Poetry

1. Poetry Poetry

2. Types of Poetry Lyric poetry - expresses a speaker’s personal thoughts and feelings • Is rich in musical / sound devices • Includes many types such as ballads, hymns and sonnets Narrative poetry • Tells a story • May range from the unfolding of an isolated incident to the narrative of someone’s lifetime • Epics or situational poems

3. Types of poetry continued • Dramatic poetry • Poetry in which one or more characters exist • The speaker addresses a specific listener within the poem, or someone outside of the poem other than the reader

4. Classification by stanza length • Couplet = two lines • Triplet = three lines • Quatrain = four lines • Quintet = five lines • Sestet = six lines • Septet = seven lines • Octave = eight lines

5. Poetry terms • Theme – the central message or idea of the work • SOUND DEVICES: • Onomatopoeia – a word that sounds like its meaning • External rhyme – a similar sound between two words at the end of a line • Internal rhyme – a similar sound between words within a line • Repetition – repeating a word or phrase for emphasis or rhythm

6. Terms • Rhythm – ordered or free occurrences of sound (metered verse or free verse) • Refrain – repetition of a line or phrase at regular intervals, usually at the end of stanzas • Stanza – a division of poetry named for the number of lines it contains (like a paragraph in stories or essays, it breaks up the poem into different, yet related ideas)

7. Terms • Alliteration- repetition of consonant sounds • Assonance – repetition of vowel sounds • Caesura – a pause or sudden break in line created for effect • Parallelism – the repetition of phrases and sentences similar in meaning or structure

8. Devices of Language (or senses) • Speaker – the voice in a poem • Tone – the attitude a writer takes toward subject that is shown through language/word choice • Personification – giving human qualities to inanimate objects • Symbol- any object, person, place, or action that has meaning in itself and stands for something larger than itself • Denotation- the dictionary definition of a word (ex: black=a color resulting from the reflection of all colors of the spectrum

9. Devices of language • Connotation – the suggested or implied meaning of a word (black = dark, scary, morbid) • Hyperbole – over-exaggeration (“That took forever!”) • Irony (verbal) – saying one thing but meaning something else • Allusion – a reference to a famous person, historical event, or literary work • Simile- a comparison between two seemingly unlike things using “like” or “as”

10. Devices of language • Metaphor – a direct comparison between two seemingly unlike things • Extended metaphor – a direct comparison between two things through the whole poem • Imagery – language that appeals to the senses (sight, taste, touch, smell, sound); occurs in the reader’s mind