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1. Poetry Device Notes Definition
Use in Modern Day Language
2. Simile Def: 2 things are compared using “like” or “as”
Lang: “Life is like a box of chocolates”
Example: The Base Stealer
3. The Base Stealer
by Robert Francis
Poised between going on and back, pulledBoth ways taut like a tightrope-walker,Fingertips pointing the opposites,Now bouncing tiptoe like a dropped ballOr a kid skipping rope, come on, come on,Running a scattering of steps sidewise,How he teeters, skitters, tingles, teases,Taunts them, hovers like an ecstatic bird,He's only flirting, crowd him, crowd him,Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate – now!
4. Metaphor Def: 2 things compared without using “like” or “as”
Lang: “that test was a piece pf cake”
Example: The Garden Hose
5. The Garden HoseBeatrice Janosco
6. Symbol Def: Word or image that represents something else
Lang: a heart symbolizes love
Example: Fifteen
7. FifteenWilliam Stafford
8. We could find the end of a road, meet
the sky out on Seventeenth. I thought about
hills, and patting the handle got back a
confident opinion. On the bridge we indulged
a forward feeling, a tremble. I was fifteen.
Thinking, back farther in the grass I found
the owner, just coming to where he had flipped
over the rail. He had blood on his hand, was pale-
I helped him walk to his machine. He ran his hand
over it, called me a good man, roared away.
I stood there fifteen.
9. Hyperbole Def: an exaggerated statement used to heighten effect
Lang: “yo mama jokes”
Yo mama so stupid it took her 2 hours to watch 60 Minutes!
Yo mama so ugly they filmed "Gorillas in the Mist" in her shower
Example: For a Hopi Silversmith
10. For a Hopi SilversmithJoy Harjo
11. Alliteration Def: repetition of consonant sounds
Lang: Sally sells seashells by the seashore
Example: Fast Run in the Junkyard
12. Run Fast in The JunkyardJeannette Nicholas
13. back down, flinging hat racks, burlap sacks, chairs cropped
of backs and flotsam crockery, breezed in league
boots
back out of everybody’s past hazards, up to the road
to break tar bubbles all-the-way-home where things
were wearing out as fast as we were grwoing up.
14. Personification Def: giving human qualities to inanimate objects
Lang: “the storm ruthlessly devoured everything in its path”
Example: Guilt
15. GuiltJames Kavanaugh
16. Onomatopoeia Def: use of words to imitate sounds
Lang: Clap, boom
Example: The Rusty Spigot
17. The Rusty SpigotEve Merriam
18. Allusion Def: references to or reminder of something
Example: To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph
19. To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to TriumphAnne Sexton
20. Apostrophe A figure of speech in which someone absent or dead OR something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present.
21. Apostrophe Examples Take Something Like a Star: the poem begins, "O Star," He addresses the star throughout the poem.
Tree at my Window: He addresses the tree throughout: "Tree at my window, window tree."
Mending Wall: speaking to the stones that make up the barrier, he says, "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"