Poetry and sound devices

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Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,
Margaret Layton © 2018
 Poetry and sound devices

1. The origin of the terms

• Poetry derives its name from the Greek verb poiêin
which means ‘to create’. It was born as an oral art,
generally accompanied by dancing and music and is the
oldest form of literature.

• People used poetry as a means

to express the most to convey the

remarkable events feelings associated
in their lives. with them.

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 Poetry and sound devices

2. Musical patterns
• Poetry is characterised by musical patterns of sounds
which are based on the natural qualities
of spoken language.

• Its language is far more condensed and intensified:

the poet combines words to make his reader feel what
he has felt and experience what he has experienced.

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 Poetry and sound devices

3. Basic structurals units

The structural units of poetry are

the stanza
the line (a section of a poem the canto
(the basic unit) which consists of or book
several lines)

All these can vary almost infinitely

• A line of poetry in English is usually from eight to

twelve syllables in length.

• Stanzas are normally from two to twelve lines long.

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 Poetry and sound devices

4. Common types of stanzas

• The types of stanzas are:

- the couplet (two lines);

- the tercet (three lines);
- the quatrain (four lines);
- the sestet (six lines);
- the octave (eight lines).

A complete poem may consist of only two lines, as in the

case of the epigram, while narrative poems may extend
over thousands of lines.

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 Poetry and sound devices

5. Rhythm
• Rhythm generally refers to the pace or speed
of a poem.

• While the Italian language is syllable-timed, English is

stress-timed.

• Stress is much more important to rhythm

than syllables.

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 Poetry and sound devices

6. Metre

• An important part of the rhythm is metre, which is

the ‘beat’ of a poem.

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 Poetry and sound devices

7. Sound devices: rhyme

• Poems are said to rhyme when the last word of two
or more lines has the same ending sound:
When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all

• Rhymes are identified by the letters of the alphabet.

The pattern they create is called a rhyme scheme.

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 Poetry and sound devices

8. Blank verse

• A common form based on iambic pentameter is

blank verse.

Blank verse lines are unrhymed

• The use of blank verse achieves extreme flexibility,

almost giving poetry the quality of everyday speech.
This is why it is often found in Elizabethan drama,
for example in Macbeth by Shakespeare.

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