ARELLANO UNIVERSITY

Jose Abad Santos Campus

Basic Education Department – Senior High School
3058 Taft Avenue Pasay City

CREATIVE WRITING
MIDTERM REVIEWER

POETRY

The production of a poet.

Writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and
arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound and rhythm.

STRUCTURE IN POETRY
An important method of analyzing a poem is to look at the stanza structure or style of a poem.

STANZA
Is a series of lines grouped together and separated by an empty line from other stanza.

KINDS OF STANZA
COUPLET (2 LINES)
TERCET (3 LINES)
QUATRAIN (4 LINES)
CINQUAIN (5 LINES)
SESTET (6 LINES)
SEPTET (7 LINES)
OCTAVE (8 LINES)

FORM
A poem may or may not have a specific number of lines, rhyme scheme, and/or metrical patterns, but it
can still be labelled according to its form or style.

3 MOST COMMON TYPES OF POEMS ACCRD. TO FORMS

1. LYRIC POEM
2. NARRATIVE POEM
3. DESCRIPTIVE POEM

1. LYRIC POEM

It is any poem with one speaker ( not necessarily the poet ) who expresses strong thoughts and
feelings.
2. NARRATIVE POEM

It is a poem that tells a story; its structure resembles the plot line of a story [i.e. the introduction of
conflict and characters, rising action, climax and the denouement].

3. DESCRIPTIVE POEM

It is a poem that describes the world that surrounds the speaker.

It uses elaborate imagery and adjectives.

3 TYPES OF POETRY

1. LYRIC POETRY
2. NARRATIVE POETRY
3. DRAMATIC POETRY

1. LYRIC POETRY
It is generally considered the most intense genre of poetry, the form that honors its musical origins.

KINDS OF LYRIC POETRY

A. ODE
It is a dignified and elaborately structured lyric poem praising and glorifying an individual,
commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally.
B. ELEGY
It is a lyric poem, written in elegiac couplets, that expresses sorrow or lamentation, usually for one who
has died.
C. SONG
It is a lyric poem which is a set to music. All songs have a strong beat created largely through the 3R’s:
rhythm, rhyme and repetition.
D. SONNET
It is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter.
E. SIMPLE LYRIC
It is a short poem expressing the poet’s thoughts, feeling, or emotion.

2. NARRATIVE POETRY
It is a poem that tells a story.

KINDS OF NARRATIVE POETRY

A.EPIC
An epic is a long unified narrative poem, recounting in dignified language the adventures of a warrior,
a king or a god, the whole embodying the religious and philosophical beliefs, the moral code, customs,
traditions, manners, attitudes, sciences, folklore and culture of the people or country from which it
came.
B. METRICAL ROMANCE
It recounts the quest undertaken by a single knight in order to gain a lady’s favor.
C. METRICAL TALE
It is a simple, straightforward story in verse.
D. BALLAD
It is a narrative poem which is meant to be sung, usually composed in the ballad stanza.

3. DRAMATIC POETRY
It presents one or more characters speaking, usually to other characters, but sometimes to themselves or
directly to the reader.

KINDS OF DRAMATIC POETRY

A. DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
Is a literary device that is used when a character reveals his or her innermost thoughts and feelings,
those that are hidden throughout the course of the story line, through a poem or a speech.

B. SOLILOQUY
It is the act of speaking while alone, especially when used as a theatrical device that allows a
character’s thoughts and ideas to be conveyed to the audience.

TECHNIQUES IN WRITING POETRY

CAUSALITY
A plot is not a random string of events. It has a logic based on cause and effect relationships between
things that happen in the story.

FORESHADOWING
It is a plot-related literary technique whereby an author shows or says something in an early part of a
story that hints at a later event. Psychologically, foreshadowing prepares us for what is to come in the
story, particularly the ending.

FLASHBACK
It is an interruption in the chronological sequence of events in the plot. It narrates a scene that occurred
earlier.

