Elements of Poetry

What is Poetry?

Prose is the language people use in speaking or writing

Poetry is Verse (a line of Poetry) in a musical language; like
singing
 Characteristics of Poetry
• Prose has a narrator
• Poetry has a speaker that talks to the reader - a poet, an
animal or even a thing
Example
But believe me, son.
I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you.

From “Once Upon a Time” by Gabriel Okara

 Characteristics of Poetry
– A line
– is a row of words that may or may not form a
complete sentence
– A stanza
–is a group of lines forming a unit
–each stanza is separated by a space.
Example:
A line
Open it.

A stanza
Go ahead, it won’t bite.
Well…maybe a little.

from “The First Book” by Rita Dove

 Figurative Language
Words or expressions that convey something other than
the literal meaning of their words - such as similes,
metaphors and personification. Poets use figures of speech
to make descriptions more vivid and colourful.
1. Simile
Using a word such as “like” or “as” to compare seemingly
unlike things
Example
The Alarm clock went off like a bomb!
She’s as mad as a hatter!
Joe is as hungry as a bear
 Can you link the ideas below to
make similes'?
Her face was like a runaway horse.

Ella’s eyes gleamed like pearls.

He bolted out of the room as round as the full moon.

Grandmother’s false teeth like charging bulls.

The children ran sparkled like diamonds.

 Figurative Language
2. Metaphor
Comparing seemingly unlike things, but does not use “like” or
“as”
Example
The moon is a white sliver
The moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas
My love is a red, red rose
Lenny is a snake
All the world is a stage
 Can you complete these
metaphors?
The bats winked from the treasure chest.

A waterfall danced on the cave walls.

The cave were black velvet scarves.

Gold coins was a curtain of glittering, blue silk.

The torchlight is a gloomy prison for the climber.

 Similes and Metaphors
Write in brackets whether the sentence is an example of a
metaphor or simile:

• As slippery as an eel.
• Arnie was a man-mountain.
• He was a lion in battle.
• She is as pretty as a picture.
• The striker was a goal machine.
• The torch lit up the room as if the sun had risen early.
• The moon was a misty shadow.
• My friend has a face like a bag of spanners.
 Figurative Language
3. Personification
Attributes human like characteristics to an animal, object
or idea.
Example
The ants marched home
Sun went to bed!
The trees whispered to each other in the darkness
The sun stretched its lazy fingers over the valley.
 Sound Devices
1. Alliteration
• The repetition of the initial consonant sound or letter at
the beginning of words:
Example:
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies

A fly and a flea flew up in a flue.

Said the fly to the flea, “What shall we do?”
 Sound Devices
2. Assonance
• The repetition of vowel sounds within a line of poetry

Example:
Do you like blue?
We viewed the movie about mooing rookies at the school.

“Well he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no”

 Sound Devices
3. Onomatopoeia
• Words that sound like what they mean.

Example
Screech, scream, holler, and yell –
Buzz a buzzer, clang a bell,
Toot a whistle, kick a can,
Bang a spoon against a pan,
Rattle a window, slam a door,
 Rhyme
Internal Rhyme
• The rhyming of words within one line of poetry

Example:
“Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered, weak and weary…”

“While I nodded, nearly napping,

suddenly there came a tapping...”
 Rhyme
• The repetition of sounds at the ends of words
Example:
My beard grows to my toes,
I never wears no clothes,
I wraps my hair
Around my bare,
And down the road I goes.
 Rhyme Scheme
• The pattern of end rhymes that is assigned a
different letter of the alphabet to each new rhyme
Example:
“All mine!" Yertle cried. "Oh, the things I now rule!
I'm king of a cow! And I'm king of a mule! A
I'm king of a house! And what's more, beyond that, A
I'm king of a blueberry bush and cat! B
I'm Yertle the Turtle! Oh, marvelous me! B
For I am the ruler of all that I see!” C
from “Yertle the Turtle” by Dr. Seuss C
 Rhythm
• The pattern of sound created by stressed and unstressed
syllables in lines of verse. In the following lines from "Same
in Blues" by Langston Hughes, the accented words and
syllables are underlined:
Example:
• I said to my baby,
Baby take it slow....
 Rhythm
Repetition
Using the same key word or phrase throughout a poem to
add rhythm or to emphasize an idea
Example 1
Time to spend; Example 2:
time to mend.
“And miles to go before I sleep,
Time to hate;
And miles to go before I sleep.”
time to wait.
“Stopping By Woods on a Snowy
Evening”
 Forms of Poetry
1. Narrative Poetry: tells a story like a Ballad ( a song or
poem passed on by word of mouth for generations or Epic
(centered on the actions of a heroic figure)
2. Dramatic Poetry: one or more characters speak.
3. Lyric Poetry: expresses a speaker’s personal thoughts and
feelings; usually short and musical like the sonnet
A sonnet consists of 14 lines made up of three quatrains
(a four line stanza) and a final couplet (a two line stanza)
 Example of a Sonnet
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 1st. quatrain
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
2nd. quatrain
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade 3rd. quatrain
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

couplet
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.