Poetry: What do you call it when…

• Several words in a line have similar consonant sounds: alliteration

o Over his shoulder, digging down and down [Digging]
• Several words have similar vowel sounds: assonance
o Till wind distresses tail and mane [At Grass]
• Two words have the same sound: rhyme
o …rasping sound / gravely ground [Digging]
• Two words almost rhyme, but not fully: pararhyme
o …shadows / … meadows [At Grass]
• A line has punctuation at the end of it, especially a full-stop or semi-colon:
end-stopped line
o I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. [Mirror]
• A line ‘runs on’ to the next, having no punctuation at its end: enjambment
o In a cage of first March sun a woman / sits not listening
(N.B.: the / indicates where the line ends) [Miracle on St David’s Day]
• An object or action in the poem suggests many possible ideas: symbolism
o The squat pen [Digging];
o Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, [The Road not
Taken]
• A poet makes a direct comparison of one thing to another: simile
o Outside the daffodils are as still as wax [Miracle on St
David’s Day]
• A writer uses another object, event or action to describe something they have
experienced: metaphor
o Now I am a lake. [Mirror]
• A writer uses a part of an object to represent the whole of it: metonym
o Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds /Bends low
(Note that Heaney uses the ‘rump’ to stand for the whole of his father.)
[Digging]
• A poem is a story told in the first person, often in the present tense:
monologue:
o When I am an old woman I shall wear purple [Warning]
• A series of statements begin with the same word or words: anaphora
o You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me
with your eyes, You may kill me … [Still I Rise]
• A writer uses a word whose sound is reminiscent of the sound being
described: onomatopoeia:
o A clean rasping sound [Digging]
• A writer gives human attributes to an object or animal: anthropomorphism
o Look at Mirror.
• A writer describes a non-human animal or object as if it were a person:
personification (this is itself a form of metaphor):
o The musty dark hoarded an armoury [The Barn]
• A group of lines are put together: stanza
• A weak syllable is followed by a stressed syllable: iamb
o The eye can hardly pick them out [At Grass]
• A stressed syllable is followed by a weak syllable: trochee:
o I am silver and exact [Mirror]
• What do I call the vowel sounds ‘ee’ ‘ay’ ‘ai’ ‘oh’ ‘ewe’? Open vowels (their
opposites, such as the ‘i’ in ‘opposite’ are closed vowels
o Vowels can also be front or back: ‘ay’ (as in ‘say’) is fronted (it is
formed at the front of the mouth), as is ‘ee’; the others are back
vowels. Front vowels are much brighter, whereas back vowels are
darker and heavier.
• What do I call the consonants ‘b’ and ‘p’? Plosives
• What do I call the consonants ‘d’ and ‘t’? Dentals
• What do I call the consonants ‘f’ and ‘v’? Fricatives
• What do I call the consonants ‘s’ and ‘z’? Sibillants
• What do I call the consonant ‘l’? Liquid
Reading Metaphors and Similes:
Metaphors and similes are essential parts of language: without them, we would be
unable to communicate. They carry out three main functions:
1. When I wish to communicate to you something that you have no
experience of, I need to find some ‘common ground’, an experience or
idea we both share, so that you may understand my thoughts or
feelings. For example:
a. ‘My Year 9 lesson today was a battle.’ (you were not there, but
you understand from the idea of a battle that the experience was
a difficult, painful and arduous one for me.)
b. ‘Mr Smith brought a breath of fresh air to the discussion.’
(We all know that fresh air is a pleasant experience, and
suggests that Mr Smith was able to enliven and rejuvenate a
stale meeting. – Note that ‘stale’ is itself a metaphor: I am
using the concept of food to enrich your understanding of the
idea.)
2. We use metaphors to allow us to understand abstract concepts, such as
time, love, relationships:
a. Time can be:
i. A liquid (it flows)
ii. Money (it can be saved or wasted, and spent wisely or
foolishly)
b. Love can be:
i. A flame
ii. An arrow to your heart
iii. Deeply, shatteringly disappointing
3. Poets often use metaphors in a lively, unconventional way, to bring
new life to a stale or everyday concept:
a. ‘The air was thick with a bass chorus.’ [Death of a
Naturalist]. Here, Heaney uses the metaphor of music to
describe the sound the frogs make (achieving thereby a comic,
if also threatening contrast between the vile croaking of the
frogs and the wonderful sound of music); he also uses the
metaphor of cloth to describe the air, which adds to the
oppressive, suffocating mood of the line.
4. Sometimes poets create metaphors out of several linked ideas. For
example, in Digging, Heaney uses the peat which his father and
grandfather dug as a metaphor for the history of Ireland and of their
family. The ‘living roots’ and ‘good turf’ contrast with the dry
lifelessness of the ‘clean, rasping sound’ of gravel.

Writing About Them:

The important feature of figurative language is to look at the image the poet has
chosen to illuminate the object or event they wish to describe. When Gillian Clarke
likens daffodils to ‘wax’ we must think about what wax suggests to us: it can be cold,
lifeless and perhaps eerie, in the way it is used to create life-like models of people.