ELEMENTS

OF POETRY
CREATIVE WRITING 11
 Learning Objectives
A. Identify the elements of poetry
B. Classify and use the elements of
poetry in a piece
C. Demonstrate enthusiasm in analyzing
a text and citing elements of poetry
used
D. Develop a sense of teamwork through
collaborative activities
 ELEMENTS
OF POETRY
- are a set of devices used to
make a poem. It is an
indispensable part of the
organization of a good poem.
 SPEAKER
1. SPEAKER – is the created
narrative voice of the poem (i.e
the person the reader is
supposed to imagine speaking
in the poem.
Example: Pigeon Poem
“You know how ladies are /
finicky feathers walking around /
beaks in the air all offended / like
they didn’t strut past by burnt
cantaloupe / eyes on purpose.”
 AUDIENCE
2. AUDIENCE – is the
person or people to whom
the speaker is speaking.
Example: He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
William Butler Yeats
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
 CONTENT
3. CONTENT - is the
subject or the idea or
the thing that the
poem concerns or
represents.
 THEME
4. THEME – relates to the
general idea or ideas
continuously developed
throughout the poem.
Example Carry Your Heart With Me
by E. E. Cummings
I carry your heart with me(i carry it in
My heart)i am never without it(anywhere
I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
By only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear
No fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
No world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
And it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
And whatever a sun will always sing is you
Here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
And the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
Higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
STRUCTURE
5. Structure - refers to the
techniques and elements
used to arrange the words
in a poem on the page.
STRUCTURE
a. Line – is a subdivision of a
poem, specifically a group of
words arranged into a row that
ends for a reason other than the
right-hand margin.
 STRUCTURE
b. Enjambment – is the running – over
of a sentence or phrase from one
poetic line to the next, without terminal
punctuation. William Carlos William’s
“Between Walls” is one sentence
broken into 10 enjambed lines.
 “Between Walls”
BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

the back wings

of the

hospital where
nothing

will grow lie

cinders

in which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle
STRUCTURE
c. End-stopped line – An
end-stopped line would be a
complete thought or phrase
appearing on a single line.
STRUCTURE
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The line has a subject, a verb
and a predicate thereby
making it a complete thought
on a single line.
 STRUCTURE
d. Caesura – is a natural pause or break in
a line of poetry, usually near the middle of
the line. There is a caesura right after the
question mark in the first line of this sonnet
by Elizabeth Barret Browning: “How do I
love thee? Let me count the ways.”
 STRUCTURE
Caesural breaks are of two types in poetry:
1. Feminine Caesura – a pause that occurs
after a non- stressed and short syllable in a
poetic line. This is a little softer and less
abrupt.
Example: “The woods are lovely, || dark
and deep.”
STRUCTURE
2. Masculine Caesura – a pause
that occurs after a long or accented
syllable in a line. It creates staccato
effect in the poem.
Example: “My words fly up, || my
thoughts remain below.”
 STRUCTURE
e. Verse - is the line of a poem
arranged in a metrical pattern.
• Accentual meter -
Lines have the same number
of stresses and varied count
of syllables
STRUCTURE
• Syllabic meter -
Lines have the same
number of syllables
and varied count of stresses
STRUCTURE
• Accentual-syllabic meter -
Lines have the same
number of syllables, both
stressed and non-stressed;
arranged in fix order
STRUCTURE
f. Stanza –a grouped set of lines
within a poem usually set off
from other stanzas by a blank
line or indentation. It is referred
to as the “unit of poetic lines”.
STRUCTURE
Different stanza forms:
 SHAPE
6. Shape is one of the main things
that separate prose and poetry.
Poetry can take on many formats,
but one of the most inventive forms
is for the poem to take on the shape
of its subject.
Examples:
 TONE
7. Tone is the attitude you feel in
the poem – the writer’s attitude
towards the subject or audience.
Tone can be playful, humorous,
serious, ironic or anything.
 IMAGERY
8. Imagery – refers to the
“pictures” which we perceive with
our mind’s eyes, ears, nose, tongue,
skin, and through which we
experience the “duplicate world”
created by poetic language.
An example is an excerpt from Elizabeth
Bishop’s poem “The Fish”

