Learning About Poetry

Elements of Poetry

- Poetry is the most musical of literary forms. Poets choose words for both sounds and meaning, using the following elements:

Sensory Language -  is writing or speech that appeals to one or more of the five senses--sight,sound,smell,taste, and touch.

Figurative Language - is writing that is innovative,imaginative, and not meant to be taken literally. Writers use these figures of speech:

• Metaphors - describe one thing as if it were something else. Her eyes were saucers, wide with expectation. 
• Personification - gives human qualities to something nonhuman. The clarinets sang
• Similes - use like or as to compare two unlike things. The drums were as loud as a fireworks display.

Sound Devices - add a musical quality to poetry.

• Alliteration - is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words, as in feathered friend
• Repetition - is the repeated use of sound, word, or phrase.
• Assonance - is the repetition of vowel sounds in stressed syllables that end with different consonant sounds, as in fade and hay.
• Consonance - is the repetition of final consonant sounds in stressed syllables with different vowel sounds, as in end and hand.
• Onomatopoeia - is the use of words that imitate sounds.
• Rhyme - is the repetition of sounds at the ends of words.
• Meter - is the rhythmical pattern---or the arrangement and number of stressed and unstressed syllabes--in a poem.

Forms of Poetry

The structure of a poem dictates its form. Most are written in lines, and these lines are grouped into stanzas. This list describes several forms of poetry.

 Lyric - poetry expresses thoughts and feelings of a single speaker, often in very musical verse. The speaker is the one telling the poem.

Narrative - poetry tells a story in verse. Narrative poems often have elements like those in short story, such as setting, plot, and characters.

Ballads - are songlike poems that tell a story, often dealing with adventure and romance.

Free verse - poetry is defined by its lack of strict structure. It has no regular meter, no intentional rhyme, no fixed line length, and no specific stanza pattern.

Haiku - is a three-line Japanese verse form. The first and third lines each have five syllables and the second line has seven.

Rhyming couplets - are a pair of rhyming lines that usually have the same meter and length.

Limericks - are humorous five-line poems with a specific rhythm pattern and rhyme scheme.