ELEMENTS OF POETRY

Poetry
 A form of literary expression that captures intense experiences or creative perceptions of the world in a
musical language.

ELEMENTS OF POETRY
 It includes the following:
1. Persona 5. Connotation and Denotation
2. Figures of Speech 6. Diction
3. Rhyme 7. Tone and Mood
4. Rhythm and Meter

1) Persona
 A speaker, or voice, talks to the reader.
 The speaker is not necessarily the poet.
 It can also be a fictional person, 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

2) Figures of Speech
 A figure of speech is a word or expression that is not meant to be read literally.
Simile
 A figure of speech using a word such as like or as to compare seemingly unlike things.
 Example:
 Does it stink like rotten meat?
From “Harlem” by Langston Hughes
Metaphor
 Also compares seemingly unlike things, but does not use like or as.
 Example:
 The moon is a white silver.
From “I Am Singing Now” by Luci Tapahonso
Personification
 Attributes human-like characteristics to an animal, object, or idea.
 Example:
 A spider sewed at night.
From “A Spider Sewed at Night” by Emily Dickinson
Hyperbole
 A figure of speech in which great exaggeration is used for emphasis or humorous effect.
 Example:
 “You’ve asked me a million times!”

3) Rhyme
 The repetition of the same stressed vowel sound and any succeeding sounds in two or more words.
Internal Rhyme
 Occurs within a line of poetry.
End Rhyme
 Occurs at the end of lines.
Rhyme Scheme
 The pattern of end rhymes that may be designated by assigning a different letter of the alphabet to
each new rhyme.
Example of the Rhyme Scheme

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4) Rhythm and Meter
Rhythm
 The pattern of sound created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.
 Rhythm can be regular or irregular.
Meter
 In order to measure how many syllables are per line, they are measured in feet.
 A foot consists of a certain number of syllables forming part of a line of verse.

5) Connotation and Denotation

Connotation
 The emotional and imaginative association surrounding a word.

Denotation
 The strict dictionary meaning of a word.

6) Diction
 The choice of words by an author or poet.
 When we explore the connotation and denotation of a poem, we are looking at the poet’s diction.
 Many times, a poet’s diction can help unlock the tone or mood of the poem.

7) Tone and Mood

 Although many times we use the words mood and tone interchangeably, they do not necessarily mean
the same thing.
Mood
 The feeling or atmosphere that a poet creates.
 Mood can suggest an emotion (ex. “excited”) or the quality of a setting (ex. “calm”, “somber”)
 In a poem, mood can be established through word choice, line length, rhythm, etc.

Tone
 A reflection of the poet’s attitude toward the subject of a poem.
 Tone can be serious, sarcastic, humorous, etc.

FREE VERSE
 Poetry that has no fixed pattern of meter, rhyme, line length, or stanza arrangement.
 In writing free verse, a poet may choose to use repetition or similar grammatical structures to
emphasize and unify the ideas in the poem.
 When writing free verse, a poet is free to vary the poetic elements to emphasize an idea or create a
tone.
 While the majority of popular poetry today is written as free verse, the style itself is not new.
 Walt Whitman, writing in the 1800’s, created free verse poetry based on forms found in the King
James Bible.

Modern Free Verse

 Concerned with the creation of a brief, ideal image, not the refined ordered (and artificial, according to
some critics) patterns that other forms of poetry encompass.

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