POETRY:
TERMS AND FORMS
Ms. Delp
English 9
Poetry Terms
• Poets rely on multiple layers of meaning in words so they make use
of both:
• Denotation – The dictionary definition of a word.
• Connotation – The emotional associations the word brings with it.
• Example stubborn verses determined (definitions form m-w.com)
• stubborn
• : refusing to change your ideas or to stop doing something.
• determined
• :having a strong feeling that you are going to do something and that you
will not allow anyone or anything to stop you
Which word has a positive connotation? Which is negative?
Poetry Terms
• Imagery - word or sequence of words representing a sensory
experience (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory)
• It was dark and dim in the forest. – The words “dark” and “dim” are visual
images.
• The children were screaming and shouting in the fields. - “Screaming” and
“shouting” appeals to our sense of hearing or auditory sense.
• He whiffed the aroma of brewed coffee. – “whiff” and “aroma” evoke our
sense of smell or olfactory sense.
• The girl ran her hands on a soft satin fabric. – The idea of touch in this
example appeal to our sense of touch or tactile sense.
• The fresh and juicy orange are very cold and sweet. – “fresh and juicy” and
“cold and sweet” when associated with oranges have an effect on our
sense of taste or gustatory sense.
Poetry Terms
• Personification - the endowment of inanimate objects or abstract
concepts with animate or living qualities •
•
•
•
•
Look at my car. She is a beauty, isn’t it so?
The wind whispered through dry grass.
The flowers danced in the gentle breeze.
Time and tide waits for none.
The fire swallowed the entire forest.
• Taken from Act I, Scene II of “ Romeo and Juliet”,
• “When well-appareled April on the heel
Of limping winter treads.”
Poetry Terms
• Metaphor - comparison between essentially unlike things without
using words OR application of a name or description to something
to which it is not literally applicable
• Example: "[Love] is an ever fixed mark, / that looks on tempests and is
never shaken."
• Simile - comparison between two essentially unlike things using
words such as "like," as," or "as though“
• Example: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
Poetry Terms
• Hyperbole - exaggeration for emphasis (the opposite of
understatement)
• From W.H Auden’s poem “As I Walked One Evening”,
• I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
• Understatement - a figure of speech employed to intentionally
make a situation seem less important than it really is
• In Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”, Holden Caulfield says:
• “I have to have this operation. It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on
the brain.”
Poetry Terms
• Oxymoron -a figure of speech in which two opposite ideas are joined to
create an effect
•
Seriously funny
• Romeo’s lines in Romeo in Juliet:
“Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!
• Paradox a statement that appears to be self-contradictory or silly but may
include a latent truth
• Truth is honey which is bitter.
• “What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young.” – George Bernard
Shaw
Poetry Terms
• Allusion -a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing or
idea of historical, cultural, literary or political significance
• “Don’t act like a Romeo in front of her.”
• The rise in poverty will unlock the Pandora’s box of crimes.
• “This place is like a Garden of Eden.”
• Symbolism – the use of objects or characters that represent
something else. Usually a concrete tangible, sensory object to
represent or ‘characterize’ a more abstract idea or concept.
• Dove is a symbol of peace.
• Red rose or red color stands for love or romance
Poetry Terms
• Tone - the attitude the writer takes toward the subject
• Tone describes the authors feelings and attitudes
• Mood – the feelings or emotional reaction created by the work
• Mood describes the reader’s feelings and attitudes
Poetry Terms
• Alliteration – the repetition of beginning consonant sounds in a line
of verse
• But a better butter makes a batter better.
• “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes;
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.”
• Assonance – the repetition of vowel sounds within a line of verse
• Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
• Onomatopoeia – the use of words that sound like their meanings –
comic book words
• buzz, splash, thump
• “The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees…
Poetry Terms
• Rhyme –the use of words that sound the same, usually occurring at
the ends of lines in regular patterns
• Repetition - Poets often use the same or words, sounds, or entire
phrases in definite patterns to create a sense of rhythm in their
poems.
• Refrain - A phrase or line repeated at intervals within a poem,
especially at the end of a stanza.
Poetry Terms
• Meter - measured pattern of rhythmic accents in a line of verse
• Stress: greater amount of force used to pronounce one syllable
over another- the opposite of unstress
• Pause: (caesura) a pause for a beat in the rhythm of the verse
(often indicated by a line break or a mark of punctuation)
• Metrical Foot – a unit of sound that that has a definite rhythm.
Usually two or three syllables or beats per foot.
Poetry Terms
• Rising meter: meter containing metrical feet that move form unstressed
to stressed syllables
• iamb (iambic) – a metrical foot containing two syllables – the first is
unstressed, while the second is stressed.
• Behold, to be, Of Mice and Men
• iambic pentameter – a traditional form of rising meter consisting of five iambic
feet (ten syllables) per line.
• Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
• Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
• anapest (anapestic) – a metrical foot containing three syllables - the first two
are unstressed , while the last is stressed.
• Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house
• ‘get a life’
Poetry Terms
• Falling meter – meter containing metrical feet that move from
stressed to unstressed syllables
• Trochee (trochaic) – a metrical foot containing two syllables – the first is
stressed, while the second is unstressed
• Pittsburgh, clever, roses
• Dactyl (dactylic) – a metrical foot containing three syllables – the first is
stressed, while the last two are unstressed
• Buffalo, strawberry, tenderly, notable
The Sonnet
A very brief background
A style of poetry created by Franceso Petrarch, an
Italian poet, during the 1300’s
 The form was very popular during the English
Renaissance
 Shakespeare used the form and created a variation
in the rhyme scheme creating the “English” sonnet
 The form is still used by modern poets including
Claude McKay(1889-1948), a Harlem Renaissance
poet and Pablo Neruda(1904-1973)a Chilean poet.

