Exhaustive Poetry Unit Study Guide: Forms, Devices, and Analysis

Test Date: Friday, October 2nd
Format:
- Part A - Poem Identification: Based on an excerpt, identify the author (last name only), full title of the poem, and a specific poetic device present in the excerpt. There will be at least $5$ poems to identify in this section.
- Part B - Poem Analysis: Select one poem from Part A and write an analytical paragraph response.
- Part C - Poem Sight Passage: Read an unfamiliar poem and answer analytical questions regarding its form, poetic devices, and central meaning.
Preparation Requirements:
- Read, review, and analyze all mandatory unit poems.
- Memorize the exact spelling of each author's last name and full poem title.
- Master at least two poems comprehensively (themes, structural format, defining features, key quotes, lines, and unique characteristics).
- Review all poetic forms and literary devices.

Lyric: Subjective, reflective poetry featuring a regular rhyme scheme that reveals the speaker's thoughts and feelings to create a single, unified impression.
Concrete Poem: A visual poem arranged in a physical shape that depicts or suggests its subject matter.
Couplet: A pair of rhyming poetic lines written in the same meter.
Narrative: A poem or prose work that tells a story, featuring plot events, characters, and dialogue.
Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter.
- English (Shakespearean) Sonnet: Divided into three quatrains and a concluding couplet, following the rhyme scheme $ABAB\,CDCD\,EFEF\,GG$ .
- Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet: Divided into an eight-line octave rhyming $ABBAABBA$ and a six-line sestet rhyming $CDCDCD$ or $CDECDE$ .

Ode: A dignified, elaborately structured lyric poem praising and glorifying a person, event, or natural feature intellectually rather than emotionally.
Blank Verse: Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.
Free Verse: Rhythmical but non-metrical, unrhymed lines that utilize natural cadence rather than a formal meter.
Epic: A long, dignified narrative poem chronicling the heroic deeds of a figure central to a nation or culture.
Elegy: A formal, melancholy poem lamenting a death or tragic loss, concluding with spiritual or emotional consolation. (Traditionally composed in alternating dactylic hexameter and pentameter lines).
Ballad: A simple, narrative poem written in rhythmic verse, originally intended to be sung or recited.
Light Verse: A category of poetry written primarily for entertainment, such as humorous lyric poetry, limericks, parody, or satire.
Limerick: A lighthearted, humorous nonsense poem consisting of five anapestic lines with the rhyme scheme $AABBA$ (where the $A$ -lines are trimeter and the $B$ -lines are dimeter).

Alliteration: The repetition of initial consonant sounds in adjacent or closely connected words.
- Example: "The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, / The furrow followed free." (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
Allusion: An explicit or implicit reference to a well-known person, place, historical event, literary work, or work of art.
- Example: In John Keats's Ode to a Grecian Urn, "Sylvan" refers to a deity of Greek mythology,