Poetry

Introduction to Lit

Different Types of Poetry

• Traditional poetry• A Poetry Slam• A Poet Laurate • Famous Children's Poetry audio• making a poem

Types of Poetry

• lyric poetry: expresses vivid thought and feeling

• narrative poetry: tells a story• dramatic poetry: uses techniques of

drama, such as speaker and conflict, to tell a story

Poetic Devices

musical devices: devices that give a poem a melodious quality

alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds• ex: Terrible truths terrified Terrance• Alphabet Aerobics

Onomatopoeia: a word that imitates the sound(s) it represents • ex: buzz, smack, wham, crash, sizzle • onomoatopeia link

devices continued

Assonance: repetition of a vowel sound• Ex: ignorance is disguised within

insult • And so, all the night-tide, I lie down

by the sideOf my darling, my darling, my life and my bride. -- Edgar Allan Poe, "Annabel Lee"

Consonance: the repetition of consonant sounds

• Ex: haggard ragged hog• Whose woods these are I think I

know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.-- Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a

Snowy Evening"

Meter

Meter: the rhythmical pattern of a poem, determined by the number and types of stresses or beats, in each line.– I wandered lonely as a cloud. • most common is iambic pentameter

(unstressed, stressed)• All TYPES of different meters

Repetition: the use of any element of language – a sound, word, phrase, clause, or sentence – more than once

Ex:I'm nobody! Who are you?Are you nobody too?Then there's a pair of us-don't tell!They'd banish us you know.

- Emily Dickinson “I'm nobody! Who are You?”

rhyme: the repetition of sounds at the ends of words

Ex: • Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I could.

- Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken”

Rhyme Scheme

rhyme scheme: a regular pattern of rhyming words that appear at the ends of lines in a poemI wandered lonely as a cloud (A)That floats on high o’er vales and hills, (B) What all at once I saw a crowd, (A)A host, of golden daffodils; (B)Beside the lake, beneath the trees, (C) Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. (C)

-- William Wordsworth “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

Figurative Language

figurative language: devices that give creative and unexpected comparisons and descriptions

Simile: a comparison using “like” or “as”Ex: Her eyes are like diamonds.

Metaphor: a direct comparison of two things.Ex: Robert is a tank.

Personification: gives human characteristics to non-human things.

Ex: The wind whispered through the trees.

Imagery: very descriptive language that creates detailed images in a reader’s mind.

• Ex:The apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.

-- Ezra Pound "In a Station of the Metro”Symbol: an object that represents something

else.Ex: the color black- death, sadness, depression,

etc.