Poetry

Poetry
•'literature in metrical form'
•or 'compositions forming rhythmic lines'.
 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.
 CONTENT
Content is the subject of the poem.
It answers the question “what?”
What is the poem all about?
What happens in the poem?
 THEME
•It is the message about life or human nature
that the poet shares with the speaker.
 SHAPE AND FORM
1.Structured poetry has predictable patterns of rhyme,
rhythm, line-length and stanza construction. Some
examples are the sonnet and the haiku.

2. Free verse, the poet experiments with the form of the

poem. The rhythm, number of syllables per line and
stanza construction do not follow a pattern.
 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.

• humorous, sarcastic, joyous, angry or solemn

 IMAGERY
• It refers to the language that appeals to the
reader’s sense of sight, hearing, touch, smell and
taste.
 STANZAS
•Stanzas are a series of lines grouped together and separated by an empty line from other
stanzas.
• couplet (2 lines)
 tercet (3 lines)
 quatrain (4 lines)
 cinquain (5 lines)
 sestet (6 lines) (sometimes it's called a sexain)
 septet (7 lines)
 octave (8 lines) 
WORD SOUNDS/ SOUND DEVICES
• Alliteration: the repetition of initial sounds on the
same line or stanza .

• Big bad Bob bounced bravely.

• Assonance: the repetition of vowel
sounds (anywhere in the middle or end
of a line or stanza)

Tilting at windmills
• Consonance: the repetition of consonant sounds
(anywhere in the middle or end of a line or stanza)

And all the air a solemn stillness holds. (T. Gray)

• Onomatopoeia: words that sound like that
which they describe

Boom! Crash! Pow! Quack! Moo! Caress

• Repetition: the repetition of entire lines or
phrases to emphasize key thematic ideas.
 RHYME
•Rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds.

• I saw a fairy in the wood,

He was dressed all in green.
He drew his sword while I just stood,
And realized I'd been seen.
RHYME SCHEME
-a pattern of rhymes in a poem
-Poets use rhyme to add musical sounds to their poems.

I saw a fairy in the wood, a

He was dressed all in green. b
He drew his sword while I just stood, a
And realized I'd been seen.b
 INTERNAL RHYME
•Internal rhyme occurs in the middle of a line.

"In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud"

"Whiles all the night through fog-smoke white"
FIGURES OF SPEECH
Simile
• a comparison using like or as

•Example
Life is like a box of chocolate.
 Metaphor
• direct comparison between two things
• does not use the words like or as

• Example
Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
 Personification
•giving human qualities to animals, ideas,
object

•Example
The moon smiled at the lovers.
Exaggeration

•describe something as larger or wildly

different than it actually is

•Example:
•I am so hungry I could eat a horse.