EUPHEMISM
Often in literature, whether for humor or just for taste, a writer wishes to describe some graphic or
offensive event using milder imagery or phrasing. When an author does this, it's called a euphemism.

ALLUSION
It is when an author refers to the events or characters from another story in her own story with the
hopes that those events will add context or depth to the story she's trying to tell.

CINQUAIN
A cinquain is a 5 line poem that follows a specific format.

EMOTION POEM
An emotion poem is used to describe various emotions, good or bad, using descriptive language.

FREE VERSE
Free verse poems do not follow any rules.

HAIKU
This is a form of Japanese poetry that follows a specific syllable pattern. It's made up of 3 lines,
consisting of 17 syllables in total. Haikus are usually about a specific part of nature.

NARRATIVE POEM
A narrative poem tells the story of an event in the form of a poem.
 TANKA
It is another Japanese form of poetry that follows a syllable format. This poem is composed of 5 lines.
Lines 1 and 3 have 5 syllables. Lines 2, 4, and 5 contain 7 syllables each.

THE ELEMENTS OF POETRY

A. SPEAKER
The poem’s speaker is the person who is addressing the reader. Sometimes, the speaker is the poet, who
addresses the reader directly or another person.

B. CONTENT
It is the subject of the poem. It answers the question “what?”

C. THEME
The theme of the poem is the meaning of the poem – the main idea that the poet is trying to
communicate.

D. SHAPE OR FORM
Basically, the actual shape and form of poems can vary dramatically from poem to poem. In poetry, you
will encounter two forms: structured and free verse.

E. MOOD OR TONE
The mood or tone of a poem is the feeling that the poet creates and that the reader senses through the
poet’s choice of words, rhythm, rhyme, style and structure.

F. IMAGERY
Imagery refers to the “pictures” which we perceive with our mind’s eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin.

TIPS ON HOW TO WRITE POETRY

1. KNOW YOUR GOAL

 If you don’t know where you’re going, how can you get there?
 
 You need to know what you are trying to accomplish before you begin any project. Writing a poem is no
exception.

2. AVOID CLICHES

A work full of clichés is like a plate of old food: unappetizing. Clichés dull meaning. Because clichéd
writing sounds so familiar, people can complete finish whole lines without even reading them.

3. AVOID SENTIMENTALITY

When readers have the feeling that emotions like rage or indignation have been pushed artificially for
their own sake, they will not take the poem seriously.

4. USE IMAGE

Poetry should stimulate six senses:

 Sight
 Hearing
 Smell
  Touch
 Taste
 Motion

5. USE METAPHOR AND SIMILE

Is to bring imagery and concrete words into your writing.

6.USE CONCRETE WORDS INSTEAD OF ABSTRACT WORDS

Concrete words describe things that people experience with their senses.
 
Abstract words refer to concepts or feelings.

7. COMMUNICATE THEME

Poetry has a theme. Theme is not just a topic, but an idea with an opinion.
The poet must strive to show the reader his/her theme during the entire poem, making use of literary
techniques.

8. SUBVERT ORDINARY

Poets’ strength is the ability to see what other people see every day in a new way. You don’t have to be
special or a literary genius to write good poems–all you have to do is take an ordinary object, place,
person, or idea, and come up with a new perception of it.

9. REVISE REVISE REVISE

The first completed draft of your poem is only the beginning. Poets often go through several drafts of a
poem before considering the work “done.”

10. TRICKS WITH LANGUAGE

Repeating a word or phrase to emphasize its importance/ create a regular rhythm.

 
11. USE PERSONIFICATION

Describe an object/idea as through it were alive. Giving it human qualities.

12. USE THE IDEA OF CONTRAST

The poets place 2 very different things side by side to emphasize something important towards the
subject.

13. USE OF SYMBOLISM

 
It is a word that becomes a sign of something other than simply itself. This is a powerful device because
it encourages the reader to read deeper layers of meaning into the poem.

14. AMBIGUITY
This is where words/ sentences have more than one meaning/ are open to numerous interpretations.