His brown skin hung in strips

Like ancient wallpaper,
And its pattern of darker brown
Was like wallpaper:
Shapes like full- blown roses
Stained and lost through age
 DICTION
9. Diction – poetic diction is the
term used to refer to the linguistic
style, the vocabulary, and the
metaphors used in the writing of
poetry. Poets especially, tend to use
words rich in connotation.
 FIGURES OF SPEECH
10. Figures of Speech - is a type of
language that varies from the norms of
literal language, in which words mean
exactly what they say for the sake of
comparison, emphasis, clarity, or
freshness.
- Also known as ornaments of language.
1. Allusion - a figure of speech
that makes a reference to or a
representative of, people,
places, events, literary works,
myths either directly or by
implication.
Example: "Chocolate cake is my
Achilles heel." The allusion here is to
"Achilles' heel," or the Greek myth
about the hero Achilles and how his
heel was his one weakness. In this
case, the speaker's "weakness" is
chocolate cake.
2. Antitheses - a rhetorical
term for the juxtaposition
of contrasting ideas in
balanced phrases or
clauses.
Examples:
Speech is silver, but silence
is gold.
“To err is human; to forgive
divine.” – Alexander Pope
3. Apostrophe - a figure of
speech in which some absent
or non-existing person or
thing is addressed as if
present and capable of
understanding or replying.
Example: “Come
on, Phone, give me
a ring!”
4. Asyndeton - is a syllabic
scheme in which conjunctions
are deliberately omitted from
a series of related clauses.
Example: “Reduce, reuse,
recycle”
5. Bathos - is a sudden
drop in tone from the
serious and elevated to
the downright silly.
Example: Her hair was finely
curled, her cheeks were lined
with rouge, and her dress was a
flowing green and blue which
made her look rather like a
tired, old peacock.
6. Chiasmus - two or more
clauses are related to each
other through a reversal of
structures in order to make
a larger point.
Example:
“When the going gets tough,
the tough get going”
“Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes
sin's a pleasure.” (Lord Byron,
“Don Juan”)
7. Hyperbole - involves
exaggeration of ideas for the
sake of emphasis.
Example: I was dying of
laughter.
Cry me a river
8. Irony - Words are used in
such a way that their
intended meaning is
different from the actual
meaning of the words.
Example:
“The weather is lovely
today” while it is
hailing.
9. Litotes - Consists of an
ironical understatement in
which affirmative is
expressed by the negation
of the opposite.
Example: It's not
the worst thing
I've eaten
10. Metaphor - An implied
comparison between two
unlike things that actually
have something important
in common.
Example:
Time is a thief.
Eyes are the windows
to the soul.
11. Metonymy - One
word or phrase is
substituted for another
with which it is closely
associated.
Example:
“I gave you my heart”. Most people
would understand this to mean, “I
gave you my love”. The word “heart”
is a metonym for love, as it is a
closely associated thing that
replaces the word.
12. Oxymoron - Two opposite
ideas are joined to create an
effect
Example:
Deafening silence, Bittersweet
Leaving dead, Alone together
13. Paradox - A statement
that is self-contradictory
because it often contains
statements that are both
true, but in general, cannot
be true at the same time
Example:
Save money by spending it.
If I know one thing, it's that I
know nothing.
This is the beginning of the
end.
14. Personification - the
attribution of a personal
nature or human
characteristics to something
nonhuman
Example:
The sun smiled at them
The flowers danced in the
breeze
Love Is Blind
My heart danced
15. Pun - A joke about
words that sound alike
but they have
different meanings.
Examples:
A bicycle cannot stand alone on
its own because it’s two-tired.