Sonnets
All sonnets have 14 lines
 Each line has 10 syllables (beats) that usually
form iambic pentameter
 The rhyme schemes are
Italian abba abba cde cde
English abab cdcd efef gg
 The rhyme scheme helps to divide the poem
into meaningful sections

Sestina

attributed to Arnaut Daniel, the Provencal
troubadour of the twelfth century(1100s)

The name "troubadour" likely comes from trobar, which means "to invent or
compose verse." The troubadours sang their verses accompanied by music and were
quite competitive, each trying to top the next in wit, as well as complexity and
difficulty of style.

Originally love poems with strict syllabic
limits, the form has evolved.

Formula for end words remains strict
Sestina

Formula
 1. ABCDEF
 2. FAEBDC
 3. CFDABE
 4. ECBFAD
 5. DEACFB
 6. BDFECA

7. (envoi) ECA or ACE
Villanelle

A nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes
and two refrains

The form is made up of five tercets(3 line stanzas)
followed by a quatrain(4line stanza).

The first and third lines of the opening tercet are
repeated alternately in the last lines of the
succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the
refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines.
Villanelle

Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters
for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as:

A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.
Ballad





Originated in oral tradition
Ballads are plot driven songs – they tell a story
Written in quatrains(4 line stanzas) with typically 3
– 4 stresses per line.
Usually 2nd and 4th lines rhyme
Ballads are fast paced, with a dramatic conclusion,
rely on ‘showing’ the most dramatic moments of
the event with vivid description
Free Verse– vers libre
[n] unrhymed verse without a consistent
metrical pattern
 Poetry Definition
 Poetry not written in a regular rhythmical
pattern, or meter. Free verse seeks to capture
the rhythms of speech, it is the dominant form
of contemporary poetry.

Natural patterns

Because of its hidden discipline, free verse
often surprises those who expect a verbal
free-for-all. While line and stanza counts,
syllables, and rhyme schemes may seem
random, the beat of the poem is not; it’s a
variation of natural speech patterns. Free
verse maintains a metrical and rhythmic
precision, exemplified by its first
universally recognized master, Walt
Whitman.
Apostrophe

a direct address of an inanimate object,
abstract qualities, or a person not living
or present.
Tone and Mood

Tone - the attitude the writer takes
toward the subject
 Tone describes the authors feelings and attitudes

Mood – the feelings or emotional
reaction created by the work
 Mood describes the reader’s feelings and attitudes
I Hear America Singing
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or
at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of
the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows,
robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
A Clear Midnight by Walt Whitman
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the
lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the
themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.