

Synecdoche: indicating a person, object, etc. by letting only a certain part represent the whole. Example: All hands on deck.

Point of view: concentrates on the vantage point of the speaker, or “teller” of the story or poem. Considered the poem’s “voice”- the pervasive presence behind the overall work(referred to as persona).

3rd person limited: the speaker is not part of the story, but tells about the other characters through the limited perceptions of one another person.

3rd person omniscient: the speaker is not part of the story, but is able to “know” and describe what all characters are thinking.

Line: marks an important visual distinction from prose. Poetry is arranged into a series of units that do not necessarily correspond to sentences, but rather to a series of metrical feet. The line is printed as one single line on the page. If it occupies more than one line, its remainder is usually indented to indicate that it is a continuation. In traditional verse forms, the length of each line is determined by convention, but in modern poetry the poet has more latitude for choice.

Verse: one single line of a poem arranged in a metrical pattern. Also, a piece of poetry or a particular form of poetry such as free verse, blank verse, etc or the art or work of a poet.

Stanza: a division of a poem created by arranging the lines into a unit, often repeated in the same pattern of meter and rhyme throughout the poem; a unit of poetic lines (a “paragraph” within the poem). Stanzas within a poem are separated by blank lines. Stanzas in modern poetry, such as free verse, often do not have lines that are all of the same length and meter, nor even the same number of lines in each stanza. Stanzas created by such irregular line groupings are often indicated by meaning, as in paragraphs of prose.

rhyme scheme: the pattern established by the arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines, such as the ababbcc of the Rhyme Royal stanza from. Capital letters in the alphabetic rhyme scheme are used for the repeating lines of a refrain; the letters x and y indicate unrhymed lines. In quatrains, the popular rhyme scheme of abab is called alternative rhyme or cross rhyme. The abba scheme is called envelope rhyme, and another one frequently used is xaxa.

Enjambment: the continuation of the logical sense—and therefore the grammatical construction— beyond the end of a line of poetry. This is sometimes done with the title, which in effect becomes the first line of the poem.

Lyric: derived from the Greek word for lyre, lyric poetry was originally designed to be sung. One of the three main groups of poetry (the others being narrative and dramatic), lyric verse is the most frequently used modern form, including all poems in which the speaker’s ardent expression of a (usually single) emotional element predominates. Ranging from complex thoughts to the simplicity of playful wit, the melodic imagery of skillfully written lyric poetry evokes in the reader’s mind the recall of similar emotional experiences.

Ode: any of several stanzaic forms more complex than the lyric, with intricate rhyme schemes and irregular number of lines, generally of considerable length, always written in a style marked by rich, intense expression of an elevated thought praising a person or object.

Pantoum: derived from the Malayan pantum, it consists of a varying number of four-line stanzas with lines rhyming alternately; the second and fourth lines of each stanza repeated to form the first and third lines of the succeeding stanza, with the first and third lines of the first stanza forming the second and fourth of the last stanza, but in reverse order so that the opening and closing lines of the poem are identical.

Rondeau: a fixed form used mostly in light or witty verse, usually consisting of fifteen octo- or decasyllabic lines in three stanzas, with only two rhymes used throughout. A word or words from the first part of the first line are used as a (usually unrhymed) refrain ending the second and third stanzas, so the rhyme scheme is aabba aabR aabbaR. Example: “In Flanders Field”

Sestina: a fixed form consisting of six 6 line (usually unrhymed) stanzas in which the end words of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively rotating order, and as the middle and end words of each of the lines of a concluding envoi in the form of a tercet.

Sonnet: a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter with a prescribed rhyme scheme; its subject was traditionally love. Three variations are found frequently in English, although others are occasionally seen.

Shakespearean Sonnet: a style of sonnet used by Shakespeare with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg

Italian (Petrachan) Sonnet: a form of sonnet made popular by Petrach with a rhyme scheme of abbbaabba cdecde or cdcdcd

Spenserian Sonnet: a variant of the Shakespearean form in which the quatrains are linked with a chain or interlocked rhyme scheme, abab bcbc cdcd ee.

Sonnet Sequence: a series of sonnets in which there is a discernible unifying theme, while each retains its own structural independence. All of Shakespeare’s sonnets, were part of a sequence.

Triolet: a poem or stanza of eight lines in which the first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh lines, and the second line as the eighth, with a rhyme scheme of ABaAabAB, as in Aselaid Crapsey's “Song”

Synesthesia: an attempt to fuse different senses by describing one kind of sense impression in words normally used to describe another. Example: The sound of her voice was sweet.

Tone, Mood: a poet reveals attitudes and feelings, in the style of language or expression of thought used to develop the subject. Certain tones include not only irony and satire, but may be loving, condescending, bitter, pitying, fanciful, solemn, and a host of other emotions and attitudes. Tone can also refer to the overall mood of the poem itself, in the sense of a pervading atmosphere intended to influence the readers’ emotional response and foster expectations of the conclusion. Another use of tone is in reference to pitch or to the demeanor of a speaker as interpreted through inflections of the voice; in poetry, this is conveyed through the use of connotation, diction, figures of speech, rhythm and other elements of poetic conversation.