The duck said to the bartender,

“Put it on my bill.”
16. Simile - A stated comparison
between two unlike things that
have certain qualities in
common
Example: As cold as ice
Fight like cats and dogs
17. Symbol - Using an
object or action that
means something more
than its literal meaning.
Example: A dove is a
symbol of peace, a black
cat signifies bad luck, and a
white flag means a peace
offering.
18. Synecdoche - A part is used
for the whole, the whole for a
part, the specific for the general,
the general for the specific, or
the material for the thing made
from it
Example: the word hand in
"offer your hand in
marriage"; mouths in
"hungry mouths to feed";
and wheels referring to a
car.
19. Synesthesia - is a
phenomenon that causes sensory
crossovers, such as tasting
colors or feeling sounds. Some
people describe it as having
“wires crossed” in their brain
Example: associating colors with
emotions
The most common form of
synesthesia, researchers believe,
is colored hearing: sounds, music
or voices seen as colors.
“a loud dress, a silly gaze”
20. Understatement - A
writer or a speaker
deliberately makes a
situation seem less important
or serious than it is.
Example: “It seems to be
raining a little," in the middle
of a hurricane, that would be
an understatement
 SOUND-EFFECT DEVICES
11. Sound-Effect Devices - or
verbal music is one of the
important resources that enable
the poet to do something more
than communicate mere
information
Most common sound-effect
devices:
1. Alliteration - repetition of the
initial consonant sounds
Example: Clary closed her
cluttered clothes closet.
2. Anaphora - Repeating
a sequence of words at
the beginning of
neighboring clauses
“Get busy living or get busy
dying.”
“Give me liberty or give me death.”
“You're damned if you do and
you're damned if you don't.”
“So many places, so little time.”
“I wish I may; I wish I might.”
3. Assonance - Repetition of
vowel sounds
Example: The light of the fire is a
sight. (repetition of the long i
sound).
Go slow over the road. (repetition
of the long o sound).
4. Cacophony - Juxtaposition of
words producing a harsh sound
Example: dishes crashing on the
floor, or horns blaring and
people yelling in a traffic
accident.
5. Consonance - Combination of
consistently copied consonants
Example: Hickory dickory dock.
Peter Piper picked a peck of
pickled peppers.
She sells seashells by the
seashore
6. Elision - Omission of
unstressed vowel or
syllable to preserve a
meter of line of poetry
Examples:
kinda for “kind of”
choc-late for “chocolate”
asp-rin for “aspirin”
hist-ry for “history”
temper-ture for “temperature”
math-matics for “mathematics”
7. Euphony - Juxtaposition of words
producing a pleasant sound
Example: The words mists, mellow,
close, sun, bless, vines and eves all
have a soothing quality to them and
don't sound harsh or jarring, thus
making them euphonious words
8. Onomatopoeia - Formation or
use of words which imitates the
source of the sound that it
describes
Example: Boom, bark, clang,
bang, boing, clink
9. Repetition - Repeating of a word
or phrase
Example: 'I have to practice my
times tables over so I can learn
them' vs 'I have to practice my times
tables over and over and over again
so I can learn them. '
10. Rhyme - Refers to a close
similarity of sounds
Example: Cat-hat, rotten-forgotten,
and heard-bird are examples of
rhyming pairs of words; their sounds
match after the last stressed
syllable.
11. Rhythm - Demonstrates
the long and short patterns
through stressed and
unstressed syllables.
5 types of rhythm:
1. iamb – consists of unstressed and
stressed syllables (amuse, portray)
2. trochee – stressed and unstressed
syllables (garden, highway)
3. spondee – two consecutively
stressed syllables (childhood, heyday,
headache)
4. Dactyl – consists of three syllables.
First syllable is stressed and the
remaining two syllables are not
stressed (elephant, fabulous)
5. Anapest – opposite of dactyl. Three
syllables where the first two syllables
are not stressed while the last syllable
is stressed. (understand)