Poetry

• distinguished from prose in terms of forms by its compression

• meter and rhyme

• line

• heightened vocabulary

• freedom of syntax

• emotional content

• implicit or explicit comparison

• music and message combined

Types of Poetry

• Lyric Poetry

  • song

  • ode

  • elegy

  • sonnet

  • simple lyric

• Narrative Poetry

  • ballad

  • epic

  • metrical romance

  • metrical tale

  • idyll

Elements of Poetry

formal elements

• line

• stanza (refrain)

  • types of stanza

    • couplet - 2

    • tercet - 3

    • quatrain - 4

    • quintain - 5

    • sestet - 6

    • septet - 7

    • octet -8

  • refrain

    • verse that is repeated at intervals throughout a song or a poem

• rhythm or prosody

• meter

• stress

  • when one syllable is emphasized more than the other

• meter

  • recurrence of regular units of stressed and unstressed syllables

• rhythm

  • beat and peace of a poem and is created by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables

Sound Elements

• sound devices (alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia)

  • alliteration

    • repetition of the beginning sound

  • assonance

    • repetition of similar vowels

  • onomatopoeia

    • use of words whose sound suggests their meanings

• rhyme and rhyme scene (based on position or on matching sounds)

  • position

    • beginning

      • occurs at the beginning of a line

    • internal

      • within a line

    • end

      • end of a line

  • matching sounds

    • perfect

      • final vowel & consonant sounds are the same (sound, ground)

    • imperfect

      • final consonant sounds in two words are the same (alone, gone)

    • eye

      • appear (spelling) to be perfect (wind, behind; bough, trough)

  • rhyme scene

    • formal arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or a poem

other literary elements & devices

• subject and theme

  • subject - explicit image used in the poem

  • theme - implicit idea expressed in the poem

• persona

  • latin for mask

  • character taken on by a poet to speak in a first-person

• diction

  • word choice that determines the level of language, as well as word order

  • abstract vs concrete

  • denotation vs connotation

  • literal vs figurative

• imagery

  • use of vivid description that appeals to a reader’s senses to create an image or idea in their head

• figures of speech

  • simile

  • metaphor

  • personification

  • hyperbole

  • irony

  • litotes

  • metonymy

  • synecdoche

  • paradox

  • oxymoron

  • allusion

  • apostrophe

• tone and mood

  • speaker’s attitude

  • overall atmosphere of the poem for